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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27174403">SAPR: Volume 2</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScipioSmith/pseuds/ScipioSmith'>ScipioSmith</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>SAPR [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, RWBY</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Crossovers &amp; Fandom Fusions, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Fantasy, Friendship, Gen, Military, Military Science Fiction, Team Switch-ups, fairytale fantasy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 02:01:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>72</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>477,422</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27174403</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScipioSmith/pseuds/ScipioSmith</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Team SAPR have returned from their vacation in Mistral and are ready to face a new semester at Beacon Academy, joined not only by their classmates, and their Atlesian friends of Team RSPT, but also by visiting students from Atlas, Haven and Shade Academies gathered for the Vytal Festival, including Sunset's new friend, Cinder Fall. </p><p>Distant clouds gather over Vale, the White Fang continue their campaign of crime, and the presence of an Atlesian battlefleet in the skies above the city lends an uncertain air to proceedings, but Sunset is content to ignore the darkness falling outside the school and leave all such things to the proper authorities.</p><p>Or at least, she would if she could. Blake, Sunset's sort-of friend, remains grimly determined to stop the White Fang's reign of terror, and Sunset is dragged with her along a road that will overturn everything they thought they knew about the world, and lead SAPR, RSPT and Blake to the very heart of a dead city, and to the choice that will define who Sunset is for the rest of her life.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Blake Belladonna &amp; Rainbow Dash, Blake Belladonna &amp; Sunset Shimmer, Blake Belladonna/Sun Wukong, James Ironwood &amp; Blake Belladonna, James Ironwood &amp; Rainbow Dash, Jaune Arc &amp; Pyrrha Nikos &amp; Ruby Rose &amp; Sunset Shimmer (My Little Pony: Equestria Girls), Jaune Arc/Pyrrha Nikos, Penny Polendina &amp; Ruby Rose &amp; Pyrrha Nikos, Rainbow Dash &amp; Ciel Soleil &amp; Penny Polendina &amp; Twilight Sparkle, Sunset Shimmer &amp; Cinder Fall</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>SAPR [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1798804</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>88</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>76</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Best Day Ever</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p>Art by <a href="https://twitter.com/cosmokyrin?lang=en">Cosmo Kyrin</a></p><p> </p><p>Best Day Ever</p><p> </p><p>Pyrrha wasn't exactly clear on how all of this had started. One moment, Ruby was flicking food at her sister from across the dining hall, the next minute, Sunset - dripping cream off her face from the pie that had struck her - had planted her foot on the table and yelled something that sounded like 'It. Is. On!' and then... Pyrrha was especially fuzzy on the ‘and then,’ but, well... now YDRN, WWSR, and BLBL had piled up the tables into a vast barricade at one end of the dining hall - with Nora perched precariously at the very top, and all the rest ranged about below like her guards - and she, Pyrrha, was charging up the hall with a baguette in her hand, and that must have happened somehow, even if she wasn't certain exactly how.</p><p>All she knew was that, as ridiculous as it might seem, it was also rather exhilarating.</p><p>It was probably exhilarating precisely because it was so ridiculous. She hadn't felt this rush of giddy enthusiasm for years on the tournament circuit.</p><p>But, as her dozen opponents armed themselves with various foodstuffs - it was an unusual breakfast selection today, with whole watermelons and roast turkeys and cream pies and all kinds of things she hadn't seen at all during the first semester - she felt it now, and she smiled in anticipation of what was to come.</p><p>Nora pointed magisterially down the hall at the advancing Team SAPR. "Get them, my minions! Attack!"</p><p>"'Minions'?" Weiss squawked, but in spite of that, the members of the three teams - most of them, at least - leapt forward in obedience to Nora's command, snatching up watermelons from the tables in front of them and hurling them at Pyrrha in a great barrage.</p><p>Pyrrha grunted as she leapt through the air, slicing the first watermelon clean in two. Its bisected halves landed on the floor at the same time as Pyrrha did. She spun on her toe, slicing two more watermelons into halves, obliterating a third with a strike that shattered it into fragments as red as blood, kicking one back at her opponents where Yang shattered it with a punch. Pyrrha shattered another watermelon, bisected another; her face and her clothes were getting covered in sticky red watermelon juice, but she didn't care because this was gloriously silly - her 'enemies' were hocking watermelons at her, for gods' sake, and she was fighting back with a baguette roll - like nothing that she'd ever done before.</p><p>The watermelon barrage continued, but suddenly, every single one of the swollen green fruits that had been launched through the air at Pyrrha stopped, sticking in the air, held there by some vast invisible hand.</p><p>Pyrrha glanced over her shoulder. Sunset stood just behind her, brow furrowed with concentration, one hand outstretched and wreathed in the green glow of what Pyrrha now knew to be Sunset’s magic. With her free hand, she scraped some residue of cream pie out of her fiery hair and gazed down at the mess on her fingertips as a result.</p><p>She winked at Pyrrha and smirked wickedly at their opponents. "Okay, let’s do this." </p><p>She jerked her hand forwards, just a little, and all of the watermelons were hurled backwards upon those who had first hurled them like a great wave descending on the shore. The members of the three teams scrambled for cover or just to get out of the way. Cardin upended a table to duck behind, Weiss grabbed a raw swordfish and impaled two watermelons upon the point, Flash simply took the hits from three without so much as flinching; most dodged, but Sky Lark and Russell Thrush weren't so lucky: both were struck hard enough to hurl them backwards and across the floor, where they lay in moaning, twitching lumps.</p><p>Lyra and Bon Bon were the first to charge. The former had a baguette like Pyrrha, but Bon Bon looked to have tied one end of a string of sausages around a turkey, while the other end of the sausages were wrapped around her hand.</p><p>Until the moment when she started using her bizarre weapon like a flail, unrolling the string of sausages as she threw the turkey at Pyrrha.</p><p>Pyrrha dodged, but the sound of an impact and a cry from Jaune told her that Bon Bon's strike had found a mark.</p><p>"Jaune, no!" Ruby cried. "You will be avenged!"</p><p>Bon Bon whirled her sausage-turkey flail around her head, her expression intense as she threw it at Pyrrha a second time. Pyrrha leapt, her whole body turning in mid-flight until she was upside down, her long ponytail falling. She could see the sausages beneath her, taut as they reached the limits of their length.</p><p>And Pyrrha reached out and grabbed them with her free hand. She landed on the ground and pulled before Bon Bon could react.<br/>The other end of the sausage string was still wrapped around Bon Bon's wrist, and she was yanked forwards, her eyes bulging as she flew like an arrow straight into the baguette which Pyrrha slammed into her face.</p><p>Pyrrha let go of the sausages as Bon Bon flew backwards towards the barricade of tables.</p><p>Lyra attacked, her baguette held in both hands. Pyrrha parried her first few slashes easily, then went on the attack, driving Lyra backwards as she beat down the other girl's guard. She prepared a finishing strike-</p><p>Blake descended upon Pyrrha from above, a baguette held in each hand. Pyrrha parried. Blake was scowling with the effort, but Pyrrha was smiling because who would have thought that something like this could be so much fun?</p><p>They separated, each backing off a step, raising their baguettes into their guard of preference. Then, they charged.</p><p>Blake had been holding out on them, Pyrrha realised as they clashed, bread striking bread in a cacophonous rhythm of dull thumps ringing in an increasingly high tempo. She'd never seemed that skilled a fighter in their sparring class – not bad, but nowhere near Pyrrha’s level – but she was making Pyrrha work for this. Whenever Pyrrha thought that she'd gotten in a decisive blow, it turned out to be a clone which dissolved like shadow once struck, and only at that point could she see the real Blake about to hit her from the side or sense her presence behind her. Pyrrha parried every blow and forced Blake back with her counters, but it was a slighter margin of error then she was used to dealing with. Blake had definitely been holding back.</p><p>It was honestly a little bit of a relief when Lyra re-joined the contest. Two vs. one wasn't ideal, but Lyra provided a fixed point to focus on, restricting the places that Blake could be, and when Pyrrha focussed on Lyra, she made Blake focus on protecting her teammate, and that shut down Blake's options yet further. Not quite enough, as the fight continued. Bread thumped against bread: slash, parry, counter. Pyrrha wasn't losing, but she wasn't winning either.</p><p>She spotted Bon Bon picking herself up off the floor and preparing to rejoin the fight. Three against one would be far from perfect.</p><p>Pyrrha leapt, backflipping away from Blake and Lyra to land on one of the tables. Her feet scattered trays and dishes in all directions. She reversed her grip on the baguette and threw it at Bon Bon like a javelin. It flew straight and true and hit her squarely in the forehead, knocking her down again.</p><p>Pyrrha jumped down off the table as Blake and Lyra came for her, snatching up another baguette to replace the one she'd thrown away.</p><p>A sound from behind distracted her for a moment; she glanced, then turned her head as Ruby came surfing along the row of tables, riding a dinner tray, scattering everything in her path down onto the floor in two messy troughs before she and her tray made a flying leap off the table straight at Lyra. Lyra raised her baguette to parry desperately, but when the tray struck her and Ruby kicked off it, she was sent flying backwards across the hall, knocking tables and chairs askew as she went until she crashed through the far window and out into the grounds somewhere.</p><p>A look of glee settled upon Ruby's face... right up until Blake attacked her in mid-air, hitting her with a flurry of blows that hammered her into the nearest pillar hard enough to crack it.</p><p>Pyrrha dashed across the dining hall, leaping over the nearest table, discarding her baguette as she scooped Ruby up in her arms and carried her out of the way of the collapsing pillar. She placed the unconscious Ruby, her eyes closed, her face childlike in repose, gently on the ground.</p><p>Then she got up and glared at Blake.</p><p>Blake glared right back as she settled once more into her guard.</p><p>Pyrrha charged, picking up baguettes one after the other and hurling them at Blake in a rain of baked rolls. Blake batted a few aside with her own twin rolls, then Blake flipped out of the way as three baguette rolls buried themselves in the floor where she had just been standing. Pyrrha grabbed a tray, dumping its contents on the floor, and spun one foot after the other before she threw it straight at Blake Belladonna. Blake dodged the ungainly object, contorting her body as it flew past. Unfortunately, she had contorted her body in such a way as to leave her open as Pyrrha descended upon her, baguette in hand. She twisted, trying to regain her balance. Pyrrha didn't give her the chance. She struck Blake once, twice, three times, knocking her up into the air. Pyrrha leapt after and above her. Blake looked up at her. Pyrrha hammered her down. Blake landed on a table that shattered beneath the impact, and all that had been on the table shot upwards like an explosion before half-burying Blake beneath it.</p><p>Pyrrha landed. She saw Sunset, arms outstretched, levitating an enormous quantity of stuff - trays, plates, turkeys, watermelons, baguettes, pies, cakes, even chairs and the tables themselves - while Cardin, Flash and a back-on-his-feet Russell looked on in wide-eyed horror.</p><p>Sunset threw her hands forward, and upon the command of that swift gesture, all the things that she had levitated to hang above her shot forward like a river in spate. Russell wailed as he tried to run. Cardin swiped futilely with a turkey stuck on a baguette as though he could swat everything that threatened him away. Flash braced himself against the floor, grabbed a dinner tray to use as a shield, and prepared to take it head on.</p><p>The storm broke upon them. Cardin and Russell were swept away by it, carried away by the tide of dinner and furniture until it bore them into the wall. Flash stood against the hurricane for a while, not seeming to feel it at all as turkeys slammed into him, as plates shattered against his tray. <em>That must be his semblance,</em> Pyrrha realised. <em>Some kind of shock absorption that lets him take hits without flinching.</em> But it had limits, and when Sunset hit him with an entire table, it was enough to knock him sprawling.</p><p>Weiss leapt through the storm, jumping from tray to chair to table and then to the next tray, flying through the midst of Sunset's tempest as though it were nothing at all. Sunset tried to hit her with the detritus of her assault, she tried to keep the wave of debris swirling in motion so that Weiss would lose her footing and fall, but Weiss skipped through it all as though everything had been placed perfectly to give her places to jump off, and she descended upon Sunset with a swordfish in hand.</p><p>Sunset flung out one hand, and a flagpole flew from the wall and into her grasp. She wielded it two-handed, like a staff or a spear, and with it, she parried Weiss' first flurry of lunges as she landed on the floor.</p><p>Weiss drove Sunset back. Although Sunset worked hard in her training, and her hand to hand skills were improving constantly, she was no match for Weiss' well-honed skills with a sword, or even a swordfish. The dead creature, eyes glassy and mouth agape with surprise as it must have been when it was hauled out of the water, flickered forwards in a series of silver flashes, rattling against Sunset's staff as Weiss drove her hard in a series of perfectly poised, well-honed lunges. Weiss grabbed a bottle of ketchup off the nearest table and squirted it out on the floor in a wide arc, skating over the crimson substance with a dancer's grace, getting behind Sunset who, by contrast, flailed in an ungainly manner for balance on the suddenly wet and sticky floor. Weiss struck for Sunset's exposed back-</p><p>Sunset teleported away, and the instant she reappeared, she surrounded herself with a howling vortex of food and plates and the remains of smashed chairs, all of it swept up from the floor around her, all of it swirling around Sunset as though she stood in the centre of a tornado, protected as if by one of her shields from any approach of her enemies.</p><p>Or so she thought.</p><p>Weiss stared at this maelstrom of detritus for a moment. Then, grim-faced, she attacked. She leapt through the vortex, not only passing through it but using it. She attacked Sunset from every direction, using the very debris that Sunset had counted on to shield her as her springboards, leaping down at her from precarious footings, balancing on the most unlikely of objecs, battering Sunset from all sides, hammering her left and right and up into the air as the vortex she had created died around her.</p><p>And as Sunset began to fall, she found Nora waiting for her, with a flagpole of her own and a watermelon spiked to the top of it.</p><p>Nora grinned as she punted Sunset so hard that the watermelon shattered and Sunset was hurled through the ceiling and into the blue sky above.</p><p>There was a momentary pause as everyone waited to see if she would come down again.</p><p>She did, after a little while, crashing back through the ceiling in a different place, making a second hole in the roof, landing in a clatter of debris and with her face in a conveniently placed custard pie. She rolled over onto her side and then stopped moving, although she did groan occasionally.</p><p>And Pyrrha was left alone. One against five.</p><p>
  <em>This never happened on the tournament circuit.</em>
</p><p>Pyrrha smiled. This was all so exciting!</p><p>She grabbed an armful of baguettes as she made a rolling leap, dodging a pair of turkeys flung at her by Yang - although a pained 'why?' from poor Jaune told her that he had once again taken a blow meant for her - as she started throwing them at each of her opponents. She caught Weiss and Dove, knocking them down, but Ren dodged, and Nora and Yang simply batted the makeshift missiles aside.</p><p>And then they came for her.</p><p>Ren was quick, Nora was strong; Yang was both fast and strong, if not as fast as Pyrrha normally. Together, they made one hell of a team. Pyrrha squirmed, striking out in all directions with her bread roll to fend of their assaults. Nora's windups took a while, but Yang was so agile that Pyrrha rarely had the chance to take advantage of it. She couldn't even really parry punches or hammer blows; she just had to focus on keeping one step ahead as the watermelon - Nora had found another one - hammer slammed into the ground again and again and Yang tried to punch her in the face with her turkey gloves. She managed to take out Ren, the weakest link, catching him across the jaw with a solid blow that sent him flying. Nora growled in anger as she swung her melon-on-a-pole, but Pyrrha ducked beneath the pole and grabbed it as it passed overhead so that she was swinging Nora, lifting the other redhead off the ground and slamming her into Yang. </p><p>Pyrrha watched and waited for the two of them to get up, if they would get up. </p><p>Yang was the first to leap to her feet, her turkeys gone, charging at Pyrrha with her bare fists. Pyrrha grabbed a nearby tray to use as a shield, taking Yang’s blow which dented the metal, even as Pyrrha infused it with her aura. She lashed out with her leg, tripping Yang and slamming the tray into her face, knocking her back again as Nora came at her.</p><p>A touch of Pyrrha’s semblance was sufficient to ensure that not only did Nora miss Pyrrha, but she swung all the way around and hit Yang square in the face, knocking her down for good. </p><p>“Uh oh,” Nora squeaked before Pyrrha hit her with an uppercut that sent her flying up towards the ceiling. Pyrrha leapt after her, tossing a tray up into the hair and holding it there with just the barest touch of polarity, leaping onto it and using it as a foothold. She hung suspended in the air for a moment as Nora flailed desperately for purchase. </p><p>Then Pyrrha leapt towards her, straight as a javelin and as graceful as a dancer, and wrapped her arms around Nora’s shoulders. </p><p>“I’m sorry,” she said as she drove Nora head first into the ground. </p><p>Nora groaned, but she didn’t try to get up again after that. </p><p>Pyrrha stood and surveyed the devastation all around her. She looked at the other students on the floor. And then she started to laugh.</p><p>"I don't think," she said, “that I have ever had so much fun in my entire life."</p><p>"Ugh, speak for yourself," Sunset groaned. She lifted her head up. "So... did we win?"</p><p>Pyrrha stopped laughing long enough to reply. "Yes. Yes, Sunset, we won."</p><p>Sunset whooped, or tried to. "Awesome. The Invincible Team. Ugh." She groaned as her head slumped down onto the floor again.</p><p>Ruby, by contrast, was beaming excitedly. "I knew that you could learn to have fun if you tried! And all it took was...uh," - she looked around - "destroying the cafeteria? Uh-"</p><p>They were interrupted by the sound of clapping from the open doorway of the dining hall. </p><p>Team RSPT stood framed in the doorway, or at least, most of them did. Ciel, covered in watermelon fragments, looked very displeased as she stood with one hand upon Penny’s arm, restraining what appeared to be Penny’s desire to join in. Rainbow Dash was shielding Twilight with her body… but she was also applauding. </p><p>“That was awesome!” Rainbow yelled. “You guys decided to have an amazing practice fight like that without inviting us? Come on, guys! I thought we were friends.”</p><p>“And as your friends, you should be thanking them, Miss Dash,” Professor Goodwitch said as she appeared behind them, “for ensuring that there is not another item to be reported to General Ironwood about your behaviour while at this school.”</p><p>Rainbow yelped. “Professor Goodwitch!” she said, leaping around and coming to attention. “Are you sure you’re not a ninja?”</p><p>Professor Goodwitch stared down at her, her expression unamused.</p><p>Rainbow laughed nervously. “So… uh… words can get taken out of context and-”</p><p>“Miss Dash,” Professor Goodwitch said acidly. “Perhaps you should take your team somewhere else.”</p><p>“Yes, ma’am!” Rainbow barked. “Team Rosepetal… move out!”</p><p>She led the way, marching stiffly past the deputy headmistress. The rest of her team followed, even if Ciel looked as though she was dragging Penny, who waved to her friends as she was led elsewhere. </p><p>Professor Goodwitch’s heels clicked upon the dining hall floor as she stalked inside. “As for the rest of you-”</p><p>“Let it go,” Professor Ozpin said calmly as he approached her from behind. His smile was genial, even benign. “I think we can indulge one day of blowing off steam before the semester begins.”</p><p>Professor Goodwitch huffed in annoyance. “They’re supposed to be the defenders of the world.”</p><p>“They’re supposed to <em>become</em> the defenders of the world,” Professor Ozpin corrected her. “And they will. But for now, they are also children, so why not let them play the part?” His voice became almost melancholy as he turned away. “After all, it isn’t a role they’ll have forever.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Welcome to Beacon</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The might of Atlas has arrived at Beacon, and Rainbow Dash is called to account for her actions.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Welcome to Beacon</p><p> </p><p>A flight of Atlesian <a href="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/rwby/images/7/7b/Atlas_Dropship.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/310?cb=20160131160013">AT-38 Skygraspers</a> buzzed over Rainbow Dash’s head as they banked over the rooftops of Beacon Academy. The blowback from their engines beat against Rainbow’s face and ran through her many-coloured hair; Weiss didn’t fare much better, her long ponytail bouncing this way and that, blown into her face as she tried to brush it away. The boys, with their much shorter hair, fared a lot better. </p><p>Rainbow shielded her face with one hand and watched as the Atlesian airships turned away; those airships anyway. The four Skygraspers – for Rainbow’s money, the best-looking airships in the Atlesian arsenal, even if they weren’t the best at anything but transporting androids – were not out here alone or flying over Beacon for the fun of it. Just like Rainbow Dash wasn’t up on the roof with Weiss, Flash, and Cardin for her health, or the health of anybody else, for that matter. </p><p>They were up here watching the Atlesian fleet arrive over Vale.</p><p>The skies over Vale – and over Beacon Academy – were filled with the panoply of Atlesian military prowess. The sleek, majestic black cruisers had long, lance-like hulls, with four squat and boxy laser cannons slung beneath and six spindly engines emerging from behind. The frigates, medical or otherwise, were smaller, but conformed to the same general shape, with long narrow hulls sharpening to a point like the tip of a spear while six wings jutted out from behind to control motion in all three dimensions; the combat frigates had a single cannon mounted beneath the hull, the medical frigates none. The carriers looked like civilian airships, but wider, with more space for the fighters and bombers crammed within. Skygraspers with their sleek bodies and fish-like fins; round and slightly bulbous <a href="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/rwby/images/2/20/Our_Way_Manta_cropped.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/310?cb=20191009202454">AT-39 Skyrays</a>; <a href="https://www.yojoe.com/images/resize/w/350/imagestore/5309/72162.jpg">AF-22 Skyhawks</a> that looked like flying cockpits with engines strapped to the back and guns underneath; squared-off and ungainly-looking <a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/neoencyclopedia/images/5/5b/CobraRattler02.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/340?cb=20120912113910">AB-10 Skybolts</a> with their racks of missiles underneath the fuselage and a manned gun turret behind the cockpit; the many-engined <a href="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/gundam/images/7/7d/Fx-550.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/310?cb=20090613121141">AF-55 Skydart</a> also had a turret behind the cockpit, but it was unmanned and, in Rainbow’s opinion, mostly there to look cool. All of these airships, from the largest cruiser to the smallest fighter – the Skyhawk – soared through the clouds that hung over Vale, casting their shadows over the city and over the river that cut through the centre of it as they headed towards Beacon. </p><p> The first cruisers were already docking – or else had docked – on the blue-and-black pads just outside of Beacon, while more of the stately black vessels were still gliding in, coming into view one after the other while their supporting airships flocked around them, preceding their coming and covering their flanks and rear as they made their entrance. </p><p>Rainbow watched the cruisers come in. She watched the narrow, angular black shapes eclipse the skies as they passed overhead. She watched the dropships and the fighters and the bombers keep pace or else zoom back and forth between the warships and designated but unseen markers. And as she imagined all the firepower contained in each ship and all the manpower within it, Rainbow couldn’t avoid a sense of awe descending over her. </p><p>Atlas ruled the skies with its air fleet. With their absolute air superiority, they could bring the fight – and the pain – anywhere they chose. Only specialists operated out of range of air support from at least a squadron of airships, if not a cruiser; meanwhile, the mobile infantry blessed the navy and called in an airstrike whenever things got too tough. No matter how numerous the grimm were, no matter how ferocious, when you looked up and you saw that black lance shape overhead, you knew you were going to be okay because your friends in the sky were looking out for you. And when the enemies of Atlas looked up and saw those ships coming straight towards them, they knew fear because the heavy end of the heaviest hammer in Remnant was about to drop down on them with great force.</p><p>The air fleet was the heart of the Atlesian military, and those ships were the iron might of Atlas rendered in physical form out of titanium alloy and armour plate.</p><p>And now that heart had come to Vale.</p><p>“I’ve never seen so many ships outside of Atlas before,” Flash muttered as he gazed, his blue eyes wide, at the approaching fleet. </p><p>“Me neither,” Weiss conceded. “What are they all doing here?”</p><p>“It’s a goodwill visit in support of the Vytal Festival,” Cardin declared.</p><p>Rainbow looked at him. “Are you sure about that?” she asked.</p><p>Cardin looked down at her, and a muscle in his face twitched. It was something that Rainbow had noticed whenever he had to talk to her, like he was struggling not to call her a horse or something. </p><p>Actually, there was no ‘like’ about it; Rainbow was certain that was <em>exactly</em> what was going on. She… it would be a bit much to say that she didn’t mind, but he wasn’t <em>actually</em> calling her a horse, so she could live with the fact that he wanted to. </p><p>“My grandfather is on the Council,” Cardin declared pompously. “He told me that the Atlesians would be coming.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Rainbow murmured. “Doesn’t mean that he told you the truth.”</p><p>“Are you saying my grandfather lied to me?” Cardin demanded. “He would never-”</p><p>“Lying is a strong word for a grandpa telling his kid the official story,” Rainbow told him.</p><p>“Do you know something we don’t, Dash?” Flash asked, a touch of anxiety in his voice. “Did General Ironwood tell you something?”</p><p>“If he had, I probably wouldn’t be allowed to say it,” Rainbow replied. “But… no, I haven’t spoken to the General in a while.” She’d been… she didn’t want to say that she’d been too scared after everything that had gone down with Blake and the docks and all, but… yeah, she’d been too scared. Rainbow Dash didn’t need Pinkie’s powers of perception to see a dressing down in her future, and she wasn’t eager to bring it about any faster than she needed to. </p><p>“But you think there’s something more going on,” Weiss pointed out.</p><p>Rainbow nodded. “So far, I’ve counted six cruisers, two carriers, and three frigates; Atlesian warships operate in squadrons of four cruisers, one carrier, three combat frigates and a medical frigate, so there are probably at least two more cruisers and three more frigates left to come in. If they’re fully manned, each of those cruisers is carrying a rifle company, a military huntsman platoon, two companies' worth of androids, all their gear, <em>and</em> enough Skyrays and Skygraspers to move them all.” Rainbow gestured to one of Skydart squadrons, one with the wingtips of their fighters painted blue and marked with the insignia of a winged thunderbolt. “You see those airships? That’s Wonderbolt Squadron, the best pilots in Atlas and pretty good huntsmen too. All of this, and some of the best that Atlas has? You don’t come loaded for ursai unless you’re expecting to go on a hunt.”</p><p>“The White Fang?” Flash suggested.</p><p>“Probably,” Rainbow agreed. “It’s not like they’ve stopped. The General probably wants to make sure that all of the students are safe for the Vytal Festival, in case they try anything.”</p><p>“The White Fang,” Cardin growled. </p><p>“Hey,” Rainbow said, not just to Cardin but to all of them. “Don’t worry. The power of Atlas is here to protect you now!”</p><p>Cardin gave Rainbow a look like he’d like to shove her off the rooftop.</p><p>“Yeah, I’m kidding, but I’m also being serious,” Rainbow explained. “I guarantee it, nothing will get past all of that in one piece.”</p><p>“I hope you’re right,” Weiss said.</p><p>“I <em>am</em> right,” Rainbow insisted. “If any of you were losing sleep over the White Fang – or anything else – you can stop now.” She turned away and walked through the door that led down from the roof and into Beacon’s spacious complex of dorm rooms. </p><p>She was not quite as confident as she had made out in front of her fellow Atlesians and Cardin. Yes, the force that General Ironwood had dispatched to Vale was a formidable one, and she had no doubt that it was strong to fend off any attack... that it saw coming. But that was the thing, wasn’t it? The Atlesians were masters of straight-up warfare; their guns, their ships, their soldiers were the best in the world. But the White Fang didn’t fight straight up, at least not if they could avoid it. They snuck around, they lurked in the shadows, they struck when you least expected it – like at weddings. The whole might of the Atlesian fleet hadn’t prevented Chrysalis from nearly abducting Cadance or from nearly managing to kill them all before the cavalry arrived. Just because Blake had turned out to be just seriously misguided and not a White Fang infiltrator didn’t mean that the White Fang wouldn’t manage to do the same thing here. </p><p>All the same, Rainbow would rather face a situation like this with a fleet nearby than without. Firepower made up for a lot of deficiencies in a fight.</p><p>Rainbow arrived back at the RSPT dorm room and pulled her scroll out of the pocket of her sports jacket to open the door. She found her teammates gathered around the right-hand work desk, where Twilight had her scroll out. </p><p>Ciel looked up. Her expression betrayed her unspoken curiosity.</p><p>"I saw six cruisers before I left, plus two carriers and support frigates," Rainbow said as she closed the door behind her. "They've got all kinds of birds in the air, close escorts and outriders. Someone wants to make a big entrance."</p><p>"That confirms the chatter we've been hearing," Ciel replied, "and that someone is General Ironwood."</p><p>Rainbow's eyes bulged a little. "The General came here himself?" Headmasters didn’t travel to other academies for the Vytal Festival – someone had to hold down the fort back home and teach the students who weren’t travelling – which meant that the General was here as, well, the General. <em>This White Fang stuff must have him seriously concerned.</em></p><p>
  <em>I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.</em>
</p><p>Twilight must have tapped into the channel the Atlesian forces were using – it wasn’t technically breaking the rules; they did have access to the secure military channels after all – because the speakers were projecting a mass of radio chatter into their room as the various ships and squadrons coordinated their movements over Vale.</p><p>"<em>Thunder Child,</em> you are clear for docking pad two; please start your approach now."</p><p>"Affirmative, Control; <em>Thunder Child</em> beginning approach now."</p><p>"Hey, Spitfire, looks like we've got civilians watching us. How about we give 'em a victory roll?"</p><p>"Negative, Misty; maintain formation and set course."</p><p>"Aww, Captain, you never let us have any fun."</p><p>"Cut the chatter, Soarin’; this is a business channel."</p><p>"<em>Glorious</em>, you're coming it too steep for docking pad three; please correct your angle of approach."</p><p>"Roger, Control, correcting now."</p><p>"<em>Resolution</em>, hurry up and finish off-loading ASAP; <em>Valiant</em> is on approach and requires the deck."</p><p>Ciel picked up a notepad on which she had scribbled several names. "So far, chatter has identified cruisers <em>Thunder Child, Endeavour, Glorious, Courageous, Resolution, Valiant,</em> and <em>Vigilant</em>. <em>Thunder Child, Endeavour,</em> and <em>Glorious</em> are with the First Battle Squadron, so I would expect the <em>Hope</em> to make an appearance also; <em>Courageous, Resolution,</em> and <em>Vigilant</em> are with the Fourth Squadron, so the eighth ship will be our old friend the <em>Gallant</em>. Carriers will be <em>Joseph Colton</em> and <em>Nicholas Schnee</em>."</p><p>"You've got the order of battle for the entire fleet memorised, don't you?" Rainbow asked. She wasn't even surprised anymore.</p><p>"And the reserve list," Ciel clarified. "In any case, <em>Valiant</em> is General Ironwood's personal flagship, hence he must be leading this expedition."</p><p>"Mister Ironwood… he isn’t just coming to watch me fight in the tournament, is he?” Penny asked.</p><p>Rainbow frowned. “No, Penny, he wouldn’t need a fleet to do that. It probably has something to do with the White Fang activity. He doesn’t want to send all of the students down here for the Festival without any cover in case things go… in case the White Fang try anything else like they did at the docks.”</p><p>“Do you think so?” Twilight said. “I mean… it’s not like you can call in an airstrike against terrorists.”</p><p>“Uh, we already have,” Rainbow reminded her.</p><p>Twilight blinked. “Okay, yes, but they weren’t acting like terrorists at the time,” she said. </p><p>“I get what you’re saying, but any backup is good backup, and any way that we can get backup sooner is a good thing in my book,” Rainbow replied.</p><p>"General Ironwood is not bound to explain his reasoning to us," Ciel declared. "But perhaps he is attempting to overawe our enemies with a display of force, so that they will dare to step into the light again."</p><p>"You’re right,” Twilight agreed, with a slight sigh in her voice. “But at the same time… I don’t know, it’s probably nothing. Just… a feeling, like there’s something more going on.”</p><p>“Despite the asymmetrical nature of the conflict, the General’s actions make sound strategic sense,” Ciel said. “With Vale’s huntsmen deployed to the outlying settlements to combat the unusual grimm activity in the provinces, our forces are well-placed to fill the void as a deterrent.”</p><p>“You mean we’re going to scare off the bad guys?” Penny asked.</p><p>Rainbow grinned. “Yes, Penny, that’s exactly what it means. We’re going to scare the bad guys and make the good guys sleep safe at night.”</p><p>“Like Ruby and Pyrrha?”</p><p>Twilight chuckled. “I’m not sure that either of them need the help sleeping, but… yes, our friends.”</p><p>Rainbow's scroll buzzed before either Penny or Ciel could reply.</p><p>"Twi, turn that off," Rainbow said, gesturing to Twilight’s scroll. Twilight cut off the Atlesian comm chatter by closing up her scroll before Rainbow opened up her own.</p><p>She was confronted by the face of General Ironwood. "Rainbow Dash."</p><p>Rainbow Dash stood to attention. “Sir!”</p><p>"Team Rosepetal is to report to docking pad one and board the <em>Valiant</em> immediately once it docks,” General Ironwood declared. “I’ll see you immediately when I return.”</p><p>"Return from where, sir?" Rainbow asked.</p><p>The look on General Ironwood’s face told her that such questions were beyond her purview.</p><p>"Right," Rainbow muttered. "Will do, sir."</p><p>"Good," General Ironwood said. "And Rainbow Dash?"</p><p>"Yes, sir?"</p><p>"Congratulations on a successful operation," General Ironwood said, the hint of a smile playing across his face. "Pass my compliments onto your team."</p><p><em>Okay, I might just survive this after all.</em> "Roger that, sir. It's appreciated."</p><p>"Understood. Ironwood out."</p><p>Rainbow folded up her scroll as the general’s face disappeared. “I think we might not be in quite as much trouble as I was worried about,” she said hopefully.</p><p>“Really?” Twilight asked. “It’s hard to believe that we could not be in trouble after what happened.”</p><p>“Oh, we’re definitely in trouble,” Rainbow said, “but we might not be in <em>so much</em> trouble.”</p><hr/><p>Professor Ozpin stood at this window, watching as the Atlesian students disembarked from their warships and set off down the path that led towards Beacon proper. He had asked Professor Port and Doctor Oobleck to meet them and show them to their dorm rooms. The Haven students would be arriving later and would be greeted by Professor Peach. </p><p>When they were all assembled, he would have them gather in the Amphitheatre and welcome them all to Beacon for the new semester, but for now, he would let them find their rooms and get settled in. </p><p>“I feel safer already,” Glynda muttered.</p><p>Ozpin chuckled softly. “Indeed. One begins to wonder how we managed without them.” It was probably a little unkind of him to mock James’ well-meaning efforts, but the fact was that he could not help but see such efforts as fundamentally misguided. </p><p>There would be no victory in strength. Ships and armies would avail them nothing in the end… and might do much harm beforehand, if they caused the spread of panic. </p><p>It was a pity that James couldn’t see that for himself. </p><p>Ozpin turned away from the window and the unsightly cruisers dominating his docking pads; just in time, as the elevator doors opened and James Ironwood strode into the office. </p><p>“Ozpin,” he said genially as he walked in, the shadows of the gears that ground above falling across his face. “Glynda. It’s been too long.”</p><p>The corners of Glynda’s lip twitched ever so slightly. “James. How is Luna?”</p><p>The smile faded from Ironwood’s face. “Safe in Canterlot, as always.”</p><p>“I’m glad to hear it,” Ozpin said. He picked up the teapot that sat on his glass desk. It was a little odd to keep a teapot full of hot chocolate, but as the headmaster, he was allowed his eccentricities. “May I offer you a drink?”</p><p>“Thank you,” Ironwood said.</p><p>Ozpin poured a Beacon mug, marked with the double axes, full of hot cocoa and held it out to Ironwood, who accepted it graciously. </p><p>Ironwood pulled out a metallic flask. </p><p>“Drinking?” Glynda asked archly. “At this hour? And with cocoa?”</p><p>Ironwood chuckled. “Cream from Atlas; I know what kind of refreshment I’m going to be offered in <em>this</em> office.” He poured a dash of the white liquid into the mug. </p><p>“Glynda?” Ozpin said, offering Glynda a cup.</p><p>“No, thank you, Professor,” Glynda said quietly.</p><p>Ozpin set down the teapot and picked up his own cup of hot chocolate. It was still warm upon his tongue, thankfully. He swallowed. “How are your students?”</p><p>“I feel as though I should ask you; you’ve been teaching the best of them for the last semester,” Ironwood replied.</p><p>Ozpin chuckled at that. “I’m told that Miss Dash is one of the stars of the leadership and combat classes.”</p><p>“You have taught her well, I admit,” Glynda muttered.</p><p>“But you have many more students than Team Rosepetal,” Ozpin reminded James.</p><p>“And I’m teaching them to be the best huntsmen I can,” Ironwood repeated.</p><p>“Huntsmen?” Glynda repeated. “Or soldiers of Atlas?”</p><p>Ironwood glanced at her. “Soldiers of Atlas are protectors of the whole world.”</p><p>Glynda stared at him evenly. “You really believe that, don’t you?”</p><p>Ironwood raised his chin a little, although he seemed to not be trying to look down upon her. “I do,” he declared. “These children will do Atlas – and all of Remnant – credit when they graduate. Or sooner, if they are allowed.”  </p><p>Ozpin was silent as he walked around his desk and sat down in his metallic chair. He didn't regret for a moment bringing Ironwood into his inner circle, although Qrow might disagree with him; James was brave, stalwart, and even reasonably loyal. Ozpin did not believe he could have chosen anyone better to run Atlas Academy on his behalf. But the man had no tact, no subtlety, and Ozpin's attempt to teach him both had, sad to say, met with failure. Their present situation was a case in point.</p><p>He swallowed a large amount of his rapidly cooling cocoa. "What would you have me do, James?"</p><p>"I want you to trust me as I have trusted you for so many years," Ironwood declared. He leaned heavily on the desk. "You have your favourites. You choose them, and you prepare them, and when the time is right, you bring them in. Qrow, Glynda... I have people too, good people who could be valuable assets to our cause if you would only consider-"</p><p>“You want to submit one of your students to be the next Fall Maiden?” Glynda said, her voice almost disbelieving. “Knowing what it could do to her?”</p><p>Ironwood straightened up, silent for a moment. “That… that’s the irony of it, isn’t it?” he asked, almost to himself. “How are <em>your</em> students, Ozpin, Glynda?”</p><p>Glynda almost smiled. “Some of them are a pleasure to teach, others… less so.”</p><p>“As you yourself have pointed out, we have our favourites,” Ozpin said mildly. “Some impress more than others.”</p><p>“Sometimes, we are impressed by different students,” Glynda remarked pointedly. </p><p>Ozpin leaned back in his chair. This was not the first time that he had had this argument with Glynda, but it was a pleasant distraction from the discussion with Ironwood. “You cannot deny the skill of the individual members of Team Sapphire-”</p><p>“And you can’t deny that Team Iron are more balanced <em>and</em> coordinated,” Glynda insisted. “Miss Xiao Long doesn’t have any of the emotional oversensitivity that is weighing down Miss Nikos.”</p><p>“You would have me choose her for the Fall Maiden?” Ozpin asked. “Goodness knows what Qrow or Tai would have to say about that.”</p><p>“They might understand,” Ironwood said. “As I said, it’s the irony: the ones we care about the most are the ones that impress us the most, and those that impress us so much… are the ones we might have to throw into the fire.”</p><p>“We bear a heavy burden, James,” Ozpin agreed, “a burden no living man should have to bear. And that is why we do not place this burden upon the children.”</p><p>“At this rate, we won’t have a choice,” Ironwood insisted. “She’s coming for you <em>now</em>.” He sighed. “It’s not just the dust shops in Vale; the White Fang are interdicting the rail line to Cold Harbour with alarming regularity. They’re planning something. Something big.”</p><p>“Isn’t that why you brought your fleet?” Glynda inquired archly.</p><p>“It is,” Ironwood confirmed. “But… I’m just not sure that our children are going to have time to grow up as we might like.”</p><p>“We all fear that, James,” Glynda murmured.</p><p>“Which is why we must do our best to hold the line,” Ozpin said, “as best we can.”</p><hr/><p>Weiss stood to the side of the path leading from the docking pads to Beacon – or vice versa – and fiddled with the hem of her skirt as the Atlesian students emerged from the belly of the cruiser to march down the grey path towards Beacon. </p><p>'Marching' was the correct description for what they were doing, for the Atlesian students moved in a more regimented fashion than the Beacon students that Weiss was used to. They did not exactly move in a single formation, but each team kept to a straight line, members aligned perfectly, moving in lockstep as they advanced. Which was not to say that all traces of individuality had been vanquished from the Atlas students; although they wore their uniforms of grey and white, a few appeared to have found some way of personalising them, like the girl with the long white hair who was wearing a purple cape decorated with moons and stars over her uniform, like a more garish, slightly older Ruby. But there was a discipline to them that the Beacon students lacked, exemplified by the way in which they did not talk, or else talked so quietly that they could scarcely be heard above the clanking of the androids – the new AK-200 variant, pristine and white and practically shining – who shepherded their column along, even as they were led by Professor Port and Doctor Oobleck, who both talked enough to make up for the relative silence of the Atlesian students. </p><p>Few of them looked at Weiss or Flash as they waited for the visiting students to pass; few of them turned their heads in any way. A metallic knight scanned both of them, but Weiss presumed that it had access to the student records, or at least to face ID for all the Beacon Students, because it took no action against them. </p><p>They were left alone, waiting.</p><p>Where was Winter? Weiss couldn’t see her, and yet, Winter had messaged her that she would be arriving with the student body. Weiss hadn’t connected that at the time to the idea that Winter would be arriving as part of… well, part of what might be the largest expedition to set forth out of the north since… since the end of the Great War. </p><p>
  <em>Who would have? Nothing like this has ever happened as part of the Vytal Festival before.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>No Vytal Festival ever took place against the backdrop of rising White Fang attacks before. </em>
</p><p>Although, to be frank, at this moment, the threat of the White Fang worried her less than the threat of Winter’s disapproval. </p><p>“Is this how you act when you’re nervous?” Flash asked.</p><p>Weiss pouted… but only for a moment, because it was hardly something that she could deny. “I take it that I’m usually better at concealing the fact?”</p><p>“To be honest, I can’t say I’ve ever noticed you nervous until now,” Flash admitted.</p><p>Weiss favoured him with a gentle smile for that, because it was nice for him to say so, even if she didn’t think that it could possibly be true. “It’s important for me to make a good impression,” she said. “Winter… Winter is everything that I aspire to be. Well, everything except a soldier of Atlas. But as a gifted huntress, as an…” she stopped short of saying ‘as an independent woman’ because she was not quite ready to air her family laundry in front of Flash at this time. She was, however, willing to admit, “As someone… tall, Winter is the sort of person I hope to become. Just as I hope she will agree that I’m off to a good start.”</p><p>“And you’re sure that you want me here for that?” Flash asked.</p><p>“You’re my partner,” Weiss reminded him, “I’m sure that Winter will be keen to meet you.” She paused. “And the truth is… I’d rather wait with someone.”</p><p>“Weiss.”</p><p>Weiss turned. The Atlesian students had all departed now, proceeding down the tree-lined path and into the spacious courtyard. Now it was her sister who was approaching from the ship. </p><p>Captain Winter Schnee was a tall young woman, seeming taller by the way that her bearing was ever so martial and erect, her back arched and her head held high. She had the classic Schnee features: eyes of icy blue and hair as white as snow worn in a high, severe, tight bun, with a long fringe brushed across the right hand side of her face without concealing any of her features. She was dressed in the white and blue of an Atlesian specialist: a dark blue waistcoat with a white jacket over the top and grey thigh-high boots over white britches. In concession to the weather here in Vale, the arms of her jacket were slit from shoulder to elbow, exposing her arms to view. She wore a sabre at her hip, and Weiss knew that there was a second blade concealed within the hilt of the first. Her black-gloved hands were clasped behind her back. </p><p>She approached them briskly, her boots tapping upon the stone of the path that led to Beacon.</p><p>“Winter!” Weiss cried out enthusiastically and took a few steps towards her elder sister before remembering her place. She was a Schnee, the Schnee heiress in point of fact; she must have poise and dignity. She curtsied. “It is a pleasure to meet you again, sister. Your presence honours us.”</p><p>Winter regarded her with a gaze as cold as the north itself. “Indeed,” she said softly. She sniffed. “The air feels different to when I was here last.”</p><p>“Someone probably hadn’t just parked a fleet overhead when you were here last,” Flash said.</p><p>“Flash!” Weiss hissed.</p><p>Winter's gaze fell upon him. “Excuse me… young man,” she said. “I don’t believe that we have been introduced.”</p><p>Weiss cleared her throat. “Winter, allow me to introduce my partner, Flash Sentry.”</p><p>Flash bowed. “A pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”</p><p>Winter arched an inquisitive eyebrow. “Partner?”</p><p>“School partner,” Weiss clarified.</p><p>For a moment, it seemed as though Winter would smile. Instead, she merely bowed, very slightly, from the waist. “A pleasure to meet you, Flash Sentry. Thank you for shielding my sister’s side in battle.” She paused for a brief moment. “Am I right in assuming that you are the son of Silver Sentry?”</p><p>Flash sucked in a breath. “You assume correctly.”</p><p>“I suppose it is no stranger to find you here than it is to find Weiss,” Winter observed. She returned her attention to Weiss, and now, she did smile, if only a little. “How have you been, Weiss?”</p><p>Weiss smiled. “In addition to being named team leader, I am consistently one of the highest performing students-”</p><p>“I’m not interested in your performance; I’m interested in <em>you</em>,” Winter clarified with obvious impatience. “Save your defence of your grades for father when he calls. How <em>are</em> you? Are you enjoying yourself here at Beacon? Are you making any friends?”</p><p>“I’m not a child, Winter,” Weiss complained.</p><p>“No, you are the dolt who flew a locker into the middle of a firefight,” Winter remarked acidly. “What in Remnant possessed you?”</p><p>Weiss felt her face chill. “You… you know about that?”</p><p>“'Further assistance was rendered by Weiss Schnee and Flash Sentry, who conducted an aerial insertion directly into the combat zone using Beacon’s rocket lockers,'” Winter said, as if she were reciting. “From Rainbow Dash’s after action report on the incident at the docks. I ask again: what possessed you?”</p><p>“It was the only way of getting down to the docks in time,” Weiss replied. “There were no airships available, and it would have taken far, <em>far</em> too long to drive, let alone to walk.”</p><p>“So you chose to risk your own safety?” Winter demanded. “You could have been killed simply by reaching the combat zone. And what made you decide to rush into battle with the White Fang in the first place?”</p><p>“That is my fault, ma’am,” Flash said. “Friends and fellow students were in danger; I couldn’t just let them die.”</p><p>“It was my decision,” Weiss insisted. “I am the team leader, and the decision on our unusual method of entering the fray came from me. All consequences also lie with me.”</p><p>Winter regarded them both silently for a moment. “I think Grandfather would have been proud of you,” she said.</p><p>Weiss’ eyes widened a little. She could not prevent the smile from spreading across her face. “Really? You think so?”</p><p>“I do,” Winter confirmed. “I, on the other hand, think that this incident demonstrates that you still have a great deal to learn.” Her tone softened. “But you still have a great deal of time in which to learn it. Come, show me to your quarters.”</p><p>“My… you mean our room?”</p><p>“I wish to make sure it is up to standard,” Winter elaborated.</p><p>“Of course,” Weiss said without a trace of the reluctance she felt entering her voice. “This way.” Flash walked beside her, and Winter just a step behind, as they led her back towards Beacon. </p><p>They met Team RSPT coming the other way, dressed in uniform like the other students, their faces – Rainbow’s face at least – grim and solemn. </p><p>“Ten hut!” Rainbow called at the sight of Winter, and she and Ciel slammed their boots onto the ground. Penny and Twilight were a little slower off the mark in that regard. </p><p>Rainbow saluted. </p><p>Winter returned the salute. “At ease.” When the four students took the position, Winter added, “You’re on your way to see the general?”</p><p>“Yes, ma’am.”</p><p>“Good luck,” Winter said, “and congratulations on a successful engagement.”</p><p>Weiss’ mouth hung open. She turned to face her sister. “Wha- why do they get congratulated while I get called a dolt?”</p><p>“They didn’t fly into battle in a locker,” Winter reminded her. </p><hr/><p>The corridor outside of the General's office aboard the <em>Valiant</em>, the corridor in which Team RSPT waited to receive General Ironwood's displeasure, had no windows but was brightly lit nonetheless. It was a pure white, sterile kind of light, illuminating a sterile grey metallic corridor with little in the way of distinguishing features except the arcane direction signs painted on the wall, indecipherable to the uninitiated. There were places aboard this ship that were monuments to Atlesian technological achievement, but this corridor wasn't one of them. The door into the office was barred by a marine guard - his face concealed behind his helmet - who stood to attention before the door and never so much as glanced at the huntresses waiting nearby.</p><p>Rainbow and Ciel stood at ease; Twilight, whose position in the military was unclear, stood awkwardly with her hands clasped in front of her; Penny fidgeted like a bored toddler.</p><p>"Officer on deck, ten-hut!" Ciel barked as footsteps began to echo down the corridor.</p><p>Rainbow stood to attention on reflex, her foot slamming down onto the deck as her hands snapped to her sides.</p><p>General Ironwood strode down the corridor, his stride brisk and martial. </p><p>Rainbow and Ciel saluted, but he strode to the door without acknowledgement of either of them or Twilight.</p><p>It wasn't until Penny said, "Good morning, Mister Ironwood," and offered him a cheery wave besides, that the general stopped in front of his door.</p><p>General Ironwood turned slowly. His expression was grave as he returned the salutes of Rainbow and Ciel, but all of his attention was clearly fixed on Penny herself. When he spoke - to her and only to her - his tone wasn't without warmth. "Penny, under the circumstances, from now on, it would be best if you called me General."</p><p>"Affirmative, Mister General!"</p><p>The General chuckled. It was a strange sound to come out of his mouth. Rainbow found it practically disconcerting. "That's not quite what I meant, but never mind. It's good to see you again. And you, Twilight."</p><p>“Uh, it’s good to see you too, sir,” Twilight said tremulously. </p><p>The door to the office slid open at the General’s approach with a hydraulic hiss. “Inside, all of you,” he commanded.</p><p>Twilight winced. </p><p>“Hey,” Rainbow whispered. “It’s going to be okay.” She was pretty sure of that, for Twilight at least.</p><p>The office into which they followed the general was smaller than his actual office back at Atlas Academy, and every bit as bare and austere. Of course, this space had more excuse for that, given that there was less room and probably not a lot of call to keep random stuff around on a warship that the General didn’t use that often. Nevertheless, the barren, grey space with a large window overlooking the city beyond reminded Rainbow of the office in which she, Ciel, and Twilight had stood when General Ironwood had first formed Team RSPT and assigned them to guard and guide Penny on her path to becoming the future of Atlas. Now, in a space that was identical in every way bar the size of it, they waited to hear what the future of that team might be.</p><p>They didn't sit down, and General Ironwood did not invite them to do so. He stood with his back to them, staring out of the window with his hands clasped behind his back.</p><p>The four of them stood to attention - or an approximation of it, in Twilight's case - before his desk and waited.</p><p>"At ease," he said, without turning around.</p><p>Rainbow and Ciel moved to the correct position, feet apart and hands behind their backs. Penny was sloppier in her movements, but managed to do the same. Twilight made no move at all. Rainbow felt her palms begin to sweat. Couldn't they just get this over with?</p><p>General Ironwood continued to stare out of the window. His office was facing away from Beacon, looking out over Vale and over the fleet that he had brought with him. Most of the airships which had escorted the cruisers in were starting to dock by this point, leaving only a few Skyhawks flying CAP. But you could still see the cruisers, hovering suspended in the sky above the city and the school.</p><p>Finally, after a wait that - whatever its actual length - felt agonising to Rainbow Dash, General Ironwood turned to face the four of them.</p><p>"Twilight," he began, "how is your examination into the possibility of wireless swords going?"</p><p>Twilight looked down. "I'm afraid I've made no progress worth reporting, sir."</p><p>"Never mind; I know you'll crack it eventually," General Ironwood said. He almost smiled. "I saw your parents before I left Atlas; they asked me to make sure that you were well and eating healthily."</p><p>Twilight cringed in embarrassment. "I'm sorry, sir."</p><p>"Never be ashamed of your family, Twilight," General Ironwood admonished. "We fight for many reasons: for the glory of Atlas, for the honour of the army, for the preservation of mankind; but most of all, we fight to protect those who are dear to us. Don't forget that."</p><p>"No, sir. I won't."</p><p>“Councillor Cadenza and your brother also asked me to pass on their best regards,” General Ironwood added. “They hope to see you soon, at the Vytal Festival at the latest.”</p><p>Twilight licked her hips. “Permission… to speak, sir?”</p><p>General Ironwood’s expression did not alter. “Granted.”</p><p>“Will that be safe, sir?”</p><p>Rainbow found herself holding her breath. </p><p>“It will be,” General Ironwood replied after a moment, “now that our forces have arrived to make safe the city.” </p><p>Rainbow let out the breath she had been holding. </p><p>“I’m told that it was you, Twilight, who informed Professor Ozpin about the incident at the docks,” General Ironwood said, continuing to address Twilight. </p><p>“Yes, sir,” Twilight admitted. “I-”</p><p>“If you’re about to apologise, don’t,” General Ironwood said, cutting her off. “It’s something that your team leader should have done.”</p><p>Rainbow swallowed. <em>Yeah, this is going to be… about what I thought it would be.</em></p><p>General Ironwood’s attention switched from Twilight to Penny. “So, Penny… how was your first taste of real combat?”</p><p>Penny was silent for a moment. “I… I don’t know what to say, Mi- General.”</p><p>General Ironwood’s brow furrowed. “Why not?”</p><p>“Because… because I didn’t protect my friend, Mister General,” Penny declared. “Doesn’t that… make me a failure?”</p><p>General Ironwood stared at Penny, his small dark eyes staring into her much larger, greener orbs. “Penny,” he said, “you have been designed with extraordinary gifts. You will be a great huntress one day, perhaps the greatest. But ‘one day’ is not today. You’re still young and with so much to learn. That is why you are being entered into the Vytal Tournament, that is why you’ve been given teammates to learn from – although I’m not particularly happy with some of the lessons they’ve been teaching you – and that is why you are in school, with the other aspiring heroes of Atlas who, like you, have a lot to learn. Do you understand what I’m saying?”</p><p>“I… I’m not sure,” Penny admitted.</p><p>“It’s okay that you didn’t succeed completely in your first engagement,” General Ironwood said. “By all accounts, you conducted yourself well and bravely. That’s enough for now. There will be other times… Gods know there will be other times; and next time, you will do better than you did before, and the time after that, you will do better again until you have achieved all your potential. Twilight.”</p><p>“Yes, sir.”</p><p>“Take Penny back to her dorm room,” General Ironwood said quietly. “You’re both dismissed.”</p><p>“Yes, sir,” Twilight repeated. “Come along, Penny.”</p><p>“What about Rainbow Dash and-?”</p><p>“They will be along later,” General Ironwood informed her.</p><p>“Oh. See you later, then!”</p><p>“Come on, Penny,” Twilight insisted. </p><p>Rainbow kept her face to the front. She heard, but did not see, the door sliding open to let Twilight and Penny leave the room, and she heard it hiss again as it shut behind them. </p><p>All traces of the avuncular fondness that General Ironwood had been displaying towards Twilight or the paternal concern that he had demonstrated towards Penny vanished as soon as he swept his gaze over Rainbow and Ciel. "Dash, Soleil, give me one good reason why I shouldn't throw you both in the brig."</p><p>Rainbow came to attention. “Sir, Ciel only followed my orders as Team Leader, the responsibility for my mistakes is all mine.”</p><p>“You bet your ass the responsibility is yours!” General Ironwood snapped. “You tried to kill a Beacon student! The daughter of the Chieftain of Menagerie! What were you thinking?”</p><p>“I was thinking that she was a member of the White Fang, sir, and posed a continuing threat,” Rainbow replied. “In my defence, she <em>was</em> a former member of the White Fang.”</p><p>“A former member of the White Fang who fled rather than engage you,” General Ironwood reminded her. “A former member of the White Fang who posed no immediate threat to you or your teammates. Once Ozpin informed you that he was aware of the situation, if you weren’t satisfied, then you should have contacted me, and I would have talked to Ozpin myself. Or you could have contacted Vale PD and passed on your suspicions to them. What you should <em>not</em> have done was take your team on an unsanctioned kill op in the middle of Vale! So I’m going to ask you again: Dash, what in the gods’ names were you thinking?”</p><p>“I…” Rainbow hesitated for a moment. “I was scared, sir.”</p><p>General Ironwood was silent for a moment, and expressionless. “'Scared'? Of Miss Belladonna?”</p><p>“Of the White Fang, sir.”</p><p>General Ironwood’s face was impassive, expressionless, completely inscrutable. “I understand your feelings towards that organisation,” he said, “but I can’t have a team leader who flies off the handle every time the White Fang comes up, especially not in the present circumstances. Are you going to be okay, Dash, or do I need to ship you back to Atlas and find somebody else to chaperone Penny?”</p><p>“No, sir, that won’t be necessary,” Rainbow declared loudly.</p><p>“Are you sure about that?”</p><p>“Yes, sir, it won’t happen again,” Rainbow insisted. “I give you my word, sir.”</p><p>General Ironwood looked into Rainbow’s eyes, weighing her, judging her. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said softly. He leaned down and pushed a button on his desk to activate the intercom. “This is General Ironwood; send her in.”</p><p>The door opened, and Blake Belladonna walked in slowly, diffidently, with clear reluctance into the office. </p><p>“You wanted to see me, General?”</p><p>General Ironwood straightened up. “Thank you for coming, Miss Belladonna. I asked you here so that, on behalf of my student and the Atlesian military, I could apologise for the way that you’ve been treated by some of my students.”</p><p>“That’s not necessary, General, uh, sir,” Blake said quietly. “I… there were a lot of misunderstandings all around.”</p><p>“Nevertheless, Atlas students should aspire to a higher standard of behaviour than was demonstrated in your case,” General Ironwood declared. “The threats of violent assault made against you were unforgivable. And yet, I hope that you can find it in you to forgive regardless.”</p><p>Blake looked at Rainbow Dash. “That’s… this is very kind of you, General Ironwood, but Rainbow Dash and I have already made our peace. Unless you’d like us to shake hands to prove it.”</p><p>General Ironwood smiled, if but thinly. “That would give me some piece of mind, yes.”</p><p>Rainbow didn’t hesitate. She thrust out her hand. “I’m sorry, Miss Belladonna. Please accept my apologies for my… rash and… thoughtless… conduct.”</p><p>Blake’s eyebrows rose. “Accepted, provided you accept mine for my own assumptions, about you and Atlas.” She took Rainbow’s hand and clasped it, firmly but warmly. </p><p>“Thank you, Miss Belladonna,” General Ironwood said.</p><p>“Although, to be frank, General Ironwood, I would prefer it if you extended this degree of courtesy to all faunus living under Atlesian rule, not just the one whose father happens to be the High Chieftain of Menagerie,” Blake said.</p><p><em>Seriously? Now, of all times? Can you not let it go ever?</em> </p><p>General Ironwood didn’t seem offended. “Progress is slow, sometimes, I admit,” he said, “but we are making progress. Your actions at the docks were very brave, Miss Belladonna, although some might question the wisdom of your actions.”</p><p>Blake let her hand fall from Rainbow’s grip. “I’ve never been the kind of person to see something that needs to be done and wait for someone else to take care of it. If I see a situation, then I jump in. I’ve never seen any reason why I shouldn’t.”</p><p>“Is that what happened to you, too, Dash?” General Ironwood asked. “Did you see a situation and decide to jump in?”</p><p>“Pretty… yes, sir,” Rainbow replied. “Although, with Penny, our training, and the fire support from <em>Gallant,</em> I thought we were better equipped to handle the situation than most.”</p><p>“I see,” General Ironwood said. “Miss Belladonna, may I ask you how you knew that the White Fang were going to be hitting the docks that night?”</p><p>Blake hesitated. “I… would rather not say, General.”</p><p>Rainbow’s eyebrows rose. <em>Blake, what are you doing?</em></p><p>“Miss Belladonna,” General Ironwood said, “I am here, my forces are here, to defend this kingdom against its enemies, the White Fang prominent amongst them. Now, I believe that the White Fang are preparing to strike a great blow against Vale, and I fear that if they are allowed to continue their preparations unchecked, then my own students, and all the children present or soon to arrive at Beacon, will be placed in grave danger. So I ask you again: is there anything that you can tell me to help me stop this?”</p><p>Blake inhaled deeply. “I appreciate your willingness to help, General,” she said, “but I don’t believe your forces are the best equipped to handle this situation. And so… my answer remains the same.”</p><p>“I see,” General Ironwood murmured. “Thank you, Miss Belladonna; that will be all.”</p><p>“General,” Blake said softly, before she turned and walked out of the office. </p><p>“Thoughts?” General Ironwood asked once the door closed behind her.</p><p>“She knows more than she is letting on, sir,” Ciel declared.</p><p>“I thought as much,” General Ironwood replied. “Will she talk to either of you?”</p><p>“She might speak to Dash, sir,” Ciel said.</p><p>“I… I’m not so sure, sir,” Rainbow admitted. “She doesn’t hate me anymore, and I’ve tried to get her to see what we’re about, but… it seems she still doesn’t trust Atlas.”</p><p>“She’s not the only one, unfortunately,” General Ironwood muttered. He turned his back on Rainbow and Ciel and once more stood before the window looking out over the Atlesian fleet. He clasped his hands behind his back. "Tell me, both of you, what do you see?"</p><p>"The strength of Atlas incarnate, sir," said Ciel, a note of pride entering her voice.</p><p>"'The strength of Atlas incarnate,'" General Ironwood repeated, musing over every word. "That's almost poetic, Soleil."</p><p>"Thank you, sir."</p><p>General Ironwood was silent for a moment or two, gazing out of the window at the array of force at his immediate disposal. "The four kingdoms are in a time of peace. To what can that peace be attributed?"</p><p>"To the might of Atlas, sir!" Ciel declared, the pride in her tone growing fiercer still.</p><p>"Indeed?"</p><p>"Indeed, sir; Atlas possesses the strongest military on the planet; every other kingdom is well aware that they could not hope to stand against us in war and that we would side against any nation that went rogue and attempted to disrupt the state of peace for its own selfish ends. We guarantee the security of all other nations against their neighbours and the grimm, and thus, we preserve peace between them."</p><p>"Even so," General Ironwood said softly, "there are those who regard this peace we are enjoying as a natural state of affairs, a status quo that will sustain itself, but I see a fragile thing that must be protected from all those who would disturb it." He turned around, seeming sterner now, and older than before. "Those like the White Fang. Last month, a train carrying weapons, munitions, and a large number of prototype models of our new heavy support mech, the Paladin, were stolen travelling south from Cold Harbour to Vale. It was far from the first military or Schnee Dust Company train to be hit on that line. I hope I don't have to tell you how dangerous advanced weaponry could be in the hands of terrorists, and when combined with the quantities of stolen dust… the possibilities verge upon horrific.”</p><p>“Is that why you brought the fleet, sir?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>"I brought the fleet because I'm not about to leave you hanging, Dash," General Ironwood replied. "Nor any other of my students."</p><p>"I appreciate that, sir."</p><p>"Not everyone does," General Ironwood muttered.</p><p>"Sir, are you referring to Atlas students or to elements of the Valish authorities?" Ciel asked.</p><p>"There are some," General Ironwood said, "who feel that my coming here was a mistake. That the presence of our forces will only endanger fear and panic."</p><p>"They'll panic more if the shooting starts with no one to help them, sir," Rainbow declared. "Sir, you asked what we see when we look out the window. I… well, Ciel already stole all of my best lines, but I see… well, to be honest, General, I see you’re ready for a fight, but apart from that… I see protection. I see a… I don't know exactly what it is, sir, but it's saying 'nothing's going to hurt you tonight.'"</p><p>"You make it sound almost like a mother," General Ironwood observed.</p><p>"Isn't Atlas mother to us all, sir?" Rainbow asked.</p><p>"A good point," General Ironwood conceded, "and I hope that others come to see our presence in the way you do, at least a little."</p><p>"They will, sir," Rainbow said loyally, "and in the meantime…"</p><p>General Ironwood looked at her. "Go on, Dash."</p><p>"Sir, I know I screwed up with this Blake Belladonna stuff," Rainbow said. She bowed her head. "I know that… that I let you down, even though I said I'd never do that. But if there's anything I can do then you can consider me volunteered for it."</p><p>"You haven't let me down, Dash," General Ironwood said. "You made a mistake; there's a difference. I never expected you to make the right call every time; granted, the call you made was a pretty damn bad one." Rainbow winced as General Ironwood continued, "But as far as I'm concerned, everything I saw in you when I got you that place at Canterlot is still there."</p><p>Rainbow swallowed. "Thank you, sir."</p><p>“That said,” Ironwood continued, “there is still the question of your punishment.”</p><p>Rainbow swallowed. “Of course, sir.”</p><p>“Professor Goodwitch tells me that you're doing well here, excelling in leadership and combat,” General Ironwood said. “Miss Belladonna just forgave you. But you still screwed up, and while that in itself is forgivable - there hasn’t been a student in the academies who hasn’t messed up at some point - our mistakes are meaningless if we don’t learn from them. Which is why, for starting an unsanctioned fight with a fellow student, you’re going to be cleaning out the mess hall and the kitchen here on the <em>Valiant</em> this weekend. And I expect them to be spotless.”</p><p>“Sir, yes, sir!”</p><p>"In addition to Rainbow Dash’s offer, you may consider my services at your disposal also," Ciel declared. "I believe that if Penny and Twilight were still here, they would say the same."</p><p>General Ironwood did not reply, not at once. "There are some," he said, "who think that you're too young to get involved in this business, being mere children as you are. They say that you deserve to remain children."</p><p>"Would these be the same individuals who think that people should be more afraid of us than of the White Fang?" Ciel asked in an arch tone.</p><p>"Their opinions are not ours, but that doesn't mean that they should be dismissed out of hand," General Ironwood informed them.</p><p>"If you say so, sir," Rainbow replied. "May I show you something, sir?"</p><p>General Ironwood raised one eyebrow curiously. "Go ahead."</p><p>Rainbow got out her scroll and shuffled through her photos until she found one of Scootaloo, taken on their first camping trip with Apple Bloom, Applejack, Sweetie Belle, and Rarity. Scootaloo beamed up out of the scroll as she sat in front of the campfire. Rainbow put the scroll down on General Ironwood's desk.</p><p>General Ironwood glanced down at it briefly. "Adorable," he remarked dryly. He looked again. "This is the girl you mentor, isn’t it?"</p><p>“Yes, sir,” Rainbow said. “She’s twelve years old, and she's the one who deserves a childhood. She's the one who deserves to be sheltered from all this. Like Ciel's little brothers. They're the kids here. We chose this, sir, and we're ready."</p><p>"I agree, sir."</p><p>General Ironwood straightened up and handed Rainbow her scroll back. "I admit that part of me is a little worried to hear you say that. A part of me would like to keep you out of harm's way as much as possible. But another part of me is very proud of both of you."</p><p>Rainbow puffed out her chest a little; she hoped it wasn't too noticeable, but at the same time, she just couldn't help herself. "Thank you, sir," she said quietly.</p><p>"If you want to help, then start by working on Miss Belladonna," General Ironwood ordered. "As you noted, she knows more than she's letting on, information that could help us get a handle on this thing. You're probably the best placed to find out what she knows."</p><p>"Understood, sir," Ciel said.</p><p>General Ironwood nodded. "That's all. Dismissed."</p><p>"Yes sir!"</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Welcome to Beacon, Part Two</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Pyrrha talks to Professor Goodwitch, and has an awkward reunion with an old rival. Sun frets about what his teammates will have to say when they show up. Weiss and Winter discuss the fleet in the room. Sunset and Cinder are reunited as the Haven students arrive at Beacon.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Welcome to Beacon, Part Two</p><p> </p><p>Pyrrha was always – that was probably too strong a word, implying that this was more than her second visit – surprised by how small Professor Goodwitch's office was. It was made to seem even smaller by the bookshelf dominating the left-hand side of the room, groaning with so many tomes on history, legend, and the nature of the grimm that Pyrrha wouldn't have been surprised if Professor Goodwitch could have taken over from either Professor Port or Doctor Oobleck in an emergency. On the other side of the wall was a map of Vale, with red pins stuck into various locations. Pyrrha wasn't sure what the pins meant, but there seemed to be more of them than there had been when she had been here last.</p><p>But that had been quite some time ago, when she had asked if there was any way in which she could switch teams, before she and Sunset had come to a mutual understanding.</p><p>Professor Goodwitch sat behind a handsome mahogany desk, piled up high with papers and documents. She scribbled something briefly on one of her pieces of paper before looking up at Pyrrha. She smiled, and when she spoke, her tone was a little warmer than usual. "Please, sit down, Miss Nikos."</p><p>"Thank you, Professor," Pyrrha murmured. She sat in a revolving chair placed in front of the desk, and her gloved hands fiddled idly with her red sash as she waited for Professor Goodwitch to explain what she was doing here.</p><p>"How are you feeling about the start of the new semester, Miss Nikos?" Professor Goodwitch asked politely.</p><p>"I'm quietly confident, Professor," Pyrrha replied. "I'm looking forward to some more field missions, and all of our vacation homework is complete." That was not quite true. Jaune still had to do his history essay for Professor Oobleck, as she had only recently discovered, but they were going to have a study session in the library this afternoon to get it out of the way before classes resumed.</p><p>"I'm glad to hear it," Professor Goodwitch said. "As you may be aware, the students from Atlas Academy arrived this morning."</p><p>"Yes, Professor, I saw them fly in," Pyrrha said. "I wasn't expecting them to be so… well-armed."</p><p>Professor Goodwitch snorted. "I think some people enjoy flaunting their power," she said derisively. "In any case, the Haven students will be arriving this afternoon. When classes resume, I think there may be a number of people eager to challenge you in sparring class."</p><p>"I imagine you're right, Professor," Pyrrha replied, "but I'm prepared for that."</p><p>"I'm sure you are," Professor Goodwitch said sincerely. She paused for a moment. "How are you feeling, Miss Nikos?"</p><p>"To be honest, I'm a little confused as to what I'm doing here, Professor."</p><p>Professor Goodwitch frowned, pinching her face. "Have you spoken to your mother lately, Miss Nikos?"</p><p><em>Ah. I should have known.</em> "May I ask… who told you about that, Professor? Was it Jaune or Ruby?"</p><p>"As a matter of fact, it was Miss Shimmer who came to see me," Professor Goodwitch said.</p><p>"Sunset?" Pyrrha asked in surprise.</p><p>"She didn't tell me what had passed between you," Professor Goodwitch went on, "only that you had had a falling out prior to your return to Beacon."</p><p>"I see," Pyrrha murmured. "No, Professor, I'm afraid my mother and I haven't spoken since I left Mistral. Nor…" She gripped the fabric of her scarlet sash tightly. "Nor do I wish to change that."</p><p>Professor Goodwitch was silent for a moment, watching Pyrrha carefully through her half-moon spectacles. "You don't have to tell me what happened," she said gently, "but let me ask you again, Miss Nikos: how are you feeling?"</p><p>Pyrrha closed her eyes. "I don't think it was asking too much," she said, "to be allowed to make a few of my own decisions. To be allowed to give my heart to whom I choose."</p><p>"You're referring to Mister Arc?" Professor Goodwitch asked.</p><p>Pyrrha nodded. "I love him," she said softly, her voice almost a whisper.</p><p>Professor Goodwitch's frown was one of concern. "You're still a young girl, Miss Nikos, and Mister Arc is still a young man. If you knew how many students I have seen come through these halls and 'fall in love' for a week, a month, a season, maybe even a year. Be careful, Miss Nikos; these things can leave scars when they end."</p><p>"Are you saying that you think it will end, Professor?"</p><p>"I'm advising you to be careful," Professor Goodwitch repeated. "In fairy tales, the Prince and the Princess fall in love at first sight and then live happily ever after. Real life is not always as straightforward."</p><p>"I see," Pyrrha murmured, by which she meant that she understood Professor Goodwitch was trying to help, even if she didn't agree with her about this. She and Jaune… there was something <em>real</em> between them, and had been ever since she had unlocked his aura, mingling their two souls together. "My mother lied," she said, "to keep us apart. I could not forgive that. I cannot."</p><p>"I see," Professor Goodwitch said. "You carry a heavy burden, Miss Nikos. I sometimes think that the expectations placed upon you are too great." She paused. "It is not my place to advise you what to do in this, but if you ever feel the need to unburden yourself or feel as though the weight on your shoulders is growing too heavy, my door is open to you."</p><p>"Thank you for the offer, Professor," Pyrrha replied. "But I'm fine, now."</p><p>Professor Goodwitch did not reply immediately. "If you're certain, Miss Nikos, then I won't keep you any further."</p><p>Pyrrha got to her feet. "Goodbye, Professor." She turned away and left the office, gently closing the door behind her.</p><p>“You should talk to your mother,” Sunset said.</p><p>Pyrrha let out a little gasp. “Sunset,” she said. “You…” she paused. “How is it that you always seem to be here when I come out of Professor Goodwitch’s office?”</p><p>Sunset grinned. “I have a magical map that lets me keep tabs on everyone.” She glanced away. “Actually, that might not be such a bad idea, hmm. Anyway,” she added, “you should talk to your mother.”</p><p>Pyrrha sighed. “Are you saying that because-”</p><p>“Don’t,” Sunset snapped, and there was nothing playful about her tone now or the hard-eyed expression on her face. “Don’t you dare.”</p><p>Pyrrha took a step back. “Sunset?”</p><p>“Your mother has been generous enough to grant me a stipend, it’s true,” Sunset admitted, “but it does not make me her hireling nor bind me to obey her will in everything or lobby on her behalf against my will. And you should know me better than that.”</p><p>“I… I’m sorry,” Pyrrha murmured. Sunset was right, she <em>should</em> have known better than to suggest such a thing. The truth was… the truth was that it irked her a little, that Sunset had chosen to avail herself of Lady Nikos’ patronage even after Pyrrha had attempted to break with her own mother, even after what her mother had done; it irked her as well – and this, Pyrrha was even more ashamed of – that her mother had chosen to favour Sunset with her patronage at all. It wasn’t Sunset’s fault that she was, in many respects, more fitting in character for the heiress to the House of Nikos than Pyrrha was: ambitious, confident, proud. It wasn’t Sunset’s fault that she would have made an excellent match with Turnus Rutulus. </p><p>None of it was Sunset’s fault, but that didn’t mean that Pyrrha had to like it. </p><p>“I’m sorry,” Pyrrha repeated. “I didn’t mean to insult you. I forgot… I forgot how important your pride is to you.”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Sunset said, her expression softening. “I may have overreacted just a little bit. Anyway, the point is that I really do think that you should call your mother.”</p><p>“I disagree,” Pyrrha said mildly. “Would you forgive your mother if she behaved like that?”</p><p>“I’ve forgiven worse,” Sunset replied.</p><p>“Really?” Pyrrha murmured. “How long did it take you?”</p><p>Sunset hesitated. “Years,” she admitted. “Years in which I regretted that… that I didn’t have her to turn to. That’s why I spoke to Professor Goodwitch; if you won’t see sense, will you at least go and talk to her if you need to?”</p><p>“I don’t want to bother Professor Goodwitch,” Pyrrha said. “I’m sure she’s very busy.”</p><p>Sunset shook her head. “Anyway, shall we go to lunch?”</p><p>“Yes, that sounds like a good idea,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>“I’ll text Jaune and Ruby to meet us at the dining hall,” Sunset said, pulling her scroll out of her jacket pocket. As her fingers tapped the letters, she said, “But seriously, you should call your mother.”</p><p>“Please, Sunset, let it lie,” Pyrrha pleaded.</p><p>“She loves you,” Sunset insisted. “It was love that made her lie to Jaune about your… status.”</p><p>“I’m not sure that an action like that could ever be motivated by love,” Pyrrha replied.</p><p>Sunset looked at her. “You don’t think love can ever drive us to do bad things, even terrible ones?”</p><p>“I think that negative emotions are more likely a cause of negative actions,” Pyrrha said. “Fear, anger… it was not love that made my mother deceive Jaune; it was fear that I might love someone not of her choosing. Fear of losing control over me.”</p><p>Sunset folded up her scroll. “'Love'?”</p><p>“Hmm?”</p><p>“You said ‘love,’” Sunset repeated.</p><p>Pyrrha blinked. A smile crossed her lips. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose I did.”</p><p>Sunset rolled her eyes. “You’ve really got it bad, don’t you?”</p><p>“Do you find it so hard to believe?” Pyrrha asked. “Do you find it impossible to imagine that our lives might change in the blink of an eye?”</p><p>Sunset was silent for a moment. “I… I don’t know,” she said, “but it hasn’t happened to me, nor anyone else I know… except you, apparently.”</p><p>Pyrrha looked away for a moment. “I… I won’t apologise for how I feel about Jaune,” she said, “any more than for how I feel about my mother.”</p><p>“I’m not asking you to apologise.”</p><p>“But you do think I’m being ridiculous,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>Sunset was silent for a moment. “I… I worry about you.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Pyrrha said softly, “but I’ll be fine.”</p><p>They left the school building and began to cross the courtyard towards the cafeteria. They could see a great many other students from all over the spacious campus converging there, and many were wearing the grey and white of Atlas that had become familiar to Pyrrha and Sunset through their friendship with RSPT. </p><p>Pyrrha’s eyes flickered across the crowds for a moment, before she said, “Sunset… may I ask something of you… which you are as likely to refuse as I’ve refused all of your requests, I must admit.”</p><p>“Go on,” Sunset said warily.</p><p>“I do wish that you wouldn’t take my mother’s money,” Pyrrha declared. “It… it doesn’t sit right with me. Not because I think you’re taking it to be her employee, but… surely you can understand.”</p><p>“I can,” Sunset admitted. “But, since I disagree with you about this… and besides, I need the money.”</p><p>Pyrrha winced. Now that Sunset had moved the argument in that direction, it was going to be hard to discuss it. She didn’t want to suggest that Sunset should voluntarily impoverish herself, and yet, that was what she would have to do if she wished to continue this conversation. </p><p>Which was probably why Sunset had said it.</p><p>Or perhaps not, because Sunset didn’t even give her the chance to respond, continuing on to add, “And so do you.”</p><p>“I’ll manage,” Pyrrha murmured.</p><p>“How?” Sunset demanded. “Your mother was quite explicit that the stipend she has granted me is for dust and ammunition and combat essentials. I’m not sure how she’d react if I started paying for our trips to the spa.”</p><p>“I can manage without such things,” Pyrrha replied.</p><p>“I could say something very unkind about how Jaune will feel once you start to get split ends and your hair dries up,” Sunset remarked. “But I won’t, because I am a classy lady.”</p><p>“I thank you for your restraint,” Pyrrha said softly.</p><p>“Seriously, what will it cost you to keep spending your mother’s money?”</p><p>“My self-respect?” Pyrrha suggested. “Surely, you can understand that?”</p><p>“I scavenged parts from a junkyard to build my motorcycle because of ‘self-respect,’ don’t be like me,” Sunset said. “Look, I’ll make a deal with you: I won’t nag you to talk to your mother, and you will keep spending her money, how about that?”</p><p>Pyrrha’s eyes narrowed. “And if I refuse?”</p><p>“Then I will mention this at every conceivable opportunity,” Sunset said, “to the point that I will wake you up in the morning by yelling ‘TALK TO YOUR MOTHER’ in your ear while you lie sleeping.”</p><p>Pyrrha covered her mouth with one hand as she giggled. “Really?”</p><p>“Really.”</p><p>“Then I don’t suppose you leave me much choice, do you?” Pyrrha said.</p><p>“I hope not,” Sunset said with a touch of laughter in her voice. </p><p>The two of them crossed the courtyard; Jaune and Ruby were already waiting for them outside the dining hall. Jaune… every time she looked at him, it was as if she were seeing him anew for the first time, and every time, it was wonderful. </p><p>He didn’t need his semblance to glow in her eyes; he was able to do that all by himself. </p><p>“Hey,” he said, reaching out to take her hands as she approached. “How did it go with Goodwitch?”</p><p>“Oh, it was nothing to worry about,” Pyrrha murmured. “She just wanted to know how I was… apparently, she heard about what happened with my mother.”</p><p>“How did she find out about that?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“How do you think?” Sunset demanded.</p><p>“You told her?” Ruby gasped.</p><p>“Of course I told her; somebody had to,” Sunset replied.</p><p>“There are a lot of things that somebody should probably tell the teachers about, but we’re not going to,” Jaune pointed out.</p><p>“That is completely different,” Sunset declared.</p><p>“How is it any different at all?”</p><p>“It’s fine, Jaune,” Pyrrha said. “Professor Goodwitch was very kind. She wanted to let me know that I could talk to her, if I needed to.”</p><p>Jaune nodded. He squeezed her hands gently. “That might not be such a bad idea.”</p><p>“I’ll be alright,” Pyrrha assured him. </p><p>“Are you sure?”</p><p>“Quite sure,” Pyrrha said. “Did you two have a good time at the farm?”</p><p>Ruby nodded eagerly. “We-”</p><p>"Pyrrha! So good to see you again!" the voice that cut across Ruby's words was high pitched, the tone clipped and aristocratic. It was also a voice that Pyrrha would rather not have heard.</p><p>Pyrrha’s shoulders slumped a little as she said, with a tone of resigned neutrality, "Phoebe, it's been some time."</p><p>Phoebe Kommenos pushed her way through the crowd of students. She was tall, of a height with Pyrrha herself, and dressed in the uniform of an Atlas student. Her eyes were dark, and her hair was black as coal and bound up in a messy bun at the nape of her neck. Diamond clusters dangled from each ear, sparkling in the sunlight. Her arms were muscular, as much as Yang or Pyrrha. She was beautiful, with a dainty nose and high, sharp cheekbones contrasting with the softness of her chin… unfortunately, Pyrrha could not bring herself to think that there was so much beauty within Phoebe as there was without.</p><p>Three other students trailed in her wake, two strapping young men and a small, slight girl who walked with her shoulders hunched and her head bowed as though she were trying to hide.</p><p>Phoebe laughed, a kind of 'ohohohoho' sound that made Sunset's ears twitch. "Yes, it has, hasn't it? Not since you beat me in last year's tournament." She laughed again as she produced a fan from out of her sleeve and snapped it up in front of her face. "I hear you went home for the vacation? I would have seen you there, I'm sure, but I decided to stay in Atlas preparing for the Vytal Festival."</p><p>"I'm sure that you will do yourself honour there," Pyrrha replied. "Allow me to introduce-"</p><p>"You're sure that I will do myself honour?" Phoebe repeated sharply. "Oh, how very kind of you to stay so, Pyrrha Nikos."</p><p>"Phoebe," Pyrrha said, "that's not what I meant-"</p><p>"Oh, I'm sure it wasn't," Phoebe said. "You never mean to, do you? You never <em>mean</em> to humiliate the rest of us, you never <em>mean</em> to cast a shadow across the world, you never <em>mean</em> to bestride the hearts of men like a colossus so we must crawl about around your pedestal and seek for crumbs of recognition!"</p><p>“That’s not fair,” Jaune protested. “You can’t demand that everyone strive to be the best but then complain when someone is actually better than you!”</p><p>“'Better than-'?!”</p><p>“Don’t waste your breath, Jaune,” Sunset said. She smirked. “Entitled mediocrity is blind to the merits of true talent. Anyway, we’re done,” she added, half-stepping between Pyrrha and Phoebe. "Now, I don't know who you are, but I can make a pretty good guess as to what you are: someone who sucks by comparison to Pyrrha, for which I have… not enough sympathy to make me want to listen to you go on about it, much less force Pyrrha to listen. So take your frustrations and stew in them. Somewhere else."</p><p>Phoebe glowered down at Sunset. One of her hands clenched into a fist. </p><p>Sunset’s hand glowed as she held her magic ready. </p><p>“Uh, Phoebe?” the girl behind her murmured tremulously. “Maybe… maybe we should… I mean-”</p><p>“Can we just get something to eat?” asked one of the two boys, a wolf faunus with a mane of silver hair and a tail emerging out of the back of his pants.</p><p>Phoebe’s chest rose and fell. “Fine,” she spat through gritted teeth. She turned away from Sunset and then stopped. “I aim to take your crown, Pyrrha,” she declared. “By the time the Vytal Festival is over, they won’t talk of the Invincible Girl, but only of the one who proved that she was only mortal after all.”</p><p>“Good luck with that,” Sunset muttered.</p><p>Phoebe didn’t hear her, or affected not to hear her, as she stalked into the dining hall. </p><p>Pyrrha sighed. “I’m sorry about that,” she said.</p><p>“It’s fine,” Jaune assured her, taking one hand in his and rubbing her shoulder with the other hand. Pyrrha smiled at him gratefully and felt him squeeze her hand for comfort and reassurance. She felt better already.</p><p>“Who was that?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“Phoebe Kommenos,” Pyrrha explained. “One of my… she and I have fought more than once during my time on the tournament circuit.”</p><p>“A sore loser, I presume,” Sunset muttered.</p><p>“You… could say that,” Pyrrha admitted. “The good news is that she’s a couple of years older than I am, so we shouldn’t see very much of her. Hopefully, she’ll keep whatever is between us… between us.” There were a great many rumours about Phoebe Kommenos, some of them rather unpleasant: a reclusive stepsister who had rarely ventured out of the house for reasons unknown; the fire that had killed her mother and sister; allegations of match-fixing against less wealthy opponents;  sparring partners injured, some quite seriously. Some said that Phoebe had had to go to Atlas Academy because her reputation would have followed her to Haven. Pyrrha wasn’t quite sure that was true, and in any case, these were only rumours, but at the same time… she didn’t want someone like that turning her ire on Jaune or Ruby simply because of their association with her. </p><p>“Hopefully,” Sunset repeated. “If not, we’ll deal with it, but for now, why don’t we get inside before all the desert goes?”</p><p>“That sounds like an excellent idea,” Pyrrha said softly. </p><p>They went inside to find that, on this occasion, Team RSPT had beaten them into the dining hall and were already sat down at the usual table that Team SAPR and their friends habitually chose. The queue was bigger than normal today, thanks to the presence of all the Atlas students, but nobody tried to grab their seats while they were queuing up; perhaps RSPT had made it clear that they were saving them for someone. Pyrrha selected her lunch – gammon, with pineapple, boiled potatoes, and a vegetable selection – and sat down opposite Penny. </p><p>“Good morning,” she said. “Or, I suppose it’s 'good afternoon' now, isn’t it?”</p><p>“It’s a good something,” Twilight said. “I suppose,” she added in a softer tone.</p><p>Pyrrha looked up from her meal. “Is everything alright?”</p><p>“We got called to the General’s office, that’s all,” Rainbow answered. “So that he could ream me out about what happened at the docks.”</p><p>“You saved us at the docks,” Pyrrha pointed out.</p><p>Rainbow nodded. “Okay, he wanted to ream me out about what happened <em>before</em> the docks.”</p><p>“That makes a little more sense,” Pyrrha conceded. She blinked. “General Ironwood? He’s here?”</p><p>“Indeed,” Ciel said. “General Ironwood is leading our forces personally.”</p><p>“You mean the unnecessarily large forces parked overhead?” Sunset said as she sat down on Pyrrha’s left.</p><p>“No, we’re talking about the forces here to defend Vale against the White Fang… and anything or anyone else,” Rainbow said.</p><p>Sunset snorted. “You Atlesians always have to be the hero, don’t you?”</p><p>“You’re an Atlesian yourself,” Twilight said.</p><p>“A little,” Sunset said with a shrug, “but you know what I mean.”</p><p>“If you are referring to the way in which our nation freely sacrifices of itself for the security of its fellow men, then yes, we know what you mean,” Ciel declared.</p><p>Sunset looked at her for a moment. “Sure, let’s go with that.”</p><p>“Hey, guys,” Jaune said as he sat down on Pyrrha’s right. “I’m a little surprised to see you here.”</p><p>“Why?” Penny asked. “Where else would be at lunchtime?”</p><p>Jaune shrugged. “Nowhere in particular; it’s just that with the Atlas students arriving, aren’t there some of your old friends you haven’t seen for a while?”</p><p>“I don’t have any old friends at Atlas,” Penny said. “I only have you.” She paused, and her face became a little downcast. “Do you not want me to eat with you?”</p><p>“Nobody’s saying that, Penny,” Ruby assured her as she, at last, took her seat next to Sunset. “Jaune was just surprised that you didn’t know anyone from your own academy. Although I suppose you did arrive in Vale pretty fast.”</p><p>“We always enjoy your company, Penny,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>“Yeah, please don’t take what I said the wrong way,” Jaune added.</p><p>“Besides, just because we can sit with other Atlesians doesn’t mean we have to or that we should,” Twilight said. “Getting to know one another, forging friendships across schools or continents, isn’t that part of what the Vytal Festival is all about? Isn’t that why students arrive at their host schools so early?”</p><p>“I couldn’t agree more,” Sun said, appearing from out of nowhere as he sat himself down on the edge of the bench next to the Rosepetals. “’Sup guys, any of you seen Blake?”</p><p>“Where did you come from?” Sunset demanded.</p><p>“I was… around,” Sun replied. “I couldn’t help but overhear, seemed like a good moment to drop in.”</p><p>“Hey, Sun,” Ruby said with a smile. “Are you excited about all the Haven students arriving?”</p><p>“I wouldn’t necessarily say 'excited,'” Sun acknowledged, scratching his cheek with one hand. “More… a little bit nervous.”</p><p>“But you’ll finally get your team back together,” Ruby pointed out. As far as Pyrrha was aware, Professor Ozpin had wanted the rest of Team SSSN - pronounced Sun, like their leader - to follow the example of Team RSPT and join Sun at Beacon early, but Professor Lionheart had put his foot down and refused to allow them to do so until the rest of the Haven students arrived.</p><p>“Yeah,” Sun conceded. “That’s why I’m a little bit nervous.”</p><p>“You’re afraid about what they’re going to say?” Rainbow asked in between a mouthful of pasta. </p><p>“I’m afraid of what some of them are going to say,” Sun admitted. “Actually… nah, make that all of them; even Neptune won’t be totally cool about this.”</p><p>“You should be worried,” Rainbow declared. “You’re a terrible leader.”</p><p>“Rainbow Dash!” Ruby cried reproachfully.</p><p>“What?” Rainbow demanded. “You ran off to another continent, ditched your team, and you’ve left them leaderless and with a man down for the last semester.”</p><p>“I ran off to another continent and ditched my team,” Penny pointed out.</p><p>“And that was very wrong of you, Penny,” Ciel said.</p><p>“Yeah, but not as bad as it would have been if you’d been team leader,” Rainbow explained. “If I’d pulled that kind of stunt, the General would have stuck me in the brig for the next four months.”</p><p>“Wouldn’t that just exacerbate the problem?” Penny asked innocently. “Then Team Rosepetal would still be a man down and without a leader.”</p><p>“It goes without saying that Rainbow Dash would not have retained her leadership – or indeed her membership of Team Rosepetal – under such circumstances,” Ciel declared.</p><p>Penny’s eyes widened. “Does that mean Sun is getting kicked out of his team?”</p><p>“Scarlet might try,” Sun confessed. He paused. “How would this General guy-?”</p><p>Rainbow, Ciel and Twilight all made noises as if they were about to start choking on their lunch. </p><p>“'This General guy'?” Rainbow repeated. “'This General guy'?”</p><p>“It’s not like you said his name,” Sun replied without much defensiveness.</p><p>“You’ve never heard of General Ironwood?” Twilight asked in astonishment.</p><p>“Only Atlesian arrogance would assume that everyone must necessarily have heard of one of <em>your</em> senior officers,” Sunset said. “Would you expect Atlesians to know who Professor Lionheart is?”</p><p>“Who?” asked Penny.</p><p>“Precisely,” Sunset said.</p><p>“You are an Atlesian,” Twilight reminded Sunset yet again. </p><p>“I like to think that I can take a step outside of your society and examine it critically.”</p><p>“You mean you weren’t happy there,” Twilight said.</p><p>“Not particularly,” Sunset admitted.</p><p>“Anyway, it doesn’t matter what his name is; he’s not here anyway,” Sun remarked.</p><p>“Uh, apparently he is,” Ruby said. “He came with his fleet.”</p><p>Sun looked at her. “What fleet?”</p><p>Everyone stared at him. Even Pyrrha found herself rather surprised to hear that. </p><p>“The, uh, the Atlesian fleet?” Jaune suggested. “You know, all those ships filling the skies over Beacon and Vale.”</p><p>“I hadn’t noticed,” Sun said, prompting Sunset to groan in frustration. “Anyway, do any of you know where Blake is?”</p><p>“Your team is about to arrive filled with just recriminations, you may in fact be about to be voted out like the loser on some game show, and on top of that, you’re so spectacularly unobservant that it’s a wonder you haven’t walked into the mouth of an ursa major, but sure, the important thing is where you can find your girlfriend,” Sunset growled. She rolled her eyes. “Sweet Celestia.”</p><p>“We’re sorry,” Pyrrha murmured, “but we haven’t seen Blake all day.”</p><p>“Did you talk to her team?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“They hadn’t seen her either,” Sunset answered.</p><p>“She came aboard the <em>Valiant</em> for a little bit,” Rainbow said. “The General – General Ironwood – apologised to her for… the way I got a little carried away when I found out, you know. But she left before us, and I don’t know where she went after that.”</p><p>Sun sighed dispiritedly. “I can’t think where she’d be. I’ve looked everywhere.”</p><p>“Maybe she doesn’t want to be found right now,” Jaune suggested. “She’ll show up eventually, but if she wants to be left alone… maybe just give her her space?”</p><p>Sun looked at him. “Would you give Pyrrha space?”</p><p>Jaune looked at her. “If Pyrrha wanted me to, then sure.” He hesitated. “Which, uh, kind of reminds me… we haven’t really been on a date yet… I mean I don’t know if you really want to go on a date because I probably should have asked first, but I didn’t because I’m such a moron, and I didn’t think this through, can we start over?”</p><p>Pyrrha covered her mouth with one hand as she laughed. “There’s no need. I would love to go on a date with you, Jaune. What did you have in mind?”</p><p>“Ugh, how saccharine. Someone pass me a sick bag.”</p><p>Pyrrha might have almost expected that to come from Sunset, or possibly even Rainbow Dash, but instead, the voice was higher-pitched than either of them possessed and belonged to a cat faunus – her tail was visible, curling up behind her back, twitching gently back and forth – who had appeared at their table in a rainbow burst. Like the other Atlas students, she wore the grey and white uniform of the northern academy, but she seemed particularly ill at ease in it, as if she couldn’t wait to burst out of it and into something more casual. Her hair was a rich red, with neon blue streaks in the bangs that fell over her forehead, and worn in twin tails that jutted out from the sides of her head. She had a heart tattooed onto her left cheek which the blush she was wearing did not conceal. Her eyes were blue and seemed very sharp.</p><p>Currently, this newcomer had her arms around the shoulders of Rainbow and Twilight, practically draping her body over both of them. </p><p>“So, <em>these</em> are the people you’ve been hanging out with for the last few months, huh, Dashie?” she asked, her sharp blue eyes scanning the members of Team SAPR. “I’m so forlorn. You’ve thrown me away for a baby, a fried breakfast-”</p><p>“A what?” Sunset demanded.</p><p>“You know, the hair,” the cat faunus said. “It makes you looked like grilled – ooh, a barbecue! That’s what you are, that’s even better. A baby, a barbecue… something starts with B… bumpkin!” Her voice assumed an accent that sounded a little like Rainbow’s friend Applejack as she addressed Jaune. “Come on, now, boy, I bet you ain’t never been more than eight miles outside of home before you came to Beacon, ain’t that right?”</p><p>Pyrrha coughed. “Excuse me, but I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”</p><p>“Hey, listen to that one, so refined.”</p><p>“Neon, stop,” Rainbow said in long-suffering resignation. “This is Neon Katt, the White Fang’s agent in Atlas Academy.”</p><p>Pyrrha’s eyebrows rose. “The… White Fang.”</p><p>“Oh, don’t worry; I’m a harmless kitty cat, really,” Neon said, pinching Rainbow’s cheek and pulling on it. “It’s just that I accept what Dashie here and others like her run away from: that we faunus are just superior to all you puny humans.”</p><p>Jaune stared. “That… sounds kind of-”</p><p>“True,” Neon insisted. “We have a range of abilities that you lack, not to mention the advantages of our extra limbs. We’re just better than you, in every way.”</p><p>“Not in brains,” Rainbow said, extracting her face from Neon’s grip.</p><p>“Oh, intelligence is overrated!”</p><p>“Is that right?” drawled a tall, slender man with skin nearly as dark as Ciel as he strode over to join them. He had accessorised his uniform with the addition of a dark fedora atop his head and a single black glove covering one hand. “What up, Dash?”</p><p>Rainbow got to her feet. “Hey, Flynt. It’s good to see you again. How you doing?” She held out one hand, which the man – Flynt – clasped warmly. </p><p>“Oh, the beat goes on; you know how it is,” Flynt said. “Improvising from one note to the next, just like always.” He glanced at Neon. “Meanwhile, I bet you’re playing some of the old favourites, huh, Neon?”</p><p>Neon made a cat’s paw with one hand, waving it in a dismissive gesture. “Oh, relax, Flynt, you know I don’t mean <em>you</em>. You’re my favourite human.”</p><p>“Gee, thanks, now how about you stop bothering Dash and come get something to eat?”</p><p>Neon’s stomach rumbled loudly. “That… might not be such a bad idea,” she admitted. “See you around, Dashie!”</p><p>“You’ll make sure of it, won’t you?” Rainbow replied.</p><p>“You know it!” Neon cried cheerily as she skipped away, her tail shaking behind her. </p><p>Flynt touched the brim of his hat with his forefingers. “Ladies,” he said, before turning around and following Neon back towards the lunch queue.</p><p>Rainbow sat down again.</p><p>“She was…” Pyrrha began, and then trailed off because it was hard to properly describe exactly what Neon was. </p><p>“Yeah, she’s something alright,” Rainbow agreed. “But she’s good at what she does.”</p><p>“Annoying people?” Sunset suggested.</p><p>Rainbow grinned. “That too,” she admitted, “but I was actually thinking about killing grimm, but yeah, that works too.”</p><p>“I must say,” Pyrrha murmured, “I was expecting Atlas students to be more… regimented.”</p><p>Rainbow rolled her eyes. “How long have you known the four of us, and you still think the rest of Atlas is a bunch of robots?”</p><p>Penny hiccupped loudly. </p><p>“I’m sorry,” Pyrrha apologised. “It’s just that they say that Atlas emphasises discipline and conformity above individualism and free thought.”</p><p>“Atlas <em>does</em> emphasise discipline,” Ciel declared, “but that does not mean that, in more off-duty situations, certain students cannot show their… freer spirits.”</p><p>“People say a lot about Atlas,” Twilight murmured, “and most of it isn’t true. They say that Atlesians don’t have friends, only co-workers, but you guys know that that’s not true. I’m sure no other academy has to put up with the amount of malicious gossip that assails Atlas.”</p><p>“Greatness attracts envy,” Rainbow observed.</p><p>“True,” Sunset said, “but we all know which of the four academies warrants the description ‘great.’”</p><p>“Yeah,” Rainbow said. “Atlas.”</p><p>“Oh, and how many Vytal Tournaments have been won by Atlesians?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“A few,” Rainbow replied. “More to the point, how many Atlesians keep the world safe?”</p><p>“Huntsmen from all four kingdoms and beyond keep the world safe,” Ruby insisted. “Not just Atlas.”</p><p>Rainbow glanced at her. “Yeah, you’re right, that was… I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m just-”</p><p>“Proud of your academy,” Pyrrha said. “There’s no shame in that, so long as we all remember that-”</p><p>“That both Beacon and Atlas are head and shoulders above Haven,” Sunset declared.</p><p>“Hey!” Sun cried. “Come on, guys, that was uncalled for!”</p><p>“What would Cinder think to hear you say that?” Jaune asked, a slightly teasing tone in his voice. </p><p>Oh, that was right, Cinder Fall would be arriving with the Haven students. She was going to let Sunset know when they were making their approach so that Sunset could meet her at the docks. </p><p>Pyrrha… Pyrrha couldn’t exactly say why, but there was something about Cinder that she hadn’t liked when she had fought with them, and that feeling had not abated. But it was irrational – Cinder had been very decent to them all, even arranging somewhere for them to stay at Haven before they returned to Beacon at the end of the vacation – so there was no real cause for Pyrrha’s feelings towards her. </p><p>But that did not mean those feelings were not there. </p><p>Sunset smirked. “I might actually tell Cinder that, just for the pleasure of hearing her response.”</p><p>“What makes you think she’ll have a response?” Penny asked. “Won’t she just get upset?”</p><p>Sunset shook her head. “Cinder isn’t the kind of person to get upset; she’s the sort of person to have a cutting remark to use to get even with you.”</p><p>Before any of them could say anything more, the doors to the dining hall were flung open, only for the doorway to be immediately obscured by several smoke bombs, spewing out mingling blue and purple smoke in clouds which blended together to creep slowly into the cafeteria. </p><p>Pyrrha got to her feet. What was going on? Was this a practical joke or something more serious? Was this a test of some kind?</p><p>Rainbow and Twilight did not look in the least alarmed. Twilight laughed nervously. “It’s nothing to worry about,” she said. “It’s only-”</p><p>“The Great and Powerful Trixie is here!” proclaimed, well, the Great and Powerful Trixie presumably, as she strode through the smoke and spread out her arms wide on either side of her, as though she were waiting for the applause of some great crowd in the arena or on the stage. </p><p>Trixie – presuming that it was she – was a young woman of average height, with purple eyes and long silver-white hair combed down one side of her face, even as the rest of it fell down her back below her waist. To her Atlas Academy uniform, she had added a purple cape, longer than Ruby’s, decorated with stars of gold and silver. </p><p>She stood like that, posed waiting for her acclaim, for a good few moments before she appeared to realise that all she was going to get were bemused and nonplussed stares from everyone in the cafeteria. </p><p>Another figure emerged from out of the smoke, another girl with aquamarine highlights streaked through her purple hair. Her blue eyes shone as she wrapped one arm around Trixie’s shoulder. “Come on, Trixie. Why don’t you save it for when there’s a spotlight, huh?” She steered the Great and Powerful Trixie towards the lunch queue, and as she did so, she held out her free hand for a young man with round spectacles and hints of a ginger goatee growing on his chin to take hold of. </p><p>A pony faunus girl, whom Pyrrha presumed to be the final member of their team, followed behind them. She was tall, as tall as Pyrrha herself and as broad in the shoulders as Yang, and the Mohawk into which she had styled her dark pink hair. She had a scowl set on her face as she followed her teammates. Her tail, the same dusky pink as her hair, hung flaccid and motionless behind her. </p><p>Pyrrha sat down again. “You’re right,” she murmured. “People who say that Atlesians have no individuality have no idea what they’re talking about.”</p><p>The rest of lunch passed more calmly, but Pyrrha found something itching in her mind: Penny’s words when asked why she was still sitting with Team SAPR after the arrival of the other Atlas students. </p><p>
  <em>“I don’t have any old friends at Atlas, I only have you.”</em>
</p><p>Those words had been spoken in a tone that was so… so monstrously cheerful. Penny spoke so blithely – as she spoke blithely about a great many things – but in this case, it was particularly… wrong. There was no better word that Pyrrha could think of; it was wrong that it should be so. </p><p>It might seem strange for her to be thinking this way, considering that she had so very few friends of her own, and considering that she and Penny were alike in that they shared many of the small number of friends that they each had, but at the same time, it bothered her. It would have been unfortunate for anyone, but especially for someone as sweet-natured and cheerful as Penny. </p><p>Pyrrha just couldn’t understand why it should be so. And thus, as soon as lunch was finished and everyone started to get up, she said, “Penny, may I have a word with you, please… in private?”</p><p>Penny’s mouth opened, but no words came out. She glanced at Twilight; a movement of her eyes so slight that Pyrrha might not have caught it if she hadn’t been paying attention. </p><p>Pyrrha kept her own brow from furrowing as she wondered why Penny would need to look at Twilight for permission to speak alone with a friend. </p><p>She knew that Team RSPT meant no harm and intended much good, but all the same, there were times, when it came to Penny, when there was something ever so slightly off about the way they treated her. They watched her, they spoke for her, and at times, it seemed as though she needed their permission before she could do things. Or speak to people, as now. Pyrrha might have given some credence to Sunset’s belief that General Ironwood had set three trusted fellows to protect the daughter of some VIP while her dream of becoming a huntress was indulged, but moments like this made her doubtful of it. This was not the behaviour of bodyguards; it was more like… well, Pyrrha would have said "gaolers" if it were not for the fact that Rainbow, Twilight, and Ciel were all too decent – and seemed to care too much about Penny – for that to be the case. </p><p>
  <em>But then, why did she look at Twilight?</em>
</p><p>Twilight, in turn, gave a barely perceptible nod of her head, at which point – these ruminations of Pyrrha’s had taken but an instant – Penny smiled at her. “Of course, Pyrrha! Is there anywhere you’d like to go?”</p><p>“Just outside should be fine,” Pyrrha said softly, and as the group began to leave the cafeteria, she hung back from the rest, walking more slowly. Penny did likewise, an earnest expression on her face. </p><p>Sunset’s scroll buzzed as they reached the doors. She pulled it out of her pocket and opened it up. A grin grew upon her features. Her tail twitched with eagerness. “Cinder’s here!” she proclaimed eagerly.</p><p>“I don’t suppose she flew in by herself?” Sun asked, sounding more hopeful than expectant. </p><p>Sunset gave him a look that verged upon withering. “She’s not you,” she declared tartly.</p><p>“Right,” Sun muttered. “So, the rest of the Haven students are here too,” he added. He looked more like a man facing a firing squad than reuniting with his friends after a long absence. “Wish me luck, guys.”</p><p>“Good luck,” Rainbow said. “You’ll need it,” she added sotto voce. </p><p>“I’ll catch up with all of you later,” Sunset said as she started to walk towards the docking pads. “You’re going to be in the library, right?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Ruby agreed. “Say 'hi' to Cinder for us.”</p><p>“Sure thing,” Sunset said, setting off with an eagerness in her step. Sun followed at a rather slower, more forlorn pace. </p><p>“Why does Sun look so upset?” Penny asked.</p><p>“Because he knows he has done something wrong,” Ciel declared, “and his own guilt manifests as fear of the judgement of others.”</p><p>“One need not necessarily feel guilt to feel shame,” Pyrrha suggested. “I think that Sun believes that what he did was, if not right, then at least not wrong; it is only the fact that he does not believe his teammates will see it in the same light that makes him fearful.”</p><p>“Perhaps,” Ciel conceded. “We have not a window into his soul to say for certain.”</p><p>Jaune looked back at Pyrrha, his brow furrowed slightly. “Are you okay?” he asked, slightly anxiously.</p><p><em>I’m not the one who might not be alright,</em> Pyrrha thought. “I’ll be fine,” Pyrrha assured him. “I won’t be long.”</p><p>Jaune still looked a little puzzled and a little concerned, but he nodded and walked away with Rainbow, Ciel, and Ruby, who waved to them.</p><p>“Catch up quick, you two,” she urged.</p><p>“I hope so,” Penny replied. She looked at Pyrrha. “Not that I don’t enjoy talking to you, Pyrrha; it’s just that-”</p><p>Pyrrha laughed gently. “I understand, Penny, don’t worry,” she said, as she reached out and took Penny gently by the arm, steering her away from the path that led from dining hall to library and leading her across the courtyard in the direction of the great statue that stood sentinel in the centre of the open space. </p><p>Twilight lurked a little way off; she did not follow the others but rather halted some distance away, standing awkwardly on the grass just off the path, watching them but too far away to hear any words that might pass between them. Pyrrha didn’t object; as long as she wasn’t actively seeking to eavesdrop, then she had no right to do so. </p><p>In any case, her attention was for the most part reserved for Penny as they wandered – the smaller girl guided by the taller – across the grass and under the shade of the trees until they were standing at the edge of the water that surrounded the dark statue. </p><p>“What do you think?” Pyrrha asked, as a way to break the ice. She had known Penny for quite some time now, but at the same time, she couldn’t really say that they had shared any time alone, without anyone else from Team RSPT present. It was part of the slightly concerning pattern; they didn’t seem to like leaving her alone. “I know that it’s supposed to be inspiring, and it is… but at the same time, I find it ever so slightly foreboding.”</p><p>Penny blinked. “Why?” she asked.</p><p>Pyrrha pursed her lips together. “It looks very grand,” she said, “until you think about it. The huntsman has his sword raised in triumph, while the huntress is resting her axe upon the ground. They act as though they’ve just won a victory, and maybe they have… but the beowolf is there, lurking underneath, waiting for its opportunity; it is as savage and as fierce as ever, and they are unaware of it. I think… I fear… that the statue is here to remind us that evil is always present in the dark places of the world and will never be wholly rooted out.”</p><p>Penny looked up at her, a frown creasing her youthful features; she really did look very young, Pyrrha thought. “But,” she protested, “you’re Pyrrha Nikos! You can’t be afraid!”</p><p>Pyrrha covered her mouth with one hand as she chuckled softly. “That’s very sweet of you to say, Penny, but there are many different kinds of fear, just as there are many different kinds of courage. I fear no one when I step into the ring, if that doesn’t sound too obscenely arrogant; in battle against the grimm or even against the White Fang, I fear very little for myself, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not afraid. I fear… I fear to lose Jaune, to lose any of my friends, to let down those who depend on and believe in me. Most of all I fear to fail.”</p><p>Penny stared up her. “May I tell you a secret, Pyrrha?”</p><p>Pyrrha nodded solemnly. “You may tell me anything you wish, Penny, and none of it shall pass my lips without your leave.”</p><p>“I, too, fear to fail,” Penny confessed. </p><p>That was interesting, and unexpected too, another forceful reminder to Pyrrha that she didn’t know Penny nearly as well as she could. Why did Penny fear to fail? What expectations had been placed upon her? Who <em>was</em> she? “To fail as a huntress?”</p><p>“More than that,” Penny replied. She looked at the statue again. “If what you say is true, do you think that it’s impossible for us to save the world?”</p><p>“'Impossible'?” Pyrrha repeated. “I would hate to think so.” She hesitated. “May I make a confession of my own? In my most fanciful dreams, I should like to do exactly that: to drive back the grimm, to vanquish them even from the farthest shores, to wipe all trace of them from the world and give back to mankind dominion over all places. The height of egotism for a mere tournament champion like myself; I must be letting my reputation go to my head.” She smiled self-deprecatingly. </p><p>“I wish for that too,” Penny said. “I wish it so that no one would have to be huntsmen or huntresses anymore, and none of my friends would have to fight and risk their lives the way they do now.”</p><p>Pyrrha smiled. “That is a thought both kind and generous, Penny, besides being rather ambitious.”</p><p>“It’s what I was-” Penny halted, abruptly in the middle of her sentence.</p><p>“Penny?”</p><p>“I was given my team,” Penny confessed. “Mis- General Ironwood assigned them to me personally. He gave me Rainbow Dash to be my team leader, who’s his top student, and Twilight and Ciel are both so talented. I need to prove that I’m worthy of everything that’s been done to me and everything that I’ve been given.”</p><p>“I see,” Pyrrha murmured, although she didn’t really see as much as she would have liked to have seen. Why had Penny been given so much? Why had General Ironwood assigned his top student to be Penny’s leader? </p><p>They were questions that she was curious to know the answer to, but not so much so that it took precedence over her duty to the friend standing in front of her. She reached out and put one hand on Penny’s shoulder. She was surprisingly cold to the touch. She said, “I… I asked to speak with you because I didn’t understand how someone so sweet as you could be as friendless as you say, but… but now, forgive me my presumption, now I think I might. When people, however well-meaning they may be, place their expectations upon you… they also throw up walls around you at the same time, don’t they?”</p><p>Penny stared into Pyrrha's eyes. "My father is a very important man," she said. "Twilight says that he's the smartest man in Atlas. And General Ironwood… My father wants me to live up to my potential; he says that nothing is more important than that."</p><p>"I know how that feels," Pyrrha murmured.</p><p>"And General Ironwood wants me to protect Atlas, and the world, maybe even save it one day, if that's possible," Penny continued. "I… I want that too. I want to make sure that nobody has to die, none of my friends or anyone else. I'd love it if nobody had to fight. But what about what else I want? Doesn't that matter?"</p><p>"It matters to me," Pyrrha declared, "and to Ruby, and I'm sure that it matters to your teammates also."</p><p>"I… I don't know," Penny replied, her voice small and soft and a little fearful. "Rainbow let me stay here at Beacon when she ought to have taken me home to Atlas, but only after she'd talked to General Ironwood first. Because Rainbow, Ciel, Twilight, they're all General Ironwood's people, not my friends. If they had to choose… I'm afraid they'd choose him over me."</p><p>"But we would not," Pyrrha insisted, "Ruby and I." She paused. "I… I do not know what lies in store for us, Penny. I do not know if it is possible that we might do our work so well that there is no more work to be done for huntresses in the future. I do not know if our skills are equal enough to our ambitions that we may achieve the outsized destinies we yearn for. But I do know that we need not fight alone, either of us. Despite the walls around us, we have both been fortunate enough to find friends who will stand with us against all perils." She smiled. "You're not alone, Penny."</p><p>For a moment, Penny stared up at her, standing still with Pyrrha's hand upon her shoulder. Then she stepped forward, wrapping her arms around Pyrrha's waist and hugging her tight, so tight that Pyrrha felt it even through her aura.</p><p>"Thank you, Pyrrha," she said. "You can count on me as well."</p><p>Pyrrha gently placed both hands on Penny's back. "I do not doubt it," she whispered. "Now, I think we should probably rejoin the others, don't you?"</p><hr/><p>Weiss was not having lunch in the cafeteria; rather, she and Winter were lunching upon an isolated veranda on the west side of the Beacon canvas; very few people knew about it, and even fewer frequented it, but Weiss found this place of ivy-coloured pillars and fountains decorated with statues of roaring lions to be peaceful, elegant, and tasteful. She wasn't sure exactly what it was for normally, but as she and Winter sat – alone, Flash having given them some privacy – nibbling on pastries and berries, with the fountains burbling away in the background, a sense of calm had descended over her.</p><p>Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a trio of Atlesian dropships flying low on patrol; it was the one thing at present that was disturbing her calm.</p><p>"Winter," she began, "it's not that I'm not happy to see you, but-"</p><p>"But what am I doing here?" Winter asked.</p><p>Weiss smiled, if only with one corner of her mouth. "You must admit, your presence begs the question."</p><p>"How do you know that I didn't come to see you?" Winter suggested.</p><p>Weiss' eyebrows rose. "You didn't fly two thousand men over here to pay me a visit," she replied. "Atlas didn't fly two thousand men over here in order to wait for the Vytal Festival tournament."</p><p>"Atlas may not, but I did get myself assigned to the expeditionary force so that I could come and visit you," Winter insisted. She picked up her china teacup and sipped it. "As for what Atlas is doing here… isn't it obvious?"</p><p>Weiss sighed. "The White Fang," she whispered.</p><p>"They aren't gathering dust for a firework display," Winter muttered. "The General is concerned about the students coming to Beacon for the Vytal Festival; Atlas was concerned about the stability of its trading partner. I was concerned about you." Winter folded her hands together in her lap. "It seems that you've made a habit of brave but foolish decisions while you've been here at Beacon."</p><p>Weiss frowned. "You're not just talking about the locker, are you?"</p><p>"I'm also talking about the apex alpha in the forest."</p><p>"How do you know about that?"</p><p>"If Father knew about that, you'd be on a ship back to Atlas by now," Winter informed her.</p><p>"I'm training to be a huntress," Weiss insisted. "Does Father think that I won't be in danger?"</p><p>"You mistake the man if you think such concerns would influence his decisions," Winter reminded her. "Fortunately, Professor Ozpin has chosen to respect your privacy."</p><p>"Not completely," Weiss pointed out.</p><p>Winter chuckled. "As a courtesy to me, he filled me in on a few details on what you've gotten up to over the last semester." She sipped from her teacup again. It was nearly empty when she set it down. "I admire your courage, Weiss, but you take too many risks."</p><p>"It seems like you may also need reminding that I'm training to become a huntress," Weiss said.</p><p>"'Training,'" Winter emphasised. "You're not a huntress yet. There's no need for you to throw yourself into danger too soon. There's no need for you to involve yourself with the White Fang anymore."</p><p>"I wasn't planning to involve myself with the White Fang the first time," Weiss pointed out. "It just… happened."</p><p>"Hmm," Winter murmured. "Well, it need not happen again."</p><p>"Are you sure about that?" Weiss asked.</p><p>Winter cocked her head slightly. "What do you mean?"</p><p>"You said it yourself: they aren't stealing dust for the fun of it," Weiss said. "They're planning something, something that has even General Ironwood himself concerned. And with the behaviour of the grimm in Vale… the world is growing darker, isn't it?"</p><p>Winter rose from her seat and walked towards the archway with one hand upon the hilt of her sabre. "Beacon is the only world you need concern yourself with at present, Weiss," she declared.</p><p>"But-"</p><p>"Whatever the White Fang is planning, then Atlas will stop them," Winter declared. "We are an army possessed of all the accoutrements of modern warfare, skilled and resolute, mustered under one of the great captains." She looked at Weiss and smiled to show that she meant no insult when she said added, "We do not require the aid of children." Her boots tapped upon the floor as she approached Weiss and the table at which she sat. "Attend to your studies, master our inherited semblance, and leave the White Fang to us. There is nothing for you to be concerned with."</p><hr/><p>Sun fidgeted like a child, shifting and shuffling uncomfortably beside Sunset, who tried her best to ignore him as she watched the Haven students arrive.</p><p>Or rather, she watched the airship which could only be carrying the Haven students as it drew near to the skydock, passing through the ranks of the Atlesian cruisers as it made its approach. The civilian airship, a skyliner of the same sort that had carried them all to Beacon at the start of the last semester and which had born Team SAPR across the seas to Mistral and brought them back to Beacon once again, was larger than the Atlesian warships immediately surrounding it, and doubtless a good deal more comfortable to travel in, although, of course, any one of them could have ripped the skyliner apart in a matter of moments.</p><p>The airship's wings beat lazily up and down as it made its final approach, turning side on towards the cliffs that marked the boundary of the school grounds. These skyliners, unlike the Atlesian cruisers, were too large to actually set down upon the docking pads, and so – as they had done last semester – it would have to extend a plank for the passengers to disembark.</p><p>"So you said her name was Cinder Fall, right?" Sun asked, in the tone of a man trying to distract himself.</p><p>"That's right," Sunset replied, still looking at the approaching airship. "Do you know her?"</p><p>"I've heard the name," Sun answered, "but she wasn't much of a people person, kept to herself; her whole team did."</p><p>"Mind you, I don't suppose you got to spend much time with any of your fellow Haven students, did you?" Sunset mused.</p><p>Sun laughed nervously. "No, I guess not."</p><p>The tap tap of heels upon the stone path alerted Sunset to the presence of Professor Goodwitch, who approached the docking pad only to stop not far away from the two waiting students. She regarded them both over the top of her half-moon spectacles. "I can understand why you are here, Mister Wukong, but your presence is a little harder to explain, Miss Shimmer."</p><p>"I met a Haven student in Mistral, Professor," Sunset said. "I'm here to welcome them to Beacon."</p><p>"I see," Professor Goodwitch murmured as the skyliner docked, its ramp extending out to touch the edge of the docking pad. A door upon the side of the skyliner opened, and Haven students began to emerge.</p><p>Like the Atlesians who had preceded them by a matter of hours, the Haven students were all dressed in their school uniforms; Sunset had to admit, that amidst every accusation that was levelled – unfairly, according to those stalwart patriots of Team RSPT – against Atlas, it was <em>Haven</em> that possessed the sinister, ominous-looking uniform. All Haven students were dressed in black jackets, single-breasted, with silver piping and high collars that revealed only a touch of the – equally high-collared – white shirts they had on underneath. Each jacket had a white armband upon the right, reminding Sunset a little of the golden band that Pyrrha wore around her own right arm. She wondered idly if there was some Mistralian significance to it, except that Blake also wore a band of silver around her arm, and she was neither Mistralian nor pretending to be such. The Haven boys wore black trousers, while the Haven girls wore plaid skirts of grey and black, with white socks or stockings which, like their Beacon counterparts, they appeared to be allowed to tailor in length.</p><p>The Haven delegation was led out of the airship by a young woman about of a height with Yang, or perhaps just a little shorter, with a swarthy complexion and a bushy mane of pale blonde hair. She stretched out her arms and rolled her neck as though she had a crick in it as she walked briskly, with a certain leonine grace, across the docking pad, leaving two boys and a girl with black marks painted on her face – whom Sunset took to be her teammates – to rush to keep up with her.</p><p>More students spilled out of the airship, spreading out across the docking pad and moving in a loose cluster across the pad itself, before funnelling back together as they approached the path that led to the school.</p><p>"Not yet," Sun muttered. "Not yet."</p><p>"Dude!" the irate cry sprang from the lips of a tall, lean young man with blue hair as he emerged from the airship and caught sight of Sun. He put Sunset in mind of Flash Sentry, not just in the colour of his hair but the style of it too, the way it matched his eyes. It inclined her to dislike him from the first.</p><p>Not that he appeared to notice Sunset one way or the other as he moved swiftly across the docking pad, murmuring his apologies as he forced his way towards the waiting Sun Wukong.</p><p>"Neptune!" Sun cried, spreading his arms out wide as though he was expecting a hug. "Dude!"</p><p>"Dude?" Neptune repeated. "What the hell, man? Lionheart makes you team leader, and then a couple of weeks later, you've totally ditched us to come to Vale? If you wanted to attend Beacon, then why didn't you just apply for Beacon?"</p><p>"It wasn't something planned; it just… kinda happened," Sun explained – badly, in Sunset's opinion.</p><p>"You <em>stowed away</em> aboard a cargo ship, how does that 'just happen'?" Neptune demanded.</p><p>Sun shrugged. "It seemed-"</p><p>"Like a good idea at the time, sure it did," Neptune muttered. He sighed. "You are the worst team leader ever. And one of the worst friends too." He shook his head. "But I can't stay mad at you, dude; it's great to see you again, come here!"</p><p>He pulled Sun into an embrace, which was enthusiastically reciprocated. Sun said, "Oh, it's good to see you too, buddy. You're going to love it here, and I can't wait for you to meet Blake."</p><p>"'Blake'?" Neptune repeated, stepping back away from Sun. "Who's Blake?" He noticed Sunset. "Is this Blake?"</p><p>"No, dude, that's Sunset," Sun said, as though it explained everything. "Sunset, this is my buddy Neptune; Neptune, this is-"</p><p>"Sunset Shimmer," Sunset said. "Leader of Team Sapphire. Welcome to Beacon, I suppose."</p><p>Neptune beamed. His teeth gleamed in the late afternoon sunshine. "Well, with you as the reception committee, I am feeling very welcome, sunshine."</p><p>"Sun<em>set</em>," Sunset corrected him. "And is that supposed to be smooth? Because that was… that was, no. Listen, I have some experience with blue-haired guys, and I-"</p><p>"Sunset!" Cinder cried. "And here I thought you were here to see me." She pouted. "But it seems I can't compare with the charms of…" She waved one hand idly towards Neptune. "Nolan, is it?"</p><p>"Ignore him," Sunset said dismissively as she walked up to Cinder, subconsciously matching the swagger in the other girl's step. "That uniform suits you," she said. "Better than that… whatever it was you were wearing for the hunt."</p><p>Cinder smiled. "Yes, it turns out, black is one of my colours," she agreed. She looked down at herself. "I'm still not convinced by this skirt, though."</p><p>"Don't take it too hard; I'm not sure anyone can really pull off plaid," Sunset said. "Once you see the Beacon uniform, you'll agree there's a hint of 'unwearable by design' about the skirt choices. Although Atlas seems to have gotten away with it."</p><p>"Yes, well, Atlas gets away with a great many things, don't they?" Cinder asked, turning away to gesture to the fleet hovering overhead. "Like invading other kingdoms, for instance."</p><p>"I think invasions generally involve a lot more fire and slaughter," Sunset suggested.</p><p>Cinder chuckled. "Only if the occupied party is prepared to resist. But what sane politicians would stand against the might of Atlas?"</p><p>"I'm sure they had permission to come here, else it really would be an act of war," Sunset said. "I mean, they're a bit of an eyesore, but I don't think they're doing any harm."</p><p>"No?" Cinder asked, sounding surprised.</p><p>"You disagree?"</p><p>Cinder was silent for a moment. "I don't trust them," she admitted, "flaunting their power over the rest of us. This is but the most extreme example of typical Atlesian behaviour."</p><p>"Team Rosepetal is going to love you," Sunset muttered.</p><p>"Hmm?"</p><p>"Atlas students," Sunset explained. "Friends of ours. One of them in particular, Pyrrha and Ruby are very fond of."</p><p>Cinder grinned. "Don't worry; I'll be on my very best behaviour. But seriously, Sunset, doesn't it bother you the way that they hoard power? The fact that they could crush us all if they wanted to, and there's nothing we could do to stop them?"</p><p>"My tail, there isn't," Sunset growled. "There's plenty we could do to stop them." Her hands glowed green with magic.</p><p>Cinder smirked. "Semblances and huntsman training? Personal power and courage? Against the Atlesian ships and armies? Do you think that would be enough?"</p><p>"I didn't say it would be easy," Sunset said. "But… yes, I think so."</p><p>"It hasn't worked for the White Fang yet," Cinder pointed.</p><p>"Have you got an alternative, or are you just trying to attract grimm with all your despond?" Sunset asked.</p><p>"Oh, I don't believe they're invulnerable," Cinder declared. "It's just that, when opposing a great power, it's always best to have the assistance of an equivalent power of your own… if only such a thing or one could be found as powerful as Atlas."</p><p>"Not that one is needed," Sunset said. "Atlas is our friend, after all."</p><p>"Of course," Cinder agreed. "This is all simply… hypothetical."</p><p>"So," Sunset said, changing the subject as she looked around, "where's your team?"</p><p>"Oh, they're just getting my things," Cinder said idly. "Ah, here's Emerald now."</p><p>Emerald consisted of a brown legs partially obscured by knee-length socks; the rest of her was completely obscured by the large stack of suitcases under which she was labouring, a pile which swayed from side to side as she made her way awkwardly across the docking pad, panting a little as she went.</p><p>"I told you I didn't need any help, Cinder," she said, sounding more than a little out of breath. "I can take care of everything."</p><p>"Yes, and what a wonderful job you're doing," Cinder told her. "Now be a good girl and keep hold of everything until we reach our room."</p><p>"Of course, Cinder," Emerald replied.</p><p>"Alright, everyone," Professor Goodwitch declared, her voice rising across the crowd of Haven students. "My name is Professor Goodwitch, Combat Instructor at Beacon Academy. The headmaster will welcome you all later this evening, but for now, let me be the first to welcome all of you to Beacon Academy. Please follow me, and I will show all of you to your dorms."</p><hr/><p>The library was rather crowded and – it had to be said – rather loud at the moment as well. All the members of Team SAPR – minus Sunset – Team YRDN, and Team RSPT were all present, scattered around a cluster of tables underneath the large library windows. Some of the young students were working, and others were not. Pyrrha was attempting to help Jaune with the history homework which he had left too late; Dove and Ren were trading knowledge in plant science, where Dove was very familiar with the flora of western Sanus and Ren with that of Anima; Twilight and Rainbow were writing one another's essays for Grimm Studies, balancing Twilight's ability to quote large chunks of textbooks from memory with Rainbow's greater understanding of what actually worked in combat. On the other hand, Ciel was quietly reading King Zoroaster's account of the Great War which, while scintillating, was not relevant to the curriculum, while Yang, Nora, Ruby, and Penny were sat around a board laden with little plastic miniatures playing <em>Remnant: The Game</em>.</p><p>"Yang Xiao Long, prepare yourself!" Ruby demanded. "As I deploy the Atlesian Air Fleet!" Yang gasped as Ruby began to push the plastic Atlesian cruisers across the board.</p><p>"Which one?" Penny asked.</p><p>Ruby looked at her. "Huh?"</p><p>"You said you deployed 'the' Atlesian Air Fleet," Penny explained. "But there is more than one, isn't that right, Ciel?"</p><p>Ciel looked up from her book with an expression of mild irritation. "While it is true that from a strictly organisational point of view, the fleet might be considered a single entity under the command of General Ironwood, operationally, the entire force would never be committed to a single battle or campaign. At present, the fleet is deployed into several battlegroups at stations near and distant, including the Home Fleet defending Atlas itself, the Mantle Squadron, the-"</p><p>"Yeah, fascinating, I'm sure," Yang said hastily. "But it doesn't matter whether or not Atlas has one fleet or twenty, or whether they wouldn't really send them all into place or not. It's just a game, Penny; it's not real life."</p><p>"I see," Penny murmured. "Many games seem very unrealistic."</p><p>"That's because they're designed to be fun," Ruby said. "Like the fun I'm about to have flying straight over all the grimm to attack Mistral directly!"</p><p>"Or at least you would, if I didn't have this trap card," Yang proclaimed. "Giant Nevermores! If I roll seven or up, their feathers will slice into your fleet-"</p><p>"And bounce harmlessly off the armoured deck; that is, assuming the creatures themselves are not annihilated by our long range fire before they get anywhere near close enough to engage," Ciel said, turning a page of her book. "Did the makers of this game assume that our ships were armoured out of paper? Or that they are wholly without weapons?"</p><p>"It's a game!" Yang said, rolling her eyes. "You must be fun at parties." She leaned closer to Ruby. "Why are you friends with these people again?"</p><p>Ciel turned another page. "The parties I prefer are a little too adult for board games. As you may find out if you take the etiquette class this semester."</p><p>Yang looked up, while Nora and Ruby looked around.</p><p>"'Etiquette class'?" Nora repeated.</p><p>"Yeah, etiquette class," Rainbow groaned. "Because I really missed <em>that</em> being here."</p><p>"At Atlas Academy, all students are required to take an etiquette class," Twilight explained. "The aim, as stated by the first headmaster, was to produce students who are acceptable at a dance and invaluable in a shipwreck."</p><p>"In the absence of a professor, one of the upperclassmen will be taking the first year class," Ciel went on. Her voice became a little quieter. "And I shall be assisting."</p><p>Rainbow snorted. "You're going to be a TA?"</p><p>Ciel looked at her.</p><p>"I mean, that's great," Rainbow said. "Really happy for you."</p><p>"Thank you," Ciel replied courteously. "The class is compulsory for Atlas students but open to any other students who wish to attend."</p><p>“Yeah, that’ll be a hard pass from me,” Yang said. “I mean, what do you even learn in that class, how to arrange doilies?”</p><p>“That comes later, after you learn how to fold napkins into swans,” Ciel replied.</p><p>Yang stared at her. Ciel’s expression gave nothing whatsoever away. </p><p>“But seriously,” Jaune said, “what <em>do</em> you learn in those classes?”</p><p>Ciel was silent for a moment. “How to comport oneself with grace and dignity, how to address people of different social standings, how to dance, how to dine. In a few words, how to behave.”</p><p>“Jaune?” Pyrrha said. “Are you interested in this?”</p><p>“Sunset already started giving me lessons,” Jaune admitted. “There’s no harm in taking them as part of a class, right?”</p><p>Pyrrha frowned. “When did Sunset start giving you etiquette lessons?”</p><p>“In Mistral,” Jaune said, as though that ought to have been obvious. “I didn’t… want to embarrass you.”</p><p>“Jaune,” Pyrrha said softly, reaching out to take his hard, “you don’t need to worry about that.” She paused. “That said,” she added, “it might be interesting to see how Atlesians behave.”</p><p>“Hmm, it doesn’t sound like a lot of fun to me,” Ruby said. “Sorry.”</p><p>“I find it a tempting idea,” Dove said, “but right now, some of us <em>are</em> trying to study.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Ren said quietly.</p><p>“Indeed,” Pyrrha murmured. She raised her voice a little. “Ruby, have you done <em>your</em> essay for Doctor Oobleck?”</p><p>“Uh, yes,” Ruby said, her voice hesitant. “I have absolutely done that and will not be rushing to do it tonight.”</p><p>“You’re always welcome to join us and work on it now?” Pyrrha suggested.</p><p>“But I’m just about to win,” Ruby protested.</p><p>“Not if I roll seven or up you won’t,” Yang said. Pyrrha couldn’t see the roll; she only heard the dice hit the table before Yang cried out in triumph. </p><p>“All my soldiers!” Ruby wailed. </p><p>“They were probably robots,” Yang said dismissively.</p><p>“Hey,” Rainbow yelled. “We’re sitting right here!”</p><p>“Hey, guys,” Sunset said, emerging into view from behind one of the bookshelves. “What’s all the fuss about?”</p><p>“Ciel is teaching etiquette classes,” Penny declared.</p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”</p><p>“I am assisting,” Ciel corrected.</p><p>Cinder followed Sunset. “Of course, if there’s one thing everyone knows about the Atlesians, it’s that their behaviour is always scrupulously proper.” The smile that played upon her face was not quite sufficient to suggest that she was being facetious, but it came close. She inclined her head towards Pyrrha. “Pyrrha.”</p><p><em>At least she didn’t call me ‘Lady Pyrrha’.</em> “Cinder,” Pyrrha replied, “how are you finding Beacon so far?”</p><p>“I’m liking it fine, although Sunset’s only just begun to show me around,” Cinder replied. “Good afternoon, Jaune, Ruby.”</p><p>“Hey, Cinder,” Ruby replied. “Looking forward to the semester?”</p><p>“Oh, I think we’re going to have a lot of fun here,” Cinder declared. “This is going to be a year to remember, I can feel it.”</p><p>“So, you’re Cinder Fall, huh?” Yang said, getting to her feet. “I’m Yang Xiao Long, Ruby’s sister. Thanks for having her back out in Mistral against that grimm.”</p><p>Cinder took Yang’s hand languidly. “Of course; as Ruby said, we’re all huntsmen, all kindred in a common purpose.”</p><p>Yang chuckled. “That’s my little sister. Always knows just the right way to put things. Anyway, this is my team, Team Iron,” she gestured to Ren, Nora, and Dove. “Lie Ren, Nora Valkyrie, and Dove Bronzewing.”</p><p>“Good afternoon, Miss Fall,” Dove said.</p><p>“Greetings,” Ren offered, with a bow of his head.</p><p>“Good to meet ya,” Nora cried.</p><p>“Charmed,” Cinder murmured. She glanced away. “Iron… spelled Y-R-D-N?”</p><p>“Yep,” Yang agreed. “It’s probably cheating to mispronounce two letters, but I guess there’s only so much you can do with a Y or an X to start things off.”</p><p>“Quite,” Cinder agreed. “And I would guess you four would be the Atlesians that Sunset mentioned.”</p><p>Now it was Rainbow’s turn to get to her feet. “Team Rosepetal. I’m Rainbow Dash; this is Ciel Soleil; that’s Twilight Sparkle and Penny Polendina over there.”</p><p>“Hello!”</p><p>“So,” Cinder asked. “How was it flying over on an Atlesian man-of-war?”</p><p>“Actually,” Penny said, “I-”</p><p>“It was tight quarters,” Rainbow said, cutting Penny off, “but we were fine. We Atlas students are used to a little discomfort.”</p><p>Cinder chuckled. “Of course. Atlesian soldiers are as hard as the northern lands they came from. I’m sure a lot of people are very glad that you’re all here. With your forces present in such numbers, what can threaten us?” She didn’t wait for a reply; rather, she looked down at the board game spread out on the table around which Ruby and the others sat. “Ah, you’re playing <em>Remnant</em>. Who’s winning?”</p><p>“I was about to,” Ruby muttered disconsolately, “before Yang pulled a trap card on me.”</p><p>Cinder laughed. “Yes. That’s why I like this game. So much more realistic than chess or draughts or such like.”</p><p>“Ciel doesn’t think it’s very realistic at all,” Penny said. “The Atlesians only have one air fleet, and it got destroyed by nevermores.”</p><p>“Perhaps not realistic in that sense, then,” Cinder conceded. “But… if you consider chess and such strategy games, as useful as they are, they are too… too pure. All the pieces move in set ways, they can be predicted, they can be controlled. Even the queen is a pawn of the player, and the other player is all you really have to worry about. But a game like this… reflects the randomness of real life. Consider what’s happening over Vale right now: Vale deploys its huntsmen away from the city, seeming to leave Vale vulnerable.” She bent down over the table and pushed away the plastic models around Vale, out into the surrounding countryside beyond. “But then, who should take their place but the gallant forces of Atlas?” She picked up the plastic Atlesian ships and set them down with a tap over Vale. “Now who could have predicted that? It would never have happened in a game of chess.” She straightened up. “Of course, the question now becomes 'what will happen next?' What will the next trap card be? What random act will throw all the plans of kings and generals into disarray?”</p><p>“Nothing throws Atlas into disarray,” Rainbow said. “We’re ready for anything. Whatever comes next, we’ll handle it.”</p><p>“Really?” Cinder asked, her smile wide and bright. Her voice, when it came next, was a delighted purr. “Hooah.”</p><p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Blake's Request</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Blake Belladonna can't make it alone, but is Sunset in the mood to help her out?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Blake’s Request</p><p> </p><p>The amphitheatre was crowded, a lot more crowded than it had been at the beginning of last semester when Professor Ozpin had given that rather uninspiring speech to the freshman class. </p><p>Now, it was not just the Beacon first years – or even the prospective first years – who were crowded into the hall, but the entire Beacon student body, all of them wearing either their field gear – like all four members of Team SAPR – or their school uniforms, all of them gathered in their teams and then forced by the press of circumstances to cluster even more tightly together, so that Sunset was rubbing shoulders with Yang, who was in turn being crushed by Ren who was pressed against Nora, who didn’t seem to mind one bit. </p><p>
  <em>Just ask him out already.</em>
</p><p>The reason for the tight quarters was not just the fact that there were four years worth of Beacon students gathered here, but also all of the students who would be or had already begun to guest with them until the end of the Vytal Festival. The students from Shade, who wore no uniform but simply wore whatever they happened to have thrown on today, stood at the far left of the amphitheatre, while the students from Haven and Atlas in their uniforms of black and white respectively stood in between. They seemed to have more space than the Beacon students did, as if everyone was trying to divide the available space equally between schools in spite of Beacon’s preponderance in numbers. Not every student from the other three academies visited for the second semester; numbers were not wholly confined to those teams who had hopes of competing in the tournament, but not every student wanted to travel aboard for half a school year, and not every student was thought worthy to go by their headmaster. There seemed to be more Atlas students than there were Haven students, and more Haven students than huntsmen in training from Shade. Sunset supposed – or guessed, at least – that since he was coming himself, General Ironwood had thought it best to bring more of his students where he could keep an eye on them instead of leaving them at home. </p><p>Or perhaps he just wanted them to be safe in numbers. </p><p>
  <em>Or maybe Atlas is just bigger than Haven or Shade, and I’m reading too much into things.</em>
</p><p>But it was a valuable distraction for Sunset to read a lot into things. It took her mind off the fact that Yang’s Ember Celica was digging into her side. </p><p>The reason why all of the students had gathered in the amphitheatre was to hear Professor Ozpin formally inaugurate the new semester and welcome the visiting students to Beacon. </p><p>Sunset hoped that he’d punched his speech up a bit more this time, instead of delivering a distinctly first draught effort like he had before Initiation. </p><p>A moment after she thought that, the man himself appeared on stage, preceded by Professor Goodwitch and followed after by – Sunset’s eyebrows rose in surprise – Skystar Aris, dressed in a cocktail dress of shimmering turquoise that matched her eyes. Sunset wondered if her appearance had anything to do with all of the stewards who had started crawling over the courtyard, setting up tables in the open air. Skystar was smiling brightly, and she waved into the crowd, presumably at Cardin; certainly, he thought so, judging by the way that he waved back. </p><p>Then she blew him a kiss, at which point, his face turned a little red. </p><p>Sunset snorted. <em>How embarrassing. </em></p><p>
  <em>He’s a lucky guy.</em>
</p><p>Professor Goodwitch had caught all of this before she whispered something to Skystar, who suddenly became very apologetic, cringing before Professor Goodwitch as Professor Ozpin, paying no attention to either of them, made his way to the microphone. </p><p>“Good afternoon,” he said, his voice carrying across the amphitheatre. “To our existing students: welcome to the beginning of a new semester here at Beacon Academy. To our guests from Atlas, Haven, and Shade: welcome to Beacon. I trust that you will find your stay here pleasant and profitable. </p><p>“I am sure that some of you must be wondering why you are here. Some of you, of course, wish to compete in the Vytal Tournament for the glory of your schools, but not all of you will receive that honour, even if you wish it, and in any case, the Vytal Tournament will not take place until some weeks after the end of this semester. Why, then, are you here? Why are you not completing your year’s studies at your own academy and then coming to Beacon for the tournament only? </p><p>“You are here because – and I beg you not to forget this fact – the Vytal Festival is so much more than a tournament, as important an aspect of it as that is. More than a chance for the pride of our academies to show their prowess before the world, the Vytal Festival is a celebration of peace, a celebration of the fact that students from Atlas and Mistral can attend the same school, can stand in the same hall, as students from Vale and Vacuo.”</p><p><em>Meanwhile, an Atlesian fleet can hover overhead and not be intent on bombing anybody,</em> Sunset thought.</p><p>Professor Ozpin continued, “We are living in an era of peace, long may it continue, an era in which the kingdoms of Remnant have put aside their differences to work for the collective good of all mankind. The Vytal Festival, which, in all its glory, will begin soon and continue throughout the entire semester and beyond, with the tournament not as its focus but rather its crowning glory, is a celebration of that fact. Nowhere is the spirit of the peace better embodied than in all of you. Visitors from the other kingdoms will arrive in Vale throughout the year, but you are here now; some of you have been here since the start of the year. There are teams from Beacon led by Atlesians, teams from Haven led by Vacuans, teams from Atlas made up of Mistralians, and you have all come here to Beacon to celebrate peace and the benefits of diversity and opportunity without borders that that peace has ushered in. Although today, you stand grouped by your schools, I hope that over the course of this semester, you will forge bonds with your fellow students from every academy, bonds that will endure across kingdoms long after the Vytal Festival has ended.” He fell silent for a moment. “But for now, let me once more welcome all of you to Beacon Academy before it gives me pleasure to introduce this year’s Amity Princess, Miss Skystar Aris.”</p><p>Professor Ozpin stepped back from the microphone, gesturing courteously for Skystar to take his place. She did so, the smile returning to her face as she looked out across the assembled student body. </p><p>“Hello, everyone!” she cried enthusiastically. “I hope that none of you got lost when you arrived; this campus is really big.” She laughed nervously, and some of the students chuckled too. “Anyway,” she went on, “as Professor Ozpin so kindly introduced me, my name is Skystar Aris, and I have the honour to be the Amity Princess for this year’s Vytal Festival! I want everyone to have the most wonderful time; we’ve got some great stuff lined up for you this year, and to start things off, we'd like to celebrate the arrival of our good friends from Haven and Atlas with a welcome feast to be held outside, in the courtyard, starting at eight. I hope you all enjoy it! Thank you, and let’s make this Vytal Festival a huge success!”</p><p>“Thank you, Miss Aris, and I’m sure that I will see you all in the courtyard promptly,” Professor Ozpin added. “Until then-”</p><p>He was cut off by Professor Goodwitch frantically whispering something into his ear.</p><p>“Ahem,” Professor Ozpin coughed apologetically. “Professor Goodwitch has just reminded me of an administrative detail that I should make you aware of. Beacon students ought to be aware - certainly, I hope that all of you who have progressed beyond your first year have noticed - that at Beacon, we give our students far greater opportunity to venture into the field on training missions than any other academy. First-years will have already had a taste of training exercises against the grimm, but starting this semester, a wide variety of missions will be offered to you. These missions may come at any time, and while no team will be forced to accept any mission, refuse too many, and I may begin to wonder why you are here.” The statement was spoken in so mild a tone that you could almost be forgiven for failing to notice that it was a threat. “However, I am aware that for our visitors, this may not be what you signed up for; therefore, if you would like the same access to training missions as Beacon students for the duration of your stay, please see Professor Goodwitch at your earliest convenience.”</p><p><em>And if you don’t sign up, then, again, he’ll start to wonder what you’re doing here,</em> Sunset thought. Professor Ozpin’s choices were heavily loaded in favour of the desired outcome.</p><p>“That is all,” Professor Ozpin continued. “I expect to see you tonight, but until then, you are all dismissed.”</p><p>Sunset let out the breath that she had been half holding in as the students started to file out of the amphitheatre, giving her a little more space even as she – and the rest of her team – joined the throng, making their way slowly towards the exit. </p><p>“Sunset!”</p><p>Sunset looked around. It was Blake who had hissed her name and who was struggling through the crowd of people to reach her side. </p><p>“Excuse me,” Blake murmured as she moved sideways through a crowd that was overwhelmingly moving forwards. “Sorry,” she apologised to someone for something before she reached Sunset’s side. “Sunset,” she repeated. </p><p>“Blake,” Sunset replied. “You know Sun’s looking for you?”</p><p>“Oh,” Blake murmured, not sounding particularly interested in that fact. “I need to talk to you. Alone.”</p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose. “You may not have noticed, but this isn’t a particularly private space.”</p><p>Blake rolled her eyes. “I know,” she said impatiently. “But once we get outside?”</p><p>“Sure,” Sunset agreed, with a slight sigh in her voice. “<em>If</em> we get outside.”</p><p>They did, in fact, get outside, and while the rest of Team SAPR – and most of the other students – headed back to the dorm rooms while they waited for the feast to begin, Sunset and Blake wandered around the edge of the large, circular amphitheatre until they were at the back of it and alone and secluded from the other students. </p><p>Nevertheless, Blake glanced left and right and behind her to make sure that nobody was nearby and listening in. </p><p>“I wouldn’t put it past Sun to show up,” Sunset remarked glibly. “You know he was looking for you.”</p><p>“So you said,” Blake murmured.</p><p>“And you didn’t seem particularly interested in it at the time,” Sunset observed. “Trouble in paradise?”</p><p>Blake shook her head. “Everything is fine with Sun,” she averred. “That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”</p><p>“I should hope not,” Sunset muttered, “but the fact remains that he is looking for you.”</p><p>“I don’t want to talk about Sun right now,” Blake said sharply, a mixture of anger and distress beginning to rise in her voice. “This doesn’t concern him!”</p><p>Sunset frowned. She folded her arms. “But it concerns me?”</p><p>“Yes,” Blake replied. “Or at least… I hope it does.”</p><p>Sunset’s eyes narrowed. “Okay… what’s this about?” She had a feeling that she knew the answer already. </p><p>Blake exhaled softly. She hesitated, glancing around once again as though she really did expect Sun – or someone else – to pop up behind her at a moment’s notice. </p><p>“The Atlesians – General Ironwood – wanted to see me today,” Blake informed her.</p><p>“To apologise for the fact that Rainbow tried to kill you, yes, Rainbow already confessed to that,” Sunset said. She grinned. “I hope you made her squirm a bit.”</p><p>Blake regarded Sunset evenly. </p><p>“What?” Sunset asked. “You could have had a little fun with it.”</p><p>Blake shook her head. “They also wanted to know about the docks, how I knew that the White Fang would be there that night.”</p><p>“I think everyone wants to know that,” Sunset replied. “What did you tell them?”</p><p>“Nothing,” Blake said. “But General Ironwood is worried. This Atlesian fleet is here because he’s afraid the White Fang are planning something big and dangerous, just like I was afraid of.”</p><p>“Is this all so you can say you told me so?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“This is because I’m right,” Blake cried. “The White Fang is on the move, and if they’re not stopped-”</p><p>“If you want to stop the White Fang, then why in Celestia’s name didn’t you talk to the Atlesians?” Sunset snapped in a tone of strangled exasperation. “If you care so much then go back to General Ironwood and tell him that you’ve got a source with contacts in the White Fang and-”</p><p>“And then what?” Blake demanded. “What are the Atlesians going to do?”</p><p>“I don’t know, something professional?” Sunset suggested. She turned away. “I… sometimes… you are absolutely infuriating, sometimes, you do realise that? It’s a wonder Sun puts up with you. You wring your hands about how something is in the wind and someone has to do something-”</p><p>“Someone does!”</p><p>“At least have the honesty to say that you’re the only one who you’ll allow to do anything!” Sunset hissed. “As proven by the fact that you had the perfect opportunity to hand this off to someone who knows what they’re doing, and you wouldn’t take it!”</p><p>“I’m not going to leave this to Atlas,” Blake insisted.</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>“Because…” Blake stumbled, falling silent. </p><p>Sunset raised one eyebrow, unable to resist the temptation to smirk just a little. “My, my, what an eloquent case you make.”</p><p>Blake snorted.</p><p>“You don’t have an answer, do you?”</p><p>“I don’t trust Atlas,” Blake said.</p><p>“Still? Even after everything you’ve seen?”</p><p>“Rainbow is a good person, and so are her teammates, but that doesn’t make Atlas just; one person – or even four – cannot stand for a whole kingdom. Atlas is still the home of the SDC; the Atlesian military is still their partner. Atlas is still the place in Remnant where faunus are the worst treated. That’s why I’m not going to hand Tukson over to them to be interrogated-”</p><p>“Like you have, you mean?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“Or faunus whose only fault is to desire justice so much that they have been misled into doing the wrong thing,” Blake continued. “I lived with these people for years; I fought with them; yes, I left because things were going too far, but I won’t condemn those who didn’t leave to die in the inferno of an Atlesian air strike!”</p><p>Sunset stared at her in silence for a moment. “Then how do you propose to stop them? Do you think it can be stopped without bloodshed?”</p><p>“I… I think… I hope… that if we can get Torchwick, then not only can we find out what the White Fang is planning – and why Adam was willing to work with a human to do it – but we can also stop the robberies, slow their progress until…” Blake bowed her head. “Maybe you’re right… but I’m not ready to take that step just yet.” She looked up, and into Sunset’s eyes. “I have to do this, Sunset; I… this is my past, coming back to haunt me. I have to do something; I can’t just sit back and leave it to other people with intentions I don’t know and can’t fully trust. I have to do this… but I can’t do it on my own. I need your help.”</p><p>“Why me?” Sunset asked. “You could ask Sun for help; he’d do anything for you. He would have stopped arguing long before now.”</p><p>“I know,” Blake said softly. “He would do anything that I asked him to, no matter how reckless. But if he were hurt because of me… if anything happened to him… I don’t want that on my conscience.”</p><p>“But you’re fine with me getting hurt or worse?” Sunset asked. “That wouldn’t touch your conscience at all?”</p><p>Blake shrugged apologetically. “Yes,” she admitted.</p><p>Sunset rolled her eyes. “You’re filling me up with warm and fuzzy feelings here, Blake,” she growled. </p><p>“I know that Ruby was hurt the last time you involved yourself in my business,” Blake said. “That’s why I’m not asking for the help of your team. It’s best that they don’t know, the same way that Sun doesn’t know, because what they all don’t know won’t hurt them. But you… I’m asking for your help because I know you want to protect your team. And that means playing it safe with their lives, keeping them out of danger, but ask yourself this: do you really think that the best way to keep them safe is to do nothing while the plans of the White Fang come to fruition? How will you protect them when the fighting comes to the gates of Beacon?”</p><p>Sunset was silent for a moment. Blake… Blake was infuriating, Blake was naïve, Blake was stupid, Blake made Sunset want to put her hands around her throat… but in this case, Blake made a pretty good point. Keeping her team out of danger would, well, it would keep them out of danger… right up to the moment at which the danger came to them. If the White Fang were allowed to proceed with their designs unmolested, then who knew where it would end up? Who knew who or what their ultimate target was?</p><p>And there was a part of Sunset that wanted nothing better than to tear the White Fang apart piece by piece. They had almost killed Ruby, who was Sunset's, and Sunset would neither forget that nor forgive it. She wanted to see Adam Taurus burn in fire, she wanted to see the strength of the White Fang broken and scattered like ashes in the wind, she wanted them to pay for the unforgivable crime of making her feel small and scared, if only for a moment.</p><p>But there was another part of her that remembered how terrified she had been in the moment when the world turned as red as blood and Adam came for her, his red sword shining. Nothing in her entire life had frightened her that way. That, although she would never admit it to any living soul, was the real reason she wanted his sword: because only once it was mounted on her wall could she be certain that it would never be used to scare her again.</p><p><em>And we were having a food fight earlier today.</em> What Blake was proposing was nuts. It was absurd. They were kids; they ought to have been worried about school, not terrorism.</p><p><em>We're kids who signed up to fight monsters. We're kids who chose to walk the glory road, though it be paved with daggers.</em> </p><p>
  <em>I guess this is what I signed up for.</em>
</p><p>"If the black knight asks for her help, how can the white refuse?" Sunset mused. "But I do <em>not</em> want my team involved in this." <em>I don't want their deaths in this nonsense on my conscience.</em></p><p>"That's fine," Blake said. "You and I will be enough."</p><p>"It'll have to be, won't it?" Sunset said. She held out one hand. "Sunset and Blake: Let's kick some ass."</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Sunset and Blake</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The two moms of Team SAPR argue over what's best for Ruby; Sunset and Blake pay Tukson a visit - but they aren't the only ones planning to call upon the bookseller.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sunset and Blake</p><p> </p><p>“Sunset?”</p><p>Sunset turned around as Pyrrha’s voice drew her attention. It was night, and despite the fact that it was summer, the sun had gone down by now, and the eerie broken moon was up in the sky. “Pyrrha,” Sunset murmured as she saw her teammate standing in the dorm room doorway. She smiled. “You know the party’s outside,” she said, referring to the welcome feast which was still in full swing.</p><p>Pyrrha chuckled softly as she closed the door behind her. “I could remind you of the same thing.”</p><p>“I don’t have a cute boy to keep me company,” Sunset replied. “You know, if you keep ignoring him like this, you’re going to lose him.”</p><p>Pyrrha chuckled once again.</p><p>“I’m not kidding,” Sunset told her, her tone suddenly earnest. “I’ve seen it too many times.”</p><p>“I’ve no intention of ignoring Jaune,” Pyrrha informed her. She paused, her expression suddenly becoming rather nervous. “I… oh my goodness, you don’t think I’ve been ignoring him, do you?”</p><p>It was all that Sunset could do not to roll her eyes. “No, Pyrrha, I do not think you’ve been ignoring your boyfriend. I was… a little kidding.”</p><p>Pyrrha placed one hand over her heart as she let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank you. That’s wonderful to hear.”</p><p>“What are you so worried about?” Sunset demanded. “What do you think is going to happen?”</p><p>Pyrrha drifted over to her bed and sat down lightly upon it. “I worry… I’m afraid that one day, he’ll open his eyes and realise that there’s nothing here but a fair face and a little skill at combat.”</p><p>Sunset put her hands on her hips. “'A little skill at combat'?”</p><p>“Alright, a great deal of skill at combat,” Pyrrha conceded. “But an Atlesian robot could say as much, and no man would take one of those to love.”</p><p>Sunset didn’t point out that Pyrrha was a lot more skilled than an Atlesian combat robot, because it wasn’t really the point of what Pyrrha was saying. Her fears would not be assuaged by telling her that she was more skilled than she was giving herself credit for. </p><p>Nor, indeed, by reminding her that many men would take a pretty face and nothing more to love. </p><p>“You are so much more than you give yourself credit for,” Sunset reassured her. “You… you’re the Princess Without a Crown, for crying out loud.”</p><p>Pyrrha gave her an old-fashioned look.</p><p>“Okay, not the right thing to say,” Sunset conceded, “but you carry yourself… with more humility than you need to, but all the same… you have not the pride of an aristocrat; you do not walk with the confidence of one… but you combine the skill in war and the learning in lore of a true prince, you are kind hearted and gentle, and… and who wouldn’t love you? Honestly? I’m amazed that Professor Ozpin hasn’t started giving you special lessons because you are perfect ‘faithful student’ material.” Not that she wanted Pyrrha to fall further under the influence of the devious Professor Ozpin, but she was a little surprised the spider in the tower hadn’t tried to entice her into his parlour yet. “But leaving that aside… where is Jaune going to find a girl better than you in this place?”</p><p>“Ruby?” Pyrrha suggested. “I know… I pretended not to notice the way she looked at him, the way that… because she’s so very dear, and I didn’t want… I didn’t want to acknowledge that someone I care so much for might become my rival, but-”</p><p>“But he chose you, not her,” Sunset reminded her.</p><p>“For now,” Pyrrha allowed, “but she is so… so full of virtues-”</p><p>“So are you,” Sunset declared. “Listen, if you want to convince yourself that Jaune is yours, then get back out there and spend the night with him! What are you doing in here anyway?”</p><p>Pyrrha got to her feet. “If I go back down there, into the courtyard, will you come with me?”</p><p>Sunset hesitated for a moment. “No,” she admitted. “I… I’m taking my bike out for a spin.” She pulled her helmet out from under the bed and put it down on the mattress next to her jacket.</p><p>“Where will you go?” Pyrrha asked.</p><p>“I’m not sure yet.”</p><p>“What time will you be back?”</p><p>Sunset smirked. “I’m not sure, <em>Mom</em>.”</p><p>Pyrrha flushed a little. “I’m sorry, but… it is a little sudden, don’t you agree? I mean, why now? On the night before classes resume?”</p><p>“You know how it is,” Sunset replied. “Some things come on you suddenly.”</p><p>Pyrrha frowned. “Is something going on?”</p><p>“A lot of things, I imagine.”</p><p>“<em>Sunset</em>,” Pyrrha said, wielding her name as an admonition.</p><p>“Sorry,” Sunset said. “Look, I can’t talk about this, okay? You’re going to have to trust me.”</p><p>“I see.” Pyrrha murmured. “Well, I… I wouldn’t want you to betray a confidence, I suppose.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Sunset replied. “If Jaune or Ruby ask where I am, tell them not to worry.” She grinned. “Don’t wait up, okay?”</p><p>Pyrrha shook her head. “Whatever it is you’re getting yourself mixed up in, you will be careful, won’t you?” She paused. “And you’ll tell Blake to be careful too?”</p><p>Sunset was silent a moment. “You’re too smart for your own good, Pyrrha Nikos.”</p><p>“It’s not that difficult to work out,” Pyrrha replied. “As I said, I won’t ask you to betray a confidence. But please take care. We would all be very hurt if something were to befall you, especially under these circumstances; I think Ruby would take it particularly hard.”</p><p>“Well, we wouldn’t want that to happen, now would we?” Sunset said with a thin smile. “I’ll be careful. And so might any hypothetical companions that I might have.”</p><p>“I’m glad to hear it,” Pyrrha said. “Are you leaving right now?”</p><p>Sunset checked the time. She still had a few minutes before the time that she and Blake had agreed upon. “I don’t have to go <em>right</em> away.”</p><p>Pyrrha was silent for a moment. “While Ruby isn’t here, I’d like to talk to you about her silver eyes.”</p><p>Sunset nodded. “I wondered which one of us was going to say something first. You don’t want her to try and learn how to use them, do you?”</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha admitted. “I’m not sure that she needs to learn how to use this… this magic at all.”</p><p>“Isn’t that her choice?”</p><p>“Aren’t we allowed to care about our friend?” Pyrrha countered. “I don’t see the need for her to go through this.”</p><p>“Just because we don’t see the need now doesn’t mean that there isn’t one,” Sunset said. “It just means that we haven’t seen it yet. And besides, you talk about her going through this… who says there’s anything to go through? It’s not like I’d let her go through with any kind of… I don’t know, unlock her eyes or die kind of thing.” Frankly, Sunset was a little hurt that Pyrrha thought – or might think – otherwise. She was a lot of things, and she worked hard, and she’d expect Ruby to do the same if they found a path to unlocking her magic that she could walk down, but there was a difference between working hard and breaking yourself – or someone else. She wasn’t going to do that to Ruby, and she’d thought that Pyrrha would know that by now.</p><p>“I’m not talking about physical damage. I know that you wouldn’t hurt Ruby that way,” Pyrrha said. “I’m talking about… I don’t think Ruby understands – or you, for that matter – what her life will be like if she starts using… magic. What people will think of her, how the world will see her.”</p><p>Sunset frowned. “And how do you think the world will see her?”</p><p>“As a silver-eyed warrior, you know as well as I do that she’ll have no chance of a normal life.”</p><p>“You’re assuming that Ruby wants a normal life,” Sunset said. “I’m not sure she does.”</p><p>“Ruby wants to save people,” Pyrrha said, “but I don’t think she wants the circus of fame and glory that goes with it.”</p><p>Sunset was silent for a moment. Then she snorted.</p><p>“What?” Pyrrha asked.</p><p>“I was wondering… is there any chance that we’re both projecting ourselves onto Ruby a little bit?” Sunset asked. “Or projecting each other, maybe. I say that she doesn’t want a normal life; you say that she doesn’t want fame and glory. All we’re really saying is that she’s not Pyrrha Nikos, and she isn’t Sunset Shimmer either.”</p><p>Pyrrha looked briefly mortified before she covered her mouth with one hand and let out a tiny giggle. “I suppose you’re right. I am thinking a little too much of myself.”</p><p>“I get it,” Sunset said. “And, sure, I’d be lying if I said that the idea of this power, of obtaining it, of unlocking this magic within Ruby, didn’t excite me. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t think this magic could be a good thing for us as a team. But if Ruby didn’t want to do this, I wouldn’t bring it up ever again.”</p><p>Pyrrha nodded. “I suppose that I’ll have to be satisfied with that. I just… I don’t want her to end up like me.”</p><p>Sunset said, “I get it. But, honestly, she could do a lot worse.”</p><p>“Really?”</p><p>“Sure. She could end up like me.” Sunset grinned. “Anyway, I’ve got to go.” She posed. “What do you think?”</p><p>“About what?”</p><p>Sunset’s face fell. “My new gear!”</p><p>Thanks to the generosity of Lady Nikos, Sunset had a new cuirass strapped across her chest, larger than her old breastplate so that it actually covered her stomach as well as her bust. It was mostly plain grey metal but with a small image of her cutie mark set in the centre, roughly where it sat on the shirt she was wearing underneath. A pair of plain, round pauldrons protected her shoulders, while she had cowters wrapped around her elbows and a pair of metal vambraces – infused with lightning dust – wrapped around her forearms. </p><p>“Oh, you mean your armour.”</p><p>“Not as fancy as yours, I admit,” Sunset said, “but I like it anyway. And that’s not all.” She picked up her coat from up off the bed and pulled it on. “I had my jacket infused with fire dust as well.”</p><p>“I see,” Pyrrha murmured. “I hope that you don’t need it, but if you do… please take care of yourself.”</p><p>“Always,” Sunset said. She strapped on her new sword, Soteria, slung Sol Invictus over her shoulders, and grabbed her motorbike helmet before she left the dorm. The dorms were empty; everyone – almost everyone, Sunset corrected herself – was out on the courtyard enjoying the welcome reception and having such a jolly good time that none of them noticed – or at least cared about – Sunset as she slunk across the grounds towards the garages. </p><p>Said garages were a series of grey concrete blocks, standing in stark contrast to the elegantly understated architecture that characterised the rest of Beacon; the garages did not really fit in with the fairytale castle aesthetic of the rest of the school, but then, how would you make bays where the students could store any vehicles they might have fit in with such an aesthetic? </p><p>Not that it mattered at this stage. The important point was that nobody was around to see Sunset approaching the garage.</p><p>Nobody but Blake. She had changed out of her usual outfit into a short black jacket that left some of her midriff bare before the beginning of a pair of tight black pants that disappeared into her calf-length boots. She wore a short skirt, starting black and becoming practically transparent, over her trousers and around her waist.  </p><p>“You got away then?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Blake didn’t reply. She just looked at Sunset as she tightened the black ribbon around her arm. </p><p>Sunset got out her scroll and used it to unlock and raise the door to garage thirteen. It elevated with a mixture of mechanical and motorised sounds, clattering and whirring as it rose to admit them. </p><p>Sunset grinned as the shadows receded into the garage, revealing her beautiful bike in all its glory. </p><p>“What,” Blake said, “is that?”</p><p>Sunset put on her helmet, then pushed the smoky visor up so that she could see Blake a little better. “You didn’t think we were going to walk to Vale, did you?”</p><p>“I thought you had a vehicle, not… this,” Blake replied.</p><p>“Hey, don’t talk about her that way,” Sunset said. It was true that her motorcycle looked a little… unusual. That was an unavoidable consequence of stealing all your parts from a junkyard because you couldn’t afford to buy a bike or the parts for one. Yes, it had some of the exhaust pipes off a Black Shadow but not all of them, and the high handle bars of a Leopard but not the right wheels to go with it, but if you could look past that, if you could look past the outward appearance and see the soul beneath, then you’d see that her bike had it where it counted: engine power.</p><p> “Look,” Sunset added, climbing on. “It’s either this or walk.”</p><p>Blake hesitated for a moment. “It… is safe, right?”</p><p>“Of course it’s safe,” Sunset snapped. “I’m driving.”</p><p>Blake walked – very slowly – over to the bike and climbed on behind Sunset. Sunset felt Blake’s arms around her waist, squeezing her tight. </p><p>Blake said, “I snuck out. The rest of my team don’t know where I’ve gone. Do you think…do you think they’ll worry?”</p><p>“Probably,” Sunset said. “Pyrrha wasn’t happy about this either.”</p><p>“And Ruby? Jaune?”</p><p>“I didn’t tell them,” Sunset said. “But what can we say, really? We can’t tell them we’re going to take on the White Fang. What’s the plan for that, by the way?”</p><p>“I thought we could call at Tukson’s first,” Blake said. “He might have some information on what the White Fang is planning next. If we can find out their next move, then we can stop them.”</p><p>“Sounds like a plan,” Sunset said. She started the engine and listened to it purr beneath her. “Okay, let’s go for a ride.”</p><hr/><p>Sun watched Blake and Sunset ride off into the night. He didn’t know exactly where they were going for the simple reason that Blake hadn’t told him.</p><p>He wished she had, but… he recognised that there were parts of her past, of herself, that Blake preferred to keep to herself, private; parts that he wasn’t allowed to access. Parts that maybe he would never be allowed to access. </p><p>And that was fine by him. She didn’t need to give herself over to him body and soul. Just the parts of her that she let him see were good enough for him. No, they weren’t just good; they were… they were amazing. </p><p>At first, he’d only seen Blake as a pretty girl. Then he’d seen her as a pretty girl in trouble. But now… now he saw someone who had – as best as he could work out because, again, not big on talking about her past – been through some terrible things and still come through it with her strength and compassion. Someone who was brave without being hard, like so many folks were in Vacuo; someone who was kind without being dumb or smart without being cold. Someone who burned like a fire underneath her snowy exterior. </p><p>And yeah, she needed her space. That was fine with Sun, not just because she was worth it but because he got it. He was the kind of guy who needed space himself. He’d never been much of one for sitting still in one place before. Blake… Blake was the first person he’d ever met he thought might actually be the person to get him to stop walking and settle down… but she seemed like she might need to keep moving even more than he did.</p><p>Sun didn’t know where she was going. He didn’t know exactly what was driving her on so furiously. He only knew that something was. He didn’t have to know what. </p><p>There were things she couldn’t, wouldn’t tell him, and he was fine with that. Blake was worth it.</p><p>But he would give her the help she needed, even if it wasn’t the help she wanted. </p><p>Sun got out his scroll and called Rainbow Dash. </p><hr/><p>Sunset pulled up outside of Tukson’s Book Trade. The shop was dark – not surprising, considering that it was late at night and well past opening hours – and the street outside the shop was still and quiet. There were no night owls in this part of town, it seemed. Not too surprising; this was a shopping district after all, and a shopping district which included upmarket book shops and boutique dust shops at that, so it wasn’t exactly the kind of place you’d expect to see people out late at night. </p><p>
  <em>All the better for us, I suppose.</em>
</p><p>Still, the lights were on upstairs, so it seemed as though he hadn’t gone to bed yet. </p><p>As Blake hopped off the bike – looking rather relieved to put her booted feet back on solid ground again – she got out her scroll and started calling someone. </p><p>Calling Tukson – obviously, after the fact – as shown by the fact that it was the bookseller’s slightly gruff voice that answered. “Blake? Is everything okay? Are you in trouble again?” He sounded more concerned on her behalf than he did put out that she might be coming to her for help. </p><p>“No, it’s not like that,” Blake said. “But… I would like to talk to you. I’m outside with Sunset. Can you come down and let us in?”</p><p>Tukson paused for a moment. “Sure,” he said. “Give me a second.”</p><p>He ended the call. </p><p>Sunset climbed off her bike and pulled her helmet off her head as she let the motorcycle rest upon the pavement. Her fiery hair fell down around her face. “You know, I sometimes wonder if you realise how lucky you are.”</p><p>Blake looked at Sunset, her eyes narrowing. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“You act like you have it so bad,” Sunset said, “but you are surrounded by people like Sun, like Tukson, who are willing to go the extra mile for you without asking for anything in return.”</p><p>“And you’re not?” Blake replied. “Think about what you have with Ruby, with Jaune and Pyrrha, and then tell me why you have any reason to be jealous of me.”</p><p>“I never said that I was jealous, I just…” Sunset paused for a moment. Her tail curled up towards her waist. “What I’m trying to say is that you’ve got a lot more going for you than you seem to realise.”</p><p>“If this is some kind of ‘you’re not alone’ speech, then… you needn’t bother,” Blake said. “I know that there are people who care about me. But at the same time… this isn’t their fight, and I don’t want to get them involved in this if I can avoid it. Just because I’m fortunate enough that there are people who want to be around me doesn’t mean that I have the right to pull them into my struggles. You know what I’m talking about, or you wouldn’t be out here alone.”</p><p>“I’m not alone,” Sunset replied cheekily. “I’m with you.”</p><p>Blake snorted. “You know what I mean.”</p><p>“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Sunset muttered. “I don’t know why me of all people. If you didn’t want to talk to the Atlesians, you could have gone to Pyrrha-”</p><p>“We both know that if I had gone to one of your teammates behind your back, you would have been furious.”</p><p>“Oh, I would have been <em>beyond</em> furious,” Sunset corrected her, “but you still could have done it.”</p><p>Blake was silent for a moment. “You argue with me,” she said.</p><p>“Pardon?”</p><p>“You argue with me,” Blake repeated. “You’re doing it right now. Adam… nobody ever fought with Adam. Nobody ever told him that he was wrong… or that he was infuriating. They just let him do whatever he wanted, descend deeper and deeper. I’m trusting you not to let me do that.”</p><p>“I’m flattered… I think,” Sunset said quietly.</p><p>The door to the bookshop opened. Tukson stood in the doorway, framed by the lights spilling out from inside the store. “Blake,” he said. “Miss Shimmer.”</p><p>Sunset nodded. “Mister Tukson.”</p><p>Blake took a few steps towards him. “I’m sorry to bother you, but… can we come in?”</p><p>Tukson took a step backwards, “Sure,” he said. “Come on inside.”</p><p>Blake led the way, and Sunset followed. Only once they were both inside did Tukson close and lock the door behind them. The tint on the windows was so full that they were black and completely opaque. Nobody could see in. </p><p>“Do you want to come into the back?” Tukson asked. “I can make some tea.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Sunset said, but Blake held up one hand.</p><p>“We won’t trespass on your hospitality for too long,” Blake murmured.</p><p>“Are you sure?” Tukson said, turning around and walking towards the back. “It’s no trouble.”</p><p>“Tukson,” Blake said softly, “I’m here for information.”</p><p>Tukson stopped, close by the counter. He rested one hand upon it as he turned around. “You’re not in trouble, you said, and you wouldn’t have any reason to lie about that,” he muttered. “So that means… you’re going to war?”</p><p>“That’s a little melodramatic,” Blake replied.</p><p>“Not by much,” Sunset grunted. “She wants to take on the White Fang. Alone. After just walking away from a meeting with the Atlesians where she told them she wasn’t going to help them.”</p><p>“Blake-“ Tukson began reproachfully.</p><p>“You can’t honestly be suggesting that I should trust Atlas,” Blake replied. “And you… thank you,” she said through gritted teeth.</p><p>Sunset smirked smugly. “Any time.”</p><p>“I understand that it’s Atlas,” Tukson said, “but all the same, Blake, you can’t do this by yourself.”</p><p>“I’m not alone,” Blake pointed out, echoing her companion's words from moments earlier. “I have Sunset.”</p><p>“You know what I mean,” Tukson said firmly.</p><p>“And you know that something big is going on, and I can’t just sit in class and ignore that,” Blake declared. “What are they planning, Tukson? Have you had any word from your contacts in the White Fang?”</p><p>“No,” Tukson replied. “And that… that’s what makes me think you need to go back to that school and stay there. Tell the Atlesians about me, and I’ll tell them everything, but you need to stay out of this.”</p><p>“Why?” Sunset said. “I mean, I know it’s dangerous, but this… this seems a little more… did something happen?”</p><p>“My contacts stopped answering; that’s what happened,” Tukson replied. “The last guy who sent me a message said that he was risking death to do it. Adam started cleaning house after the debacle at the docks. The old guard, the guys I knew, the ones who weren’t so on board with Adam… they’re all gone, Blake. Or at least, they’ve all fallen silent. I’m afraid we both know what that likely means.”</p><p>Blake fell silent herself, her eyes widening as one hand rushed to cover her mouth. “Oh, gods,” she whispered. “And you… then what are you still doing here?” she demanded. </p><p>Tukson took a step back. “Blake, what are you-”</p><p>“If any of them talked, if any of them even breathed your name, then you could be in danger!” Blake cried. “You have to get out of here now, before Adam sends somebody to kill you! Why didn’t you tell me? Why haven’t you gone?”</p><p>“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to worry you-”</p><p>“You didn’t want to worry me?” Blake shouted. “I’m worried now! You need to go, before… before anything happens to you.”</p><p>Tukson didn’t reply, not for a moment at least. He looked around his shop and all the books on the towering shelves that lined the walls and cluttered the shop floor. “You want me to go?” he asked. “You want me to run away and abandon everything that I’ve built here?”</p><p>“I want you to be safe,” Blake replied in a whisper.</p><p>Tukson smiled fondly. “That’s sweet of you, Blake,” he said, “but sometimes, we have to make a stand for what we believe in, right?”</p><p>Blake’s ears stiffened. Her cheeks reddened a little. She pouted. But she didn’t reply. Sunset – although she didn’t understand the context of what Tukson had just said – guessed that was because she couldn’t.</p><p>
  <em>I wish I could shut her up like that.</em>
</p><p>Sunset’s ears twitched. She looked towards the door and windows of the bookshop, and Blake did the same. </p><p>There were footsteps outside, footsteps on the pavement beyond the bookshop. Nothing too unusual, perhaps, but the street had been so quiet before. </p><p>“Look at that ugly-ass bike,” Torchwick said. “Do you think there’s someone else in here?”</p><p><em>This is bad,</em> Sunset thought as her hand moved gingerly towards the hammer of her rifle. It felt as though everyone in the bookstore was holding their breath.</p><p>“What if there is?” Adam grunted. “Are you squeamish about eliminating witnesses?”</p><p>
  <em>This is really bad!</em>
</p><p>Someone whimpered. It could have been Blake, or it could have been Sunset herself. But the memory of that sword, of the world turning black until only Adam, red as blood, remained visible flashed before Sunset’s eyes. The memory of Ruby’s scream of pain filled her ears and made them flatten atop her head. </p><p>Rage and fear battled within her soul. She wanted to run. She wanted to kill Adam. </p><p>She wished Pyrrha were here. </p><p>“I’ve got no issue with killing; I just prefer to do as little of it as necessary,” Torchwick replied. “If there is someone in there-”</p><p>“Then they will pay for associating with traitors to our cause,” Adam declared. “You’ve arranged everything with the cops, right?”</p><p>“Yeah, sure, they won’t respond to any calls from around here,” Torchwick muttered.</p><p>“Good,” Adam said, with relish in his voice. “Then it doesn’t matter if Tukson has one guest or twenty. Everyone inside that store dies tonight.” Sunset heard the sound – or perhaps she imagined that she could hear the sound – of a blade being drawn. “Thus ever to traitors.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Scarred</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Adam loses his mask</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Scarred</p><p>“Take cover,” Sunset said. “Blake, stay with Tukson.”</p><p>“Wait,” Blake began, “what are you-?”</p><p>Sunset didn’t give her the chance to respond before she teleported. </p><p>Teleportation was easier when it was sight to sight; with the windows tinted to be blacker than the night outside, Sunset couldn’t see where she was going, but it was only a brief hop from inside the store to the street outside, and her memory wasn’t so bad that she couldn’t recall the details she’d only just come from. </p><p>So long as she didn’t teleport into Adam or Torchwick, she’d be fine. </p><p>And she was fine, thank Celestia; she appeared with a crack and a flash of green light not far from her motorcycle, about half a foot off the pavement; Sunset wasn’t concerned about the use of magic: with Adam around, it might be the most use she was going to get out of it. </p><p>She appeared and quickly dropped onto the pavement with a soft thud, a few feet away from Adam and Torchwick. Adam was in the lead, with Torchwick trailing a little behind him. Sunset gritted her teeth. She would have preferred it the other way around; she didn’t think that Torchwick was quite so good at blocking bullets. </p><p>But she had to work with what she was confronted with. </p><p>Sunset hit the ground and dropped to one knee, bringing Sol Invictus to her shoulder in a smooth, fluid motion.</p><p>She started firing. Sol Invictus cracked three times, shattering the stillness of the night air. She hit Adam once, staggering him back a step with the impact, but by the time of her second shot, he was already reacting to her presence. His sword, that terrible crimson blade, leapt from its scabbard to trace blood-red patterns in the air as he parried her second and third rounds. Adam darted to the right, his sword in one hand and the sheath-gun aimed at her in the other hand; he unmasked Torchwick behind him as he dashed into the middle of the empty street. </p><p>Adam fired, the bullet thudding harmlessly into a shield hastily conjured. Torchwick raised his cane. Sunset was faster, and a beam of magic erupted from her palm to hit him square in the chest and blast him backwards and flat onto his back. Adam fired again, hitting Sunset in the shoulder. She felt the blow like a punch from Yang, spinning her around and knocking her onto her belly; her new cuirass hit the pavement with a metallic clang. </p><p>Sunset knew what was coming next. She teleported again, appearing in the air a couple of feet above the ground and back from where she had been and where Adam was charging towards. Sunset shot at him; once more, he parried the blow with his sword. </p><p>Sunset’s feet thudded onto the ground, her knees bending. Clearly, she wasn’t going to get very far by shooting him. But then, she ought to have known that already. </p><p>She couldn’t shoot him with bullets, and she didn’t dare attack him with magic, because he’d just take it on that damn sword of his, and she’d end up making him stronger. </p><p>Which meant that she was going to have to do this close quarters. Just like she'd feared when she'd decided to go to Pyrrha for help fixing that gap in her training.</p><p>
  <em>If Dash can do it… yeah, even I can’t make myself believe that.</em>
</p><p>But she would try it anyway. He had hurt Ruby, he had terrified Sunset, she wasn’t going to let him hold that over her forever. </p><p>She wasn’t going to be ruled by her fear. </p><p>She <em>was</em> going to be ruled by her anger. </p><p>Sunset bared her teeth at him, this man who had hurt Ruby. He had hurt Ruby, and he was going to pay for it. </p><p>Sunset put one hand upon her jacket, and with a touch of her aura, she ignited the fire dust that she had infused into the fabric. The spark spread across the jacket, igniting the fire dust infused into the material as fire rippled up Sunset's arm and across her back until half her body seemed to be burning with flames of crimson and gold. And yes, she had chosen the colours to match her hair, because if you were going to do this, then you might as well make it look cool.</p><p><em>My Phoenix Cape</em>. </p><p>Sunset let the fires burn upon her back and arms for a moment, and then she charged at Adam, a roar of anger ripping from her throat, her bayonet gleaming in the moonlight as she jabbed it at him like a spear. </p><p>Adam parried, once, twice, three times turning her thrusts aside. But he did not counterattack. He couldn’t, Sunset had reach on her side, and she wasn’t letting him get close to her. He could knock her bayonet and rifle barrel aside, but Sunset simply recoiled and thrust forward again. </p><p>He didn’t look particularly concerned, but it was hard to read his face behind that mask with its blood red lines upon it. </p><p>Torchwick seemed to think that Adam was holding his own with no assistance needed. As Sol Invictus clashed with Adam’s crimson blade, Torchwick picked himself up off the ground and approached the door to Tukson’s Book Trade. He reached for the handle-</p><p>The door slammed open into his face, knocking him back with a cry of irritation as Blake emerged out of the crack in the doorway, her black ribbon spinning around her as she hurled herself on Torchwick in a blur of frenzied motion that drove him backwards by the sheer fury of her onslaught. </p><p>Not that Sunset had much attention to pay to that. She had to focus on her own fight and on her own opponent. </p><p>Adam batted Sol Invictus aside again, and Sunset retreated a couple of steps. She wasn’t getting very far; she might have to change things up somehow.</p><p>She teleported directly behind Adam, thrusting her bayonet forward for the small of his back, but he twisted in place with the nimbleness of an eel and the speed of a pegasus in flight to parry her assault again. </p><p>He smirked at her. “I remember you,” he said, his voice deep and gravelly. “You were there at the docks that night.”</p><p>Sunset smirked right back at him. “I was there when we stopped your little scheme, yeah.”</p><p>Adam chuckled. “A temporary setback, a momentary check upon an advance to glory that cannot be halted. And in the process, you lost something too, didn’t you?”</p><p>Sunset growled wordlessly, thrusting forward at him. He retreated a step, parrying the thrust. </p><p>“The little girl in the red cloak,” Adam said. “The one who pushed you out of the way. Is that why you’re here? Is this some quest for revenge?”</p><p>“Shut up,” Sunset snarled. “She’s not dead. You messed that up too.”</p><p>“Huh,” Adam said, sounding genuinely surprised. “Must be one tough girl.”</p><p>“She is.”</p><p>Adam’s smirk broadened. “I’ll be sure to take her head next time to make good and sure.”</p><p>Sunset bellowed in anger as she went for him, reversing the grip of Sol Invictus in her hands so that she was wielding it like a club, swinging the wooden stock for his head. He wanted to talk of taking heads? She was going to bash his in so that he could never, ever get anywhere near Ruby again. And then she would pluck that sword from out of his cold dead hands, and everyone – <em>everyone</em> – would know that you didn’t mess with Sunset Shimmer and get away with it!</p><p>She hurled herself at him, swinging the butt of her rifle, trying to hit his head, to hit any part of him with her furious blows. Her teeth were bared, her ears were flattened against the top of her head, and her tail was rigid with anger as she swung at him again and again. Adam took the blows upon his sword, giving ground before her, the smirk still fixed upon his face; the sight of that smirk only made Sunset’s anger burn all the hotter. She could feel the heat from her phoenix cape mingling with the sweat of her wrath as if she were actually on fire herself. </p><p>“I didn’t kill your friend, but you’re still angry about it,” Adam observed. He chuckled. “So much fury in those eyes of yours. And that power, the way you teleport? Ah, if only I had found you before the huntsmen academies got their claws in you. What use I and the White Fang might have made of someone like you. What use we still could.”</p><p>Sunset’s only response to that suggestion – that she might join the White Fang after they had almost killed her friend – was to attack him harder, try to move faster, to assail his guard with even more furious intensity than before. </p><p>“Yes, you’re angry,” Adam declared. “That’s good. Anger will keep you alive.” His smile broadened. “Until you find yourself up against an even greater fury than your own!”</p><p>And Sunset learned that he had just been playing with her all this time. But now he was done with playing, and as he went on the counterattack against her, Sunset swiftly learned the difference between Adam toying and Adam fighting. He got faster and stronger out of nowhere, all the reserves that he had been holding back while it pleased him to let him expend her strength against him suddenly flooding to the fore. Sunset had beaten upon his defences like a tide assailing the sea wall, but now, Adam was like an ocean tempest which catches a lonely sailing ship at sea and sweeps that gallant vessel to a watery grave. Sunset staggered backwards, desperately parrying his furious slashing strokes with Sol Invictus. He was so fast, faster than she was, and he was so strong, stronger than she was; she turned aside, presenting her flaming sleeve to his stroke. The flames of the phoenix cape leapt higher as the crimson sword descended towards it, the fire of the dust erupting in a burning geyser, so that even as his stroke bit into Sunset’s aura, she could be sure of burning away some of his as well; it was probably the first bit of harm she’d done to his aura all night, and didn’t <em>that</em> hurt to admit. </p><p>That was the point of infusing her jacket with dust like this: she couldn’t be harmed without harming her attacker in turn. </p><p>Adam took a step back. His blade had only a faint red glow, not enough to really worry her, not yet. </p><p>On the other side of the street, Blake had been joined in the fight by Tukson, but it seemed as though even together they were struggling to bring the fight with Torchwick to a close. </p><p>Adam’s expression was still and solemn. “Do you think that dust protects you?” he asked. “Do you think that I am afraid of a little harm? Do you honestly believe that I will not suffer much worse than this for the sake of my people?”</p><p>He seemed genuinely angry now, anger borne out of a sense of affront as he charged at her, his red blade swinging, biting at Sunset’s aura, heedless of the damage he was taking to his own as he drove her back, knocking Sol Invictus out of her hands, slashing at her, slicing into her aura until he had Sunset on the ground with his foot upon her cuirass. </p><p>He raised his sword to stab down at her.</p><p>With a pulse of aura, Sunset activated the lightning dust in one of her vambraces; it sparked and crackled, snapping like a pack of wild dogs as he lashed out from the metal plate to tear at Adam’s leg. He growled in pain, faltering, momentarily distracted.</p><p>Sunset’s hand glowed as she picked up her motorcycle in the grip of her telekinesis and dragged it towards them both.  </p><p>Adam turned, but slower than before, thrown off-balance by Sunset’s lightning attack, and the motorcycle hit him square in the face and chest, hurling him off Sunset and sending him flying with a grunt of pain. </p><p>Sunset rolled away, picking herself up and onto her feet. She drew her sword, Soteria, uncertain whether or not to ignite the fire dust she had infused with the black blade. </p><p>Sunset heard Blake gasp in pain. She turned to see Torchwick catch Blake with a blow to the side and then to the face that knocked her flying backwards, hair askew. </p><p>“Blake!” Sunset yelled. </p><p>Tukson slashed at Torchwick with his claws, but the man in white evaded the wild stroke easily before bringing the tip of his cane down on Tukson’s head and beating the bigger man into the ground. Torchwick laughed as he aimed his cane at Blake while she was down.</p><p>Adam regained his feet and charged at Sunset, his expression set in a rictus of anger. </p><p>A fusillade of fire stopped Adam in his tracks, forcing him to retreat, desperately parrying bullets with his sword, just as Sun leapt down from out of the sky to nail Torchwick with a flying kick that sent them both to the ground in a thrashing tangle of arms and legs. </p><p>They were up and on their feet in a moment, staff and cane alike whirling and clacking in a furious rhythm.</p><p>There was an Atlesian Skyray overhead, painted in a garish neon blue with accents in all the colours of the rainbow, a Skyray from which leapt Rainbow Dash, her metallic wings unfurled as he glided down to the ground, firing her SMGs at Adam as she flew and fell. </p><p>She landed in front of Sunset, between her and Adam and right in Adam’s face as her wings tucked in behind her, and she holstered her SMGs and, diving beneath the stroke of Adam’s sword, punched him in the gut. </p><p>There was a boom like a peal of thunder, and Sunset caught sight of a shockwave emanating from Dash’s fist as Adam, his face contorted, was picked up off the ground and hurled away like a ragdoll. </p><p>Rainbow pursued him, a rainbow trailing behind her as she charged, but Adam was back on his feet a split second before she reached him. He raised his sheath and fired twice at Rainbow, but Dash dodged the shots – which Sunset had to conjure a shield to protect herself from in turn – by sliding along the ground. Adam leapt up, avoiding her attempt to sweep his legs out from under him, but Rainbow pushed herself off the ground with one hand and caught him with a flying kick on the side of his face that knocked his mask off to land with a clatter in the road. </p><p>Rainbow kept up the pursuit, one fist raised… and then she stopped, frozen in place, her magenta eyes widening. </p><p>Sunset could not restrain a little gasp herself as she understood why: they could see Adam’s face now, what lay beneath the mask. </p><p>He had been branded, his left eye ruined by the ugly mark that had been burned into his skin: the letters "SDC."</p><p>Sunset had never seen anything like it. She had never so much as <em>heard </em>of anything like it. Small wonder that Rainbow hesitated. </p><p>Adam did not hesitate. He slashed at her with his sword, and this time, Rainbow did not dodge the stroke; Sunset couldn’t even say that she was trying to. Whether she was trying to or not, the stroke caught her in the midriff and sent her flying. </p><p>Adam climbed to his feet. He was panting heavily, Rainbow’s attack must have taken a lot of his aura. </p><p>“Look,” he growled, his one remaining eye glowering, seeming almost to burn with a blue fire of his hatred of humanity. “Look at me! Look at what your precious Atlas does to those who are judged unworthy!”</p><p>Sunset summoned Sol Invictus into her hands. Rainbow Dash reached for her shotgun, but before Sunset could close her fingers around her gun, she was kicked in the face by the diminutive girl with the pink and brown hair who had gotten in her and Ruby’s way during the dust shop robbery on the night they met. Having sent Sunset sprawling with her unexpected appearance in the battle, she turned her attention to Rainbow Dash. Or rather, the person who had just kicked Sunset in the face shattered like fragments of glass before another copy of her appeared in Rainbow’s face, lashing out at her with feet and with her parasol both, and while she didn’t manage to land a hit on Rainbow, it was also true to say that Rainbow didn’t land a hit on her either; they danced for a moment, a rhythm of blows dodged in rolling, elastic motions, before the little girl in the old-fashioned get-up leapt backwards to stand by Adam. Torchwick, having brought himself just enough of an advantage over Sun to disengage, joined them. </p><p>“Perfect timing as always, Neo,” he muttered. </p><p>Neo – if that was the girl’s name – looked insufferably smug to hear it. </p><p>The Skyray landed. The side door was open, revealing Ciel Soleil with her enormous rifle in hand. She placed one hand upon her ear. “This is Rosepetal Two, requesting backup at Princess Aurora Street-”</p><p>Neo smirked at Sunset and curtsied politely to all concerned. </p><p>Rainbow shot her, and the three figures of Neo, Adam, and Torchwick all shattered like glass, disappearing into nothingness, leaving behind an empty street and the three of them nowhere to be found. </p><p>“What the-?“ Sun said. “Where did they go?”</p><p>The screech of tires echoed towards their ears from a street or so away.</p><p>“Into that getaway vehicle, I suppose,” Sunset muttered. </p><p>“It is unfortunate that they didn’t use a Bullhead,” Ciel growled. “Command, this is Rosepetal Two, requesting an aerial search of the area around Princess Aurora Street; suspects are fleeing in an unidentified vehicle.”</p><p>Blake crouched down by the prone and unconscious Tukson. Blood was beginning to pool around his head. “He needs help!” she cried.</p><p>“Also, please send medical assistance; we have a civilian down,” Ciel added.</p><p>Blake’s golden eyes were wide as she looked from Sun to Ciel to Rainbow Dash. “What… what are you three doing here?”</p><p>“Saving you, apparently,” Ciel answered. “Rainbow Dash, what are your orders?”</p><p>Rainbow didn’t reply, she was staring at the space where… where Adam had been. Her features were creased by a frown of confusion, her eyes flickering back and forth as though there was something that she did not – could not – comprehend. </p><p>“Rainbow Dash!” Ciel repeated, more loudly this time. </p><p>But Rainbow did not reply. </p><p>Sunset was certain she knew what Rainbow was thinking of: the brand on the face of Adam that now was branded upon their minds.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Swift Reprisal</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Rainbow Dash struggles with what she has learned about the dark side of Atlas, while Blake faces the consequences of her meddling.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Swift Reprisal</p><p> </p><p>“Blake left?” Rainbow asked. “Where?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Sun admitted, “but it’s gotta have something to do with the White Fang, right? I mean, why else would she sneak off in the middle of the party like this?”</p><p>Rainbow considered that. She didn’t really know Blake well enough to say what other things she might have going on that would lead her to do this, but she felt like most of those other things wouldn’t much interest Sunset Shimmer. If this was something they were doing together, it had to concern both of them, and that… maybe it wasn’t the White Fang… but it might be. </p><p>
  <em>You could have just told General Ironwood what you know, but that would be too easy.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Why do you not trust us yet? Why is it so hard for everyone to accept that we’re the good guys?</em>
</p><p>She and Sun stood close to the skydocks, removed from the party that was still going on in the courtyard outside. Rainbow said, “And you’re telling me this because-”</p><p>“Because she and Sunset left on the ugliest motorbike I’ve ever seen,” Sun reminded her. “I can’t follow them on foot, and I thought you might have, like an airship or something.”</p><p>“Do you think all Atlas students have their own airships? Or even all teams?” Rainbow asked. “I mean, I <em>do</em> have my own airship, but if I wasn’t so awesome, you’d be out of luck.”</p><p>“I’m talking to you because you’re awesome,” Sun told her. “Neither Blake nor I could catch a break against that Adam creep, but you had him on the ropes. You and Pyrrha are the best fighters I know, but Pyrrha… well, Pyrrha doesn’t have her own airship to start with, but also, Pyrrha… Pyrrha’s really nice and all, but I think she’d tell the professors. I want to save Blake, not get her in trouble.”</p><p>Rainbow folded her arms. “You realise that I’m going to tell General Ironwood about this, right?” <em>If I don’t tell him after what happened last time, he’ll hang me from the highest yardarm in the fleet.</em></p><p>“Yeah, the General guy, sure,” Sun said, “but he’s not Blake’s headmaster, so it doesn’t matter what he knows.”</p><p>
  <em>I’ve known Pinkie for five years, and this guy still makes no sense to me.</em>
</p><p>“I don’t… whatever,” Rainbow said. <em>I’ll ask General Ironwood to keep this under his hat, or at least not tell Professor Ozpin.</em> “You know, Blake might not like that you did this.”</p><p>“Fine,” Sun replied. “I’d rather lose her because she broke up with me than because someone put her in the ground.”</p><p>Rainbow nodded. “I get that. Okay. Get your weapons, I’ll talk to the General and get Ciel, and then we’ll head out.”</p><hr/><p>“Is the last of your little rats taken care of?”</p><p>Adam scowled. “No,” he admitted.</p><p>The voice on the other end of the scroll sighed. “Adam, Adam, Adam; this pattern of failure is becoming rather disappointing. If this goes on, I might have to wonder if your reputation isn’t a little overstated.”</p><p>Adam squeezed his scroll almost, but not quite, hard enough to damage it. “It wasn’t my fault.”</p><p>“Then whose fault was it? Was one bookshop owner tougher than you anticipated?”</p><p>“Blake was there,” Adam growled. “And another girl, a pony faunus with hair like fire.”</p><p>“Sunset Shimmer,” the voice on the other end of the scroll whispered. “Is she still alive?”</p><p>“Blake?”</p><p>“Sunset.”</p><p>“They both are,” Adam admitted in a sour and snarling tone. “Before Torchwick could finish either of them, even more of their friends showed up: Blake’s new beau-” – how those words irked him to say, how he yearned to cut off that insolent boy’s hands to teach him the penalty for thievery and trespass. Blake’s alabaster skin was for Adam’s hands alone to touch; like a princess of old, she belonged to the king. There had been times when it had taken all of Adam’s self-restraint not to put out people’s eyes just for looking at her loveliness, the thought that another man might have laid his hands upon her… – “-and the Atlesian race traitor from the docks.”</p><p>“Sun Wukong and Rainbow Dash. That’s unfortunate. There’s not much that we can do about the two of them, but I think that Miss Belladonna has meddled in our affairs for long enough.”</p><p>“Blake is mine!” Adam snapped. “Her life is mine to take, if I choose. She does not belong to you; you cannot choose her fate.”</p><p>“Oh relax, Adam,” the voice on the other end of the scroll sounded rather weary now. “I’m not proposing to kill her, just get her out of our way.”</p><p>“How?”</p><p>“By having a good citizen expose the dastardly terrorist in our midst, obviously.”</p><hr/><p>Tukson had been taken to hospital – with an Atlesian guard detail – and a search of the surrounding areas had unfortunately revealed no trace of the getaway vehicle used by Adam and Torchwick.</p><p>And Rainbow Dash’s custom Skyray soared back to Beacon.</p><p>The interior of the airship was quiet; honestly – and for once – Rainbow was glad of that. She wasn’t in the mood to talk much right now. </p><p>Nobody seemed in the mood to talk much. Ciel never seemed in the mood, or at least, it might have been nicer to say that she was always in the mood for some quiet or could appreciate the value of it anyway. </p><p>Blake was in a mood. That was obvious from the way that she was glaring at Sun; judging by the look in her eyes, there wasn’t going to be much gratitude from her for saving her life. Rainbow couldn’t help but wonder if she really understood that she would have died without what he’d done or if she just didn’t care. </p><p>Sun was well aware that Blake was upset with him, and he was not quite meeting her eyes. Poor guy looked as though he wanted to sink into the floor. </p><p>As for Sunset… it was hard for Rainbow to say <em>what </em>Sunset was thinking. She was staring at the floor like she was trying to burn holes in it with laser eyes. </p><p>
  <em>Is she thinking about the brand, too?</em>
</p><p>Rainbow couldn’t get her own mind off that brand. Those three letters burned into Adam’s skin. Sure, he was a terrorist wanted in all four kingdoms, but at the same time, he couldn’t have actually gotten branded then, could he? If he’d been caught at any point, he would have been handed over to the proper authorities, wouldn’t he? </p><p>
  <em>Why did he get the brand at all?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Was it just because he was a faunus?</em>
</p><p>Rainbow looked down at her reflection in the blue screens that filled up the Skyray’s cockpit; for a moment, she saw nothing but her face, unusually stern, but then the next moment, she saw one side of her face ruined, one eye gone, her face branded with the letters “SDC.”</p><p>Rainbow winced and flinched away from it; thankfully, she didn’t disturb the airship, which continued on its present course. </p><p>
  <em>“You don’t understand what it’s like down here, Dash! You spent so long up in the clouds, you think you’re one of them!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Could that have been me? Is that what I would have become, if it weren’t for my friends?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If it weren’t for Twilight?</em>
</p><p>Nobody said anything as they passed through the clouds; the emerald lights that gleamed at the top of Beacon Tower shone like a lighthouse beacon to guide them home. Rainbow steered her airship around it. Since they couldn’t have one of Beacon’s skydocks permanently occupied by a single airship, Rainbow had gotten permission to land her ship behind the school, in the long expanse of open ground between the school and the cliffs. Rainbow landed there, setting the Skyray down gently on the grass. </p><p>Blake, her arms crossed, turned towards one of the side doors and waited for it to open. </p><p>It didn’t.</p><p>Rainbow took off her helmet and got up out of her seat. “We’re not quite done yet,” she said as she stood at the cockpit entrance, one elbow resting on her chair. Ciel remained seated, looking forward, not really a part of this conversation. </p><p>Blake glanced at Rainbow out of the corner of her eyes. “Do you need something?”</p><p>“A little gratitude might be nice,” Rainbow snapped. She bit her lip. “I mean-”</p><p>“Thanks,” Sunset said quietly, as her tail swished back and forth behind her. “If you hadn’t shown up… things could have been bad.”</p><p>“You don’t know that for-”</p><p>“Blake,” Sunset interrupted her. “Come on, just drop it, okay? Torchwick was about to blow your head off, and Adam… I’m still not on his level yet.”</p><p>Blake didn’t reply, although she did look down at her own feet, so maybe she got it and just didn’t want to admit it. Rainbow could understand that. It wasn’t always easy to admit that you were wrong. Sometimes, you just had to do it, but that didn’t actually make it easy. </p><p>“Why?” she asked quietly. “Why did you come after us?”</p><p>“Because I think you could help us if you could get that stick out of your rear end and accept our help,” Rainbow declared. “Because letting you die just because you don’t like Atlas doesn’t sit right with me.” She paused. “General Ironwood knows about this; he arranged to have backup on station, and he’s put guards on your friend in the hospital… but he isn’t going to tell Professor Ozpin what you two were up to tonight.”</p><p>“Wow, you’re really determined to put us in your debt, aren’t you?” Sunset said.</p><p>“You want to consider yourself in my debt, go ahead,” Rainbow grunted.</p><p>Sunset frowned. “And it really got to you, didn’t it?”</p><p>“What did?”</p><p>“The lack of inner-city parking,” Sunset snapped. “What do you think?”</p><p>Rainbow’s hands clenched into fists. So, they were going to talk about that. Of course they were going to talk about that. That was the main reason why Rainbow hadn’t opened the doors yet. </p><p>She kept her eyes on Blake. “You didn’t mention the brand on his face.”</p><p>“Should I have?” Blake asked.</p><p>“You wasted so much breath trying to convince me that Atlas was bad, and you didn’t once mention the fact that the SDC branded the face of someone you used to know?” Rainbow demanded.</p><p>“What would you have said if I had told you?” Blake replied.</p><p>“I…” Rainbow paused. “I might not have believed it without proof,” she admitted.</p><p>“And now?” Blake asked. “Now that you’ve seen it?”</p><p>Rainbow looked away, a scowl disfiguring her features. “The SDC isn’t Atlas,” she declared. “It certainly isn’t the military.”</p><p>“But it does wield power,” Blake said. “In Atlas more than anywhere else.”</p><p>“There’s no way that it can be legal,” Sunset said. “It isn’t legal to do that, not for corporations; not even the kingdoms themselves punish people that way.”</p><p>Blake laughed bitterly. “So what if it’s illegal? Do you think anybody is going to challenge the SDC on behalf of a few faunus?”</p><p>“Yes,” Rainbow said with an absolute certitude which she did not entirely feel. <em>I hope so, anyway. </em>She hesitated. “Do you know how he got it?”</p><p>Blake hesitated. “Adam’s past was a mystery, even to me. I knew that he had been branded; he showed it to me – on the clear understanding that I wouldn’t tell anyone else – but he never explained how he got it or… anything about himself before he joined the White Fang.” She paused. “Does it matter?”</p><p>“It might help work out where it’s happening,” Rainbow muttered. </p><p>“Who would do something like that?” Sun asked. “I mean… what’s the point?”</p><p>“It’s about power,” Blake growled. “Whoever did this… they did it because they can. They did it to show that they can.”</p><p>Rainbow frowned. Her ears twitched. “Whatever. I don’t suppose you’ll change your mind <em>now</em> about cooperating with us?”</p><p>“I hope so,” Sunset muttered.</p><p>“I… I’ll think about it,” Blake said softly.</p><p>“Blake!” Sunset groaned.</p><p>“If we had been just a second later-” Rainbow began.</p><p>“I said I’ll think about it, and I meant it!” Blake cut her off. “I’m not just saying that I’ll think about it so that I can come back later and tell you no. I… I admit that there is something to be gained-”</p><p>“You can take Atlesian help, or you can do this on your own,” Sunset declared. “I’m done.”</p><p>Blake whirled to look at her, her tangled black hair flying around her. “Sunset!”</p><p>“Torchwick had you!” Sunset snarled. “Just like Adam had me, bang to rights. We’re not Jaune’s comic book superheroes, Blake! We’re not going to save the world all by ourselves! Now you may not enjoy living, but I do!”</p><p>“Is that what you think this is about?” Blake cried. “Do you think that I’m trying to get myself killed?”</p><p>“I don’t know, are you?”</p><p>“I’m trying to help!”</p><p>“You’re trying to make yourself feel better!”</p><p>“Maybe I am,” Blake admitted, her voice loud and high. Her breathing was ragged. “Maybe I am,” she repeated, quieter this time. “But I… I’ve done things that I need to make up for. That I have to; nobody else can atone for them on my behalf.”</p><p>“How do you balance your desire to do penance with the ill behalf from the inefficiency of your attempts to do so?” Ciel demanded. She got out of her seat and came to stand by Rainbow Dash. “Perhaps you should help us defeat the immediate threat and <em>then </em>worry about how you will square your past associations?”</p><p>Blake didn’t reply, and Rainbow took pity on her and opened the door to let her out. She didn’t thank Rainbow for that, any more than she had thanked Rainbow for rescue; she just leapt out and presumably started walking back to Beacon. Sun followed, calling her name. </p><p>Sunset lingered for a moment, both hands upon the handles of that ugly bike of hers. “Thanks,” she said quietly.</p><p>Rainbow nodded stiffly. “Any time.”</p><p>“I hope not,” Sunset muttered. “That would be unbearable. I’d have to throw myself off the cliff.” She winced. She glanced at Rainbow and then looked away. Her ears flattened into her fiery hair. “Listen, Rainbow… don‘t sweat it, okay?”</p><p>Rainbow’s brow furrowed. “Sweat what?” she asked, although she could have guessed the answer already. </p><p>“What happened to that guy down some SDC mine,” Sunset said. She reached up and scratched the back of her head. “You’re still an incredibly lucky faunus,” she said. </p><p><em>Yeah, ain’t that the truth.</em> “I know,” Rainbow said, a little defensively.</p><p>Sunset hesitated, but must have decided against saying anything else, because she took her bike and left, wheeling it out of the airship and out towards the garages. </p><p>Rainbow lingered in the Skyray. She walked out into the passenger section, one fist resting on the wall. </p><p>“Rainbow Dash,” Ciel murmured.</p><p>Rainbow looked over her shoulder. “Yeah?”</p><p>“Do not draw too many comparisons based on your race,” Ciel advised her. “While we have had our disagreements, and I sometimes find you a little heedless and headstrong… that does not change the fact that you are an honourable soldier of Atlas, a flower of the north as hardy as any… and more beautiful than most. You are not a terrorist.”</p><p>“No, I’m not,” Rainbow replied. <em>But I might have ended up down a mine if things had gone a little differently.</em> It wasn’t as though work had been abundant in Low Town. Rainbow might well have ended up, as so many did, heading for the nearest mine where they were always hiring new labourers. </p><p>And there… people might have taken a different view of ‘headstrong and heedless’. </p><p>“You go on ahead,” she told Ciel. “I’ll catch up.”</p><p>Ciel hesitated for a moment. “Are you certain?”</p><p>“Yes,” Rainbow replied. “I’m sure.”</p><p>“Very well,” Ciel said. Rainbow heard her footsteps upon the metal of the airship as she exited. </p><p>Rainbow was left alone, with her thoughts and the memory of that brand. The letters “SDC.” </p><p>
  <em>“You’re just a token faunus to them!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>That’s not true. They’re my friends, they wouldn’t… they rescued me. If it wasn’t for them, I… I would…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’d be just like him.</em>
</p><p>One of Rainbow’s eyes closed involuntarily, and for a moment, Rainbow thought that she couldn’t open it again: it was fused shut, burned shut; she was blinded there forever-</p><p> </p><p>
  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQKaAlMNvm8">
    <em>'Cause I love to make you smile, smile, smile,</em>
  </a>
</p><p>
  <em>Yes I do,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It fills my heart with sunshine all the while,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yes it does,</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Rainbow’s eye opened. She blinked rapidly and breathed in and out pretty rapidly too as her scroll continued to ring. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>'Cause all I really need’s a smile, smile, smile,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>From these happy friends of mine,</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Rainbow pulled out her scroll with one trembling hand. She opened it up and answered it. </p><p>“Hey, Rainbow Dash!” Pinkie cried, her beaming image appearing on the screen. </p><p>“Hey, Pinkie,” Rainbow said softly. “You… you got me at just the right time.”</p><p>Pinkie’s smile became a little gentler, almost kind of sad. “Yeah, funny how that happens, huh?” She laughed nervously. “Listen, Rainbow Dash… you know that if you’re ever in any trouble, you can always talk to me, right? Whatever it takes to put a smile back on that face.”</p><p>Rainbow chuckled. “You’re doing a pretty good job already, Pinkie.”</p><p>“I’m glad,” Pinkie murmured. “I just… Rainbow Dash?”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>Pinkie blinked. “You know that we all love you, right? You’re a part of all of us.”</p><p>Rainbow stared down at her friend, her silly, cake-baking, party-planning friend. “I know, Pinkie.”</p><p>“Promise you won’t forget,” Pinkie said.</p><p>“I promise.”</p><p>“Do you <em>Pinkie </em>promise?”</p><p>Rainbow grinned. “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.” She paused. “Hey, Pinkie?”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“Thank you.”</p><p>Pinkie made a squeaking sound as she smiled. “You’re welcome.”</p><hr/><p>“Blake!” Sun called, as he chased after her. “Blake, wait up!”</p><p>Blake ignored him. She strode purposefully across the grass towards Beacon. Towards her dorm, her bed, and a door that she could put between herself and Sun. </p><p>“Blake!” Sun yelled again. “Will you just listen to me?” He reached out and put one hand on her arm.</p><p>Blake used a clone to get away from him, the Blake he had laid a hand on disappearing in a puff of smoke before the real Blake appeared a couple of feet away from him.</p><p>“Go away, Sun!” she snapped. “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”</p><p>Sun stared at her. “Well… you know… our dorms are kind of in the same general direction, so…”</p><p>Blake huffed and turned away from him again and resumed her stomping march back to school. </p><p>“I’m not going to apologise,” Sun called to her retreating back. “I know that what I did wasn’t what you wanted… but I’m not going to say sorry for caring about you.”</p><p>Blake stopped. “You say that you care about me, but you don’t care about my wishes,” she declared, glaring at him over her shoulder. </p><p>Sun’s expression was anguished, his mouth open, his eyebrows arching upwards as if they were trying to form a triangle. He held out his hands towards her. “I saw you leave,” he admitted, “with Sunset, on her bike. I thought… I was worried.”</p><p>“I could have handled it,” Blake insisted.</p><p>“No, you couldn’t!” Sunset shouted from behind Sun as she dragged her bike along the grass. </p><p>Blake rolled her eyes. “I didn’t want you anywhere near me tonight,” she told Sun, “and you should have respected that.”</p><p>“And I would, most of the time,” Sun replied defensively. “Like… if you wanted to go out with the girls and… do girls' night stuff, then I would absolutely stay away.”</p><p>Blake stared at him for a moment. “'Girls' night stuff'?”</p><p>“Neptune says that what goes on there is a mystery that only women should understand,” Sun informed her.</p><p>“Mm-hmm,” Blake murmured. “Regardless of Neptune’s opinion on lady’s night, you haven’t exactly been the best at staying away from me.”</p><p>“I… can get that,” Sun conceded. “But… look, I’m sorry. I’ve just never been with an amazing girl like you before – well, I’ve never really been with a girl before, but anyway – and you laughed when Sunset threw me across the café that one time, so I thought you enjoyed when I just showed up, and I did it because I wanted to make you happy, so if you don’t like it, then you should have said something, and I would have stopped. But this… this is different. When I saw you leave with Sunset, I thought that you might get in trouble, and… and I couldn’t just let you go on your own – or with just Sunset – like that. I had to try and help you. Because I care about you, and I’m not going to apologise for that, and… and you can’t ask me to stop. It’s not fair.”</p><p>“'It’s not fair'?” Blake repeated.</p><p>“Yeah,” Sun agreed. “Come on, who does that?”</p><p>Blake looked away from him. A sudden night breeze ran through the air, blowing her wild tangle of black hair into her face. Blake raised one hand to brush it aside. “What you did… it was very sweet,” she whispered, “but the fact remains that I didn’t want you anywhere near me tonight.”</p><p>“Why not?” Sun asked. “Why is it so bad to have people who care about you?”</p><p>“Because Adam will kill you!” Blake cried. “He’ll hunt you down in some dark place where there is no help, and then he’ll cut you down.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because you’re mine!” Blake yelled. “You’re mine, and I’m yours where I used to be his, and he won’t… he won’t be able to abide that; he’ll… he’ll…” She sniffed, and as her vision blurred, she realised that she was crying. </p><p>“I should never have had anything to do with you,” she sobbed.</p><p>She felt a pair of strong arms enfolding her and a solid chest pressing against her own. </p><p>“Blake,” Sun whispered into her ear, “there’s still so much that I don’t know about you. It feels like I barely know you at all. But that’s fine. You don’t want to tell me, you want to keep your secrets, that’s your choice. But whether or not I stand by your side… that’s my choice.”</p><p>Blake closed her eyes and allowed herself to lean into his embrace. “Sun, I-”</p><p>“Hey, stop that,” Sunset snapped. “It’s bad enough having to watch Jaune and Pyrrha having more fun than me without having to put up with it from the two of you as well.”</p><p>Blake smiled and wiped at her eyes with the back of one hand as Sun released her, and she retreated back a step. “Thank you, Sunset,” she said. “I… thank you, for coming with me.”</p><p>Sunset stared at her. “This is the part where I’m supposed to be gracious and say ‘any time’; but… no, that’s not happening. I know the arguments, and I know the things that you said to convince me that someone has to do something are just as valid as when you talked me into this… but we are <em>not </em>enough for this.”</p><p>Blake pursed her lips together. Sunset… uncomfortably, she had a point. They had barely held their own against Adam and Torchwick; how would they have fared against the White Fang as a whole? She felt foolish, quixotically so, and yet… the alternative of trusting General Ironwood and the Atlesian forces…</p><p>Rainbow and her team might be good people, but that didn’t mean that all of Atlas was as trustworthy as she was. </p><p>“What about your own headmaster?” Sun queried. “If you don’t want to tell that general, why not Professor Ozpin? He seems pretty cool.”</p><p>“No,” Sunset said immediately. “We are not telling Professor Ozpin anything.”</p><p>Blake blinked. “You don’t trust Professor Ozpin?”</p><p>“No, I don’t,” Sunset declared. “I think he manipulates people into doing what he wants. I think he arranged the whole fight at the docks where Ruby got hurt.”</p><p>“That… doesn’t make much sense.”</p><p>“He knew who you were,” Sunset reminded her. “He could have found out Rainbow’s history with the White Fang; he allowed them to come to Beacon anyway to arrange a confrontation that would lead us to the docks.”</p><p>“That… sounds like the kind of thing that should have a wall and some red string to go along with it,” Sun said apologetically.</p><p><em>It makes my fears about Atlas seem grounded,</em> Blake thought. But at the same time, having been so stubborn with Sunset about Atlas, she could hardly deny Sunset any right to her own concerns, regardless of how frivolous they seemed to her. After all, it was clear that Sunset thought Blake’s concerns were pretty ridiculous.</p><p>“Okay,” she said. “No Professor Ozpin. As for Atlas… I meant what I said. I’ll think about it.”</p><hr/><p>Sunset slipped back into her dorm room as quietly as she could. It was pretty late; everyone else was probably- </p><p>"Sunset?"</p><p>Sunset stood still and silent for a moment. "Ruby?" She whispered. "You're still up?"</p><p>"We all are," Ruby said plaintively. "We waited up for you."</p><p>Sunset turned on the lights. They were all awake, just as Ruby had said, and they were all looking right at her.</p><p>"You didn't need to stay up," Sunset said. “I told Pyrrha that you didn’t need to stay up.” <em>Sure, I told her sarcastically, but that was only because I didn’t think that she might actually do it.</em></p><p>Jaune groaned. "Now you tell us," he said, before he stifled a truly leonine yawn behind one hand.</p><p>The corners of Sunset's lips twitched upwards just a little. "I'm pretty sure that I told Pyrrha before I left, actually, but-"</p><p>"We were worried about you," Ruby cut her off. “We wanted to make sure that you got home safely.”</p><p>"Thanks, but you didn't need to do that either," Sunset said. "As you can see, I'm perfectly fine."</p><p>Ruby got up off her bed. "Where did you go, Sunset?"</p><p>"I can't say."</p><p>"Why not? If you're in some kind of trouble, then maybe we can-"</p><p>"If I was in trouble, you guys would be the first to find out about it," Sunset replied. "Probably, maybe. Look, I'm not in any trouble myself, but a friend..." Sunset paused, debating with herself whether Blake's situation counted as her being in trouble or not. Or whether Blake was actually her friend or not. She felt a kind of kinship with the runaway princess, but that didn’t mean that she actually <em>liked</em> Blake; she was so self-righteous, and unlike Pyrrha and Ruby, she didn’t sugar it with any great degree of charm. "I'm helping… someone deal with some of her stuff, but I can't tell you any more than that because it's not my stuff. But... I've suggested that we might need a little more help so...you might find out what's going on pretty soon." Not, of course, because they would be getting involved, but Sunset was sure Team RSPT wouldn’t keep it to themselves. She wasn’t sure Penny had the ability to keep things to herself even if she wanted to.</p><p>"As much as we wouldn't want you to betray anyone’s trust," Pyrrha said carefully, "the fact that you might need our help isn't all that reassuring. It suggests that your secret might be a little dangerous."</p><p>"It is," Sunset conceded candidly. "So if you just don't want to know, now's the time to say so, and I won't involve you further."</p><p>"On the contrary, if you and your friend are putting yourselves in harm’s way, then the sooner you involve the rest of us, the better," Pyrrha countered.</p><p>"Yeah!" Ruby cried. "We're a team and that means that we oughtta stick together. So tell this friend of yours to hurry up and bring us in so we can whup butt! Isn't that right, Jaune? Jaune?"</p><p>Jaune snored, prompting Ruby to look fondly exasperated, while Pyrrha simply looked fond.</p><p>"I guess it is time for bed," Ruby said, a moment before she joined in the yawning herself.</p><p>"Will there be more late nights like this?" Pyrrha asked.</p><p>"I don't know," Sunset admitted, "but I certainly hope not." She sat down on her bed, making no move to get undressed and change into her pyjamas. She just clasped her hands together and looked down at them. She wasn’t really looking; she was… she was thinking of that mark on Adam’s face. </p><p>
  <em>Does Weiss know that’s what her family does?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Perhaps she and Flash are made for one another.</em>
</p><p>“Sunset?” </p><p>Sunset looked up to find Ruby staring at her from across the room. </p><p>“Are you okay?” Ruby asked anxiously. “Only, you seem… kind of not okay?”</p><p>Sunset’s gaze flickered between Ruby and Pyrrha, both of whom were looking back at her. </p><p>She wasn’t about to tell them about the brand. There was nothing they could do about it, and really… why should they know? Why should it disturb their lives of joy and happiness? Why should they be troubled by such things as this?</p><p>“I’m fine, Ruby, really,” Sunset assured her. </p><p>
  <em>Although I might need to have a talk with Weiss about this.</em>
</p><hr/><p>Rainbow leaned on the sink. She reached down and held her hands underneath the tap, letting the water pool there before she splashed it on her face. She looked up and into the mirror. </p><p>For a moment, her face stared back at her. Then it was Adam’s face she saw looking back at her. Then her own face, but marred with that SDC brand. </p><p>It was a fate that could have been hers. It was a fate that, perhaps, she had deserved. She was just a faunus, after all, just a punk from Low Town underneath Atlas. She was just a thug with a talent for punching things. She didn’t deserve General Ironwood’s patronage, the friendship of Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie, Fluttershy; she didn’t deserve Twilight. </p><p>
  <em>I’m so blessed.</em>
</p><p>“Rainbow Dash?”</p><p>Rainbow looked around, to see Twilight standing in the bathroom doorway, dressed in her light blue pyjamas with the little stars of white and pink upon them; she had her glasses on, but her hair was down, understandably. Rainbow thought it made her look cuter than when she bound it up. </p><p>Rainbow forced a smile onto her face. “Hey, Twi. Did I wake you?”</p><p>“It’s fine.”</p><p>“No, it isn’t. I’m sorry.”</p><p>“It’s okay,” Twilight reassured her. “Are <em>you</em> okay?”</p><p>Rainbow hesitated for a moment, silently looking at her, then she crossed the bathroom in a couple of quick strides and wrapped her arms around Twilight, pressing the other girl close against her, resting her chin on the top of Twilight’s head. </p><p>“R-Rainbow Dash?” Twilight whispered in surprise.</p><p>Rainbow put one hand on Twilight’s head, stroking her hair gently. “Thank you,” she murmured.</p><p>Twilight was silent for a moment. “For what?”</p><p>“For saving me,” Rainbow replied. “Without you, I… I wouldn’t be me without you. You know I love you, right, Twi?”</p><p>Twilight put her arms around Rainbow’s waist. “You’re my best friend too, Rainbow Dash.”</p><p>Rainbow closed her eyes as a wry smile spread across her face. “I know,” she whispered as she kissed the top of Twilight’s head. “My light Twilight.”</p><p>Twilight giggled softly. </p><p>Rainbow let her go. “I have to step out for a second, okay?”</p><p>Twilight looked up at her, blinking. “Why?”</p><p>“I just need to make a quick call.”</p><p>“In the middle of the night?”</p><p>“It’s kind of urgent,” Rainbow insisted, albeit quietly. “I just… trust me, okay Twilight?”</p><p>“Sure,” Twilight replied, nodding her head. “Always.”</p><p>Rainbow tiptoed through the dorm room where Ciel was asleep already – she had the ability to go out like a light whenever her head hit the sack and to go from slumber to one hundred percent in a split second; Rainbow was jealous – and Penny was in power-saving mode, her head bowed and her eyes flickering. She opened the door as quietly as she could and closed it just as quietly. </p><p>She leaned against the door, one hand going up to feel at her face. With her other hand – it trembled a little – she got out her scroll.</p><p>She opened it up and hesitated for a moment. </p><p>
  <em>“So what if it’s illegal? Do you think anybody is going to challenge the SDC on behalf of a few faunus?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She will. She’ll listen.</em>
</p><p>Rainbow called Cadance. </p><p>The scroll rang. And rang. And rang. It was the middle of the night – or the very early morning, rather – but Rainbow was still starting to get a little impatient by the time that Cadance’s face appeared on the screen. Her hair was a lot more dishevelled than Rainbow was used to seeing, and she had a pink silk nightgown on with a light blue sleep mask pushed up onto the top of her head. She blinked and frowned a little. “Rainbow Dash?”</p><p>“I’m sorry to wake you, ma’am,” Rainbow began.</p><p>Cadance blinked rapidly a few more times. “Is everything okay?” she asked anxiously. “Is Twilight-?”</p><p>“Twilight’s fine, ma’am, and so am I,” Rainbow assured her. “I actually wanted to talk to you about something else.”</p><p>Cadance’s eyes narrowed. “In the middle of the night.”</p><p>“I’m sorry, but yes,” Rainbow replied. “I… got into a fight with a member of the White Fang tonight.”</p><p>Cadance said nothing, waiting for Rainbow to continue. </p><p>“His face…” Rainbow hesitated, but then pressed on, knowing that she couldn’t keep Cadance waiting too long. “It had been branded, by the SDC.”</p><p>Cadance frowned. “'Branded'?”</p><p>“They’d burned the letters ‘SDC’ onto his face, ma’am,” Rainbow explained. </p><p>Cadance’s eyes widened. “My gods,” she murmured, her mouth forming an O.</p><p>“That’s… that’s not legal, is it?” Rainbow asked, unable to keep the anxiety out of her voice.</p><p>“No, it most certainly is not,” Cadance declared, her voice hardening. “I don’t suppose you have any information about who this faunus was or where they were branded.”</p><p>“Uh… it was Adam Taurus, ma’am,” Rainbow admitted.</p><p>Cadance stared at her. “You fought Adam Taurus?” she demanded.</p><p>“Twilight was nowhere near the fight; she was-”</p><p>“I’m not worried about Twilight; I’m worried about <em>you</em>,” Cadance informed her.</p><p>“I can handle Adam Taurus, ma’am, even if he is wanted on three continents,” Rainbow declared. “Or at least, I thought I could, until…”</p><p>“No one would ever have allowed that to happen to you,” Cadance insisted, seeming to sense where she was coming from. “Not Twilight, not any of your friends, not me, either.”</p><p>“But if I’d never met Twilight…” Rainbow trailed off for a moment. “Is there something that you can do about this?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Cadance admitted, “but I do know that I’m going to try my hardest. It won’t be easy without details, but I’ll find out what’s going on… starting in the morning.”</p><p>Rainbow smiled. “Yeah. Ma’am?”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“Are you sure about this?” Rainbow asked. “It’s the SDC, and-”</p><p>“<em>Fiat justitia, ruat caelum</em>,” Cadance told her.</p><p>Rainbow frowned. “I don’t know what that means, ma’am.”</p><p>“'Let justice be done, though the heavens fall,'” Cadance translated. “The SDC doesn’t get to break the law just because it has money. Don’t worry, Rainbow Dash; I’ll get to the bottom of this.”</p><p>Rainbow’s whole body sagged with relief. <em>You see, Blake? This is what Atlas is all about. I told you that someone would do something.</em> “Thank you, ma’am, this means a lot. And now I’ll let you get back to bed. Sorry for disturbing you.”</p><p>Cadance smiled. “It’s no trouble at all, Rainbow Dash. Goodnight.”</p><p>“Goodnight, ma’am.”</p><hr/><p>Classes resumed the next day. The timetable had changed a little since last semester – for example, to accommodate the new etiquette class that was mandatory for Atlesians and voluntary for everyone else – but the week still began with Grimm Studies with Professor Port. </p><p>The lecture theatre was a lot more crowded now than it had been during the first semester; all of what had seemed to be redundant space where the students could spread out as they liked was crammed with students from Haven, Atlas, and Shade Academies all sitting cheek by jowl with the Beacon students. Cinder, anchoring the left flank of her team CLEM just as Sunset held the right of Team SAPR, was pressed up against Sunset, their bodies squeezing together as though they were dance partners.</p><p>Cinder gave Sunset a smirking glance as the latter tried to find enough space to start writing her notes. </p><p>“To our Beacon students, welcome back to another semester!” Professor Port declared. “I hope you all found your vacation restful and recharging but remembered to stay vigilant against the creatures of grimm that infest our world! To all our guests from the other three academies, welcome! My name is Professor Port, and I will be taking over where your regular instructors left off in arming you against the many perils that infest the lands beyond the kingdoms. We are sitting in a fortress, but outside, it is growing dark, and one day, it will be up to you to spread the light and to defend it.” He paused for a moment. “Miss Shimmer, will you please come to the front of the class please?”</p><p>The classroom was silent. Sunset’s ears pricked up in surprise. Nevertheless, she stood up and – with Jaune, Pyrrha, and Ruby moving out for her – she was able to get out of the row of seats and make her way down the steps to the front of the classroom. </p><p>“Now,” Professor Port continued, “I understand that Team Sapphire had a little adventure during their vacation.”</p><p><em>Ah, so that’s what this is about.</em> Sunset smiled. “Yes, sir, we fought a karkadann just outside of Mistral.” She glanced at Cinder. “Alongside Cinder Fall of Team Clementine of Haven.”</p><p>“A karkadann,” Professor Port said, his voice swelling with admiration. “Very impressive, Miss Shimmer. Well, since your team has been on an independent hunt, why don’t you tell the rest of the class, then we can discuss it while I, with the benefit of my experience, guide you on how to approach such a savage beast should you encounter one again.” Professor Port took a step back. “The floor is yours, Miss Shimmer.”</p><p>Sunset liked to think that Professor Port had summoned her, rather than Ruby, Jaune, or Pyrrha, not only because she was the team leader but also because she was the one least likely to suffer from stage fright. In fact, she didn’t suffer from it at all. The eyes of the entire class were upon her, and she was troubled by it not at all. </p><p>It was rather thrilling, to be honest. </p><p>
  <em>One semester down, and we’re already building a reputation. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>By our second year, we’ll be like Team CFVY but twice as huge. Everyone is going to be looking up to us.</em>
</p><p>Sunset cleared her throat. “We were dropped off by an airship at the sight of the most recent attack by the grimm, the identity of which we did not yet know-”</p><p>“Hey,” one of the Haven students – a girl with dusky skin and an untidy mane of pale hair – interrupted.</p><p>“Please raise your hand to ask a question, Miss-“</p><p>“Altan, Arslan Altan, Professor,” Arslan said. She raised her hand.</p><p>Professor Port nodded. “Go ahead, Miss Altan.”</p><p>Arslan’s face was disfigured by a frown. “Why was your team given the job of hunting down this grimm?” she demanded. “Was it because you had Pyrrha Nikos on your team?”</p><p>Sunset chewed on her lip. “Pyrrha… was asked to take on the job,” she admitted, through gritted teeth. “The rest of the team decided to accompany her because we are her team, and we weren’t about to let her fight some dangerous grimm on her own.”</p><p>“Of course not,” Professor Port agreed. “Any other decision would have been thoroughly unworthy of Beacon students.”</p><p>Sun’s blue-haired teammate Neptune raised his hand. “Uh, I’m sure it would, Professor, but I think what Arslan was trying to ask was why students were given this assignment? Shouldn’t this sort of thing have been handled by a pro huntsman?”</p><p>“There weren’t any,” Sunset replied. “In the whole city, there was only my team, and Cinder.”</p><p>“There was me,” Arslan declared. “I was in Mistral during the vacation, and nobody asked me to hunt down any grimm.”</p><p>“Well, you’re not Pyrrha Nikos, are you?” Sunset asked, ignoring the frantic but frankly indecipherable signals that Pyrrha was making as she waved her hands up and down to Sunset. Was she telling Sunset to calm down? Sunset was just having some fun.</p><p>Pyrrha put her head in her hands as Arslan made a rumbling noise in <em>the</em> bottom of her throat as though she was trying to avoid venting her spleen. </p><p>“It seems to me that this discussion is not germane to the class at hand,” Professor Port declared. “Please, Miss Shimmer, continue.”</p><p>Sunset smirked at Arslan, then resumed. “We arrived at the scene of the attack and-”</p><p>She was interrupted again, this time by the doors into the classroom opening. </p><p>A dozen people strode in, led by a horse faunus woman with long brown hair and a tail to match, dressed in a dark blue pantsuit and a white blouse. She was followed by a rather grave-looking Professor Ozpin, a rough-and-ready looking fellow with stubble on his cheeks and a halberd in his hands who was almost certainly a licensed huntsman, and perhaps a dozen officers of the VPD in full tactical loadout, their faces hidden behind their helmets and masks. </p><p>“Professor Ozpin?” Professor Port asked. “What is going on here?”</p><p>“Good morning, Professor. My name is Lieutenant Martinez,” the woman in the pantsuit announced in a broad accent replete with elongated vowels, “and I have a warrant for the arrest of Blake Belladonna; I’m told she’s in this class.”</p><p><em>They know. I don’t know how, but they know. Someone tipped off the authorities.</em> </p><p>“Miss Belladonna?” Professor Port repeated. “On what charge?”</p><p>Sunset's scroll buzzed. So did everyone else's scroll in the classroom. Sunset answered, for all that she was standing in front of a cop, the headmaster, and a class full of students. Everybody looked at their scrolls. They all wanted to see what was so important that they’d all gotten pinged at once. </p><p>It was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImKCt7BD4U4">a video</a>, a video showing footage of Blake robbing a train in the Forever Fall forest, destroying Atlesian security droids alongside… Sunset's chest seemed to constrict around her lungs as she saw who Blake was fighting alongside in this video.</p><p>Adam Taurus.</p><p>'What kind of monster have you been living with these past months?' asked the video as more footage flashed up.</p><p>“On charges of terrorism, destruction of property, and membership in an illegal organisation,” Lieutenant Martinez said, clearly annoyed at the interruption and nature thereof, “namely, the White Fang.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. I Fought the Law (And Atlas Won)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Rainbow Dash makes Blake an offer she cannot refuse.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Lieutenant Martinez originally derives from Shinzakura's All American Girl, although not having read that my interpretation comes from Spark to Spark, Dust to Dust by Cody Fett and Cyclone, my beta readers.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I Fought the Law (And Atlas Won)</p><p> </p><p>For a moment, Blake tensed to run. If she could make it past the cops – and using her clones, that shouldn’t be impossible – then she could sprint down the corridor and…</p><p>And what?</p><p>Even if she did get out of the gallery, even if the shocked and outraged look on Cardin’s face and Nora’s expression of confusion and the way that her own team looked as though they’d been collectively pole-axed meant that they were all too stunned to try and stop her, even if one of the literally hundreds of students in the classroom didn’t catch her before she could get out, even if she did get out of this room, out of this immediate situation… did she really think that she was going anywhere? Did she really think that she could escape from a whole school full of huntsmen, from the professors and the upperclassmen, from Professor Goodwitch? </p><p>Did she really think she was going to escape the grounds, and even if she did, what then? Where would she go? Tukson was in intensive care under Atlesian guard; there was no one she knew to help her move on to somewhere else, start afresh with a new life in Vacuo or someplace. </p><p>Where would she go? Would she hang around the streets of Vale, dumpster diving, and avoiding the cops? What kind of a life was that, and was she willing to drag Sun – sweet, loyal, utterly foolish Sun  – into that sort of miserable existence when he followed her, as it seemed almost certain that he would? Would she stowaway on a boat to Menagerie and crawl back home to face the disappointment of her parents? </p><p>Where would she go?</p><p>There was nowhere she could go.</p><p>She didn’t want to go. </p><p>She didn’t want to leave Beacon, she didn’t want to go anywhere else, she didn’t want to leave the people that she’d met here.</p><p>The friends that she’d made here.</p><p>But she had no choice but to go; not to run, but to go with the police to wherever they intended to take her. She couldn’t run; she couldn’t run because she wouldn’t escape, because she had nowhere to go even if she did escape… but also because, as she contemplated fleeing from this as she had fled from all her problems in the past – fled from Menagerie, fled from her parents and her home, fled from Adam and the White Fang – she caught sight of three faces; two faces which, amidst the crowd of shocked and frightened and furious expressions, looked to be on her side. </p><p>Sun, Sunset, and Rainbow Dash. </p><p>Sun was closest to her, both physically – whether she wanted him to be at that particular moment or not – and emotionally too. He had been there for her when she had been at her lowest ebb; he had approached her when no one else would. Even now, it seemed that he was trying to reach her, trying to shake off the hands of his friend Neptune and his teammate Scarlet as they tried to sit him down and keep him away. </p><p>Sunset stood at the front of the classroom, barely a few feet away from the cops and the headmaster; her look was tense, and her hands were beginning to glow with the energy of her semblance. Sunset didn’t seem to actually like Blake very much, and Blake had to say that the feeling was mutual; if she were to choose a single word to describe Sunset at this moment, it might well end up being ‘callous,’ reflecting the lack of concern or fellow feeling that she had for anyone outside of her very narrow social circle. But Sunset, for all that she might act as though Blake was an idiot, had nevertheless never failed to support her, to help Blake when she had asked for help, to back her up even at the risk to her own life. And if she had done so reluctantly and accompanied by a great deal of sour grumbling, did that really matter? It seemed that she was even ready to defy the law for Blake’s sake, just as she had once defied Rainbow Dash. That had been payment of a debt, but the debt was paid now, so then why did she go so far for Blake?</p><p>
  <em>She must have meant it when she said she felt a kinship between us.</em>
</p><p>If Blake decided to run, then it seemed that Sun and Sunset would both try to help her get away, at least away from here. </p><p>And then there was Rainbow Dash. The Atlesian student did not seem quite so ready to leap into action on Blake’s behalf, but in her magenta eyes, there was a sadness and an understanding that Blake had not expected to see. Her expression was pinched, as if she would have liked to do something but was not entirely sure yet what to do. Blake still thought of Rainbow as one of those privileged faunus who did not really understand what their race went through – how could she, being so well-connected as she was, soaring as high as she did? – but as she looked into Rainbow’s eyes, perhaps Rainbow did remember what life for the average faunus was like after all. </p><p>She could not run. She wouldn’t cause that kind of trouble for Sun and Sunset. </p><p>Blake stood up, and as she stood up, she glanced at her teammates, not realizing how much their reactions would hurt her until she saw them: outrage from Bon Bon, open-mouthed disbelief from Lyra, and from Sky, her partner, anger that verged on hatred. </p><p>Whatever came next, whatever these cops wanted from her, a part of her life was over now. She could never go back to being just plain Blake Belladonna. Whatever happened, if she ever came back here, it would be as Blake the Faunus, Blake the Terrorist, Blake of the White Fang. </p><p>She would no longer be a person in this place, but a symbol of her kind.</p><p><em>Sienna would say that that’s exactly why we need the White Fang.</em> But the White Fang had set her up – Blake had no doubt that they had ultimately tipped off the cops and sent that video, if only because there was no one else who could have done it – so she wasn’t feeling too inclined to grant the validity of Sienna’s talking points. </p><p>If there was one thing in this awful situation that consoled her, it was the thought that, although she had barely begun to fight back, she had somebody sufficiently worried that they had done this to stop her. If she ever had the liberty to pursue it further, she would do so confident that she was on the right track. </p><p>If they allowed her a phone call, she would let Sunset know that she had to keep going, because they were onto something for a certainty. It was true that Sunset had been decidedly unenthusiastic about pressing on, but she’d been unenthusiastic about it yesterday and had nevertheless agreed to help Blake regardless; Blake was confident – Blake hoped – that it would be the same again, that Sunset would grumble but ultimately do the right thing.</p><p>But such thoughts were for later, for whatever ‘later’ might mean and hold for her. For now, she had to face the music.</p><p>Slowly, and feeling a surprising sense of liberation, an un-knotting of the constant feeling of tension that had been a part of her stomach for so long that she had learnt to live with it, with a weird feeling of relief that the worst that could happen had happened and she no longer hard to worry about her secret getting out any more, Blake untied the bow from on top of her head.</p><p>She heard a few gasps as people beheld her faunus ears, jutting out sharply like knives from the top of her head.</p><p>She would have liked to have said something to Sun, but the rest of the world wasn’t going to stop for them to have a moment. This wasn’t the kind of story where she’d have all the time in the world to say goodbye, to get him to promise to forget all about her or not, to say all the things that she found it so very hard to say. </p><p>She leapt from her seat and landed down on the stage of the lecture theatre in front of the cops and Professors Port and Ozpin. </p><p>“Here I am,” she told Lieutenant Martinez. “I’m Blake Belladonna.”</p><hr/><p>Rainbow Dash was surprised and not surprised. </p><p>She was not surprised that Blake was getting arrested. Or rather, she was and was not surprised. She was surprised that Blake’s secret was out like this, although when she thought about it, maybe it wasn’t so surprising that somebody had taken steps to shut Blake up through other means, since killing her was starting to look like a non-starter. It took guts to do it, though; she wondered how they had tipped off the cops without getting caught themselves, and to send this video so that even if Blake got her legal troubles cleared up, she couldn’t go back to school and try to brazen the whole thing out… it was a gutsy play, that was for sure. </p><p>The kind of guts that might, with a bit of luck, prove to be the undoing of their enemies. </p><p>She was a lot less surprised that the cops had taken the bait and arrested Blake. Rainbow hated to sound like… well, like Blake, but in her experience, police had a habit of locking up a faunus whether they deserved it or not. She’d first met Twilight when she’d tried to help her out from a bit of trouble she was in, and she’d been the one to get arrested for it, even though she was only trying to help because she was a faunus. She was lucky that Twilight and her folks hadn’t seen it the same way: they’d bailed her out of jail and given her a place to stay for the night, which had then turned into a place to stay for the next several months until they both went to Canterlot that fall. </p><p>But if Rainbow wasn’t surprised that the cops had come to arrest the person with good intentions but too many ears, she was more surprised that Blake so meekly allowed herself to be taken into custody. When the lieutenant came in waving her warrant,. Rainbow had thought for sure that Blake was going to run. She’d looked as though she was going to run, but then… she had looked at Rainbow, and it seemed that she had spotted the fact that Sun and Sunset were both prepared to help her out and decided that she didn’t want to cause them the trouble.  </p><p>
  <em>She’s got a good heart underneath all that stubbornness. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>She reminds me of myself, a little bit.</em>
</p><p>Rainbow had never considered trying to hide her ears and pass for human; some did, of course, like Blake’s old buddy Ilia from Crystal Prep who had kept it up for years, but Rainbow had never contemplated it for herself. What would have been the point? She knew who her friends were; they were the girls who had accepted her for who <em>and</em> what she was. She didn’t need to hide her ears around Twilight or Pinkie or any of the others. She didn’t need to pretend to be human at Sugarcube Corner, or even in the halls of Canterlot. </p><hr/><p>Some might have called what was happening now justice. Not too long ago, Rainbow would have said that it was no more than Blake deserved. She had been a  member of the White Fang, after all. But now… now, Rainbow wasn’t so sure. Blake was a lot of things, including a former terrorist and someone who had been brainwashed with an unthinking dislike of all things Atlas… but she was also trying to do better, and she knew things that could help them stop a major terrorist attack on Vale. </p><p>And she wasn’t going to be too much help to them in a Valish cell, was she?</p><p>“I know that some of you will have questions,” Professor Ozpin said, grave-faced and leaning upon his cane as the police led Blake away. “I know that some of you will be confused and alarmed by this development. I ask you to remain calm and to remember that I – and the entire faculty – treat your safety at this school as our highest priority. That said, Peter, I’m sorry, but I think it best to dismiss this class for today; I’m not sure if you will all be in a fit state to continue learning. If you have questions or concerns, my door is open. I ask only that you remember that everyone is the hero of their own story and consider carefully whether they must then be the villain of yours.”</p><p>“What are you thinking?” Ciel asked as the other students began to rise from their seats amidst much hubbub and babble about what had just occurred. </p><p><em>I’m thinking of a faunus girl locked in a cell and the girl who took a chance and opened the door for her. </em>“I’m thinking that we can’t exactly fulfill General Ironwood’s orders with Blake thrown in prison,” Rainbow said, “and I have the start of a plan, not all the details yet, but… Twi, can you find out who sent that video to everybody?”</p><p>“I’m already working on it,” Twilight replied, “but I’ll be able to work faster if I can get back to our room and use the computer there.”</p><p>“Do it and take Penny with you,” Rainbow said. “Penny, go with Twilight and keep her safe until Ciel and me come back.”</p><p>Penny saluted. “She’ll be safe with me!”</p><p>Rainbow grinned. “Sure she will.”</p><p>“What are we going to do?” asked Ciel.</p><p>“We… are going to talk to Sunset,” Rainbow said. </p><hr/><p><em>How quickly the smiles die,</em> Sunset thought, as she watched the shock and fear and anger blossom on the faces of her classmates. <em>How swiftly affection is replaced by fear and hatred. If you could see this, Princess Celestia, would you not understand how easily I could turn my back on friendship and affection? There is no loyalty to be found in it.</em></p><p>
  <em>None, save in the rarest of cases.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Even you, even we... one mistake, and all that has been done and shared is fast forgotten, all memories of happiness fade, and there is nothing but disgust and disdain.</em>
</p><p>If Blake had decided to run, then Sunset would have helped her. She'd been prepared to help her: her plan had been to block the doorway with a shield once Blake got out so that she couldn't be pursued. But Blake decided not to run, for reasons that Sunset honestly couldn't fathom. In the face of all the shock and anger, in the face of the dying of all the smiles, she decided to stand.</p><p>
  <em>It fits her nature and pattern of behaviour, I suppose. </em>
</p><p>Sunset turned away as Blake, vested of her pitiful disguise, walked down to deliver herself up into the custody of the Vale police. That wasn't something that she wanted to watch: Blake being marched out in the custody of the guards under the eyes of those who had once called her friend. She remembered what it felt like too much to want to watch it done to another.</p><p>Besides, by turning away… she could likewise turn away from the fact that there was nothing she could do. That she was helpless in the face of the majesty of law and state and all the prejudice that went hand in hand with the same. </p><p>She didn’t see her team approaching her, but they must have been on their way because she heard Rainbow Dash say to them, “Hey guys, I need to borrow Sunset for a bit, is that okay? Great, thanks.”</p><p>Rainbow didn’t wait for a real response, but took Sunset by the arm and steered her out of the classroom and down the corridor – in the opposite direction to that which most of the other students were heading in. Her teammate Ciel followed them both like a silent shadow.</p><p>“Guys!” Sun cried as he raced after them, heedless of Neptune’s attempts to stop him. “You have to do something to help Blake! I mean, you know she’s not a terrorist, right? Just because she used to be doesn’t mean that she ought to be punished for being one now!”</p><p>“You should have studied law,” Sunset muttered. “You’d be a marvel at the Inns of Court.”</p><p>“Relax, Sun,” Rainbow assured him. “We are going to do everything we can to help Blake out of this fix.”</p><p>“You are?” Sun asked. “Like what?”</p><p>“I don’t know yet,” Rainbow admitted. “That’s why you need to trust me and give us some space to work it out, okay?”</p><p>Sun nodded, if a little reluctantly. “She’s not a bad person, you know.”</p><p>“We know,” Sunset said. <em>Just an occasionally infuriating one.</em></p><p>Sun didn’t follow on but allowed Rainbow – trailed by Ciel – to drag Sunset farther and farther away. “Good luck guys!” Sun called, as he receded behind them.</p><p>Rainbow paid him no mind. "Do you think Blake trusts you?” she asked.</p><p>“Excuse me?”</p><p>“It’s a simple question: does she trust you?”</p><p>Sunset thought about it for a moment. “I… think so?” she ventured. “It’s weird, but I think that I might be the person she trusts most.”</p><p>“Is that so bizarre?” Ciel asked from behind them.</p><p>Sunset looked over her shoulder. “Yes, firstly, because she has a boyfriend, and second and more importantly, I don’t even think she likes me. But she does trust me. Or perhaps she just really doesn’t care whether I live or die and wanted someone expendable to help her out.”</p><p>Rainbow snorted. “Yeah, don’t discount that second one.”</p><p>“Why does it matter to you, anyway?”</p><p>Rainbow didn’t reply to that. Instead, she asked, “You were going to fight for her, weren’t you?”</p><p>Sunset pouted. “Why do you care?”</p><p>“Humour me?”</p><p>Sunset snorted. “I wasn’t going to fight. I was going to help her get away from the cops like I helped her get away from you.”</p><p>Rainbow winced at the memory. She scratched the back of her head. “I think the cops might have given you worse than a punch to the gut,” she pointed out.</p><p>Sunset lifted her head proudly. “I’ve been picked up by the cops more than once since I enrolled in Canterlot; I can handle a night in lockup.”</p><p>“But why would you?” Rainbow asked. “You said it yourself: Blake doesn’t even like you.”</p><p>“Blake doesn’t like anyone – except maybe Sun – and I get why,” Sunset declared. “She doesn’t have to like me to trust me, and since she does trust me… I hate the fact that I have to leave her hanging.”</p><p>Rainbow was silent for a moment. "You're really not the same Sunset I knew in Canterlot, are you? Back then, you wouldn't have given a damn about any of this."</p><p>"Thank you for noticing the change," Sunset growled. "Get to the point."</p><p>"We think we have a plan," Ciel said. "A way to get Miss Belladonna out of custody."</p><p>"We need to sell it to the general," Rainbow said, "and maybe to Blake herself too. If we offer her a deal, can you get her to take it?"</p><p>"What kind of deal?" Sunset asked. "The fact that she'd need to be persuaded to take it makes me nervous."</p><p>"I'll explain on the way," Rainbow said. "For now, we need to make a call to the general."</p><p>"Wait," Sunset said, unmoving. "This is about getting her to help you against the White Fang, isn’t it?"</p><p>"It’s about helping Blake too," Rainbow insisted. "But... yes, it’s also about helping Atlas, stopping the White Fang, and saving Vale. So come on, let's get to it."</p><p>Sunset sighed and shook her head. “You know, if Blake does go for this, there’ll be an irony to the fact that it took getting arrested to make her do the sensible thing.” </p><p>“Some people,” Ciel declared, “cannot be reasoned with save by the inescapable force of events.”</p><p>“So what is your brilliant plan, anyway?”</p><hr/><p>Ozpin sat in his office and watched the news on his scroll. It was not live, but it was only slightly delayed from when it had taken place. </p><p>“A startling development in the saga of the White Fang activity in Vale took place today at Beacon Academy,” Lisa Lavender reported, “when police arrested a first year student, Blake Belladonna, for membership of the White Fang and in connection with the recent robbery of a Schnee Dust Company train loaded with dust.”</p><p>Ozpin frowned as the image switched to a shot of Miss Belladonna, bound in aura-suppressing restraints, being walked by the police towards their waiting van in full view of the kingdom’s media. As the reporters showered questions at the silent Miss Belladonna, Ozpin thought that they resembled a mob as much as they did journalists. </p><p>The scowl remained on Ozpin’s face as he turned off the broadcast and called First Councillor Aris. </p><p>It took but a moment for his image to be projected onto the same screen where the news had been playing just a moment earlier. </p><p>“Ozpin,” she said coolly, “in light of recent developments, I’m forced to wonder if you’re slipping.”</p><p>“And I am forced to wonder what you were thinking, Madame Councillor,” Ozpin replied, “putting on that little show on my school grounds that way.”</p><p>Novo Aris stared at him from the other side of the screen. “My God,” she muttered. “You knew all along, didn’t you?”</p><p>“Most of my students are too young to arrive with a past,” Ozpin declared. “Miss Belladonna was one of the exceptions.”</p><p>“Being a member of the White Fang is more than just having a past,” Novo replied.</p><p>“<em>Former </em>member,” Ozpin corrected.</p><p>“The White Fang isn’t a country club; you can’t just quit and be done with it.”</p><p>“You would know more about country clubs than I, Madame Councillor.”</p><p>“Don’t get cute with me, Ozpin, not when you’ve been harbouring a damn terrorist underneath your roof!” Novo snapped. “My daughter was just at your school yesterday!”</p><p>“And there was never any danger of Miss Belladonna going on some kind of crazed rampage that put Miss Aris – or any of my students – at risk,” Ozpin said firmly. “I resent the implication that I would have allowed Miss Belladonna to attend Beacon if I thought for a second that she posed any danger to her fellow students.” Ozpin was silent for a moment. “I’ve spoken to her and looked into her eyes,” he said quietly, “and I believe she deserves a chance at redemption.”</p><p>Novo inhaled through her nostrils. “The law only grants redemption in exchange for punishment.”</p><p>“If you don’t think being a huntress is a punishing path, Madame Councillor, that only shows that you have never tried to walk it,” Ozpin said. “In all likelihood, Miss Belladonna would die in battle long before she would have completed any as-yet hypothetical prison sentence.” He let that hang in the air for a moment before he added, “Besides, there is also the issue of her relationship to the High Chieftain of Menagerie.”</p><p>“Menagerie is a small land of little account,” Novo said dismissively. “Vale doesn’t even recognise it as a kingdom! How they feel about this matters much less to me than the fact that I can finally tell the public that we’ve caught at least one terrorist!”</p><p>“For how long?” Ozpin whispered. <em>And what will the public say once Miss Shimmer and Miss Dash are done?</em></p><p>“Excuse me?” Novo demanded.</p><p>“Nothing, Madame Councillor, just thinking aloud,” Ozpin said calmly. He might have warned her that she was about to be gravely embarrassed by the power of Atlas, but quite frankly, the First Councillor had not endeared herself to him today, and he felt under no obligation to endear himself to her in turn. “Now, I won’t keep you any further, unless there is anything else you wish to say to me?”</p><p>“Not at the moment,” Novo declared, “but I hope that there aren’t any more skeletons hiding in Beacon’s closets, Ozpin, or I might be forced to reconsider your future as Headmaster of Beacon.”</p><p>“Duly noted,” Ozpin said. “Good day, Madame Councillor.”</p><p>“Good day, Ozpin,” Novo said, and her image disappeared, to be replaced mere seconds later by a notification of a call from James. </p><p>Ozpin accepted it, and the face of General Ironwood, transmitting from his ship, took the place of the recently departed First Councillor.</p><p>"So, it seems that one of your students used to be in the White Fang," Ironwood said.</p><p>Ozpin sipped his cocoa as he gazed down at the image of the general's face on his screen. "So it would appear."</p><p>"But you already knew that, didn't you?”</p><p>“As you knew that I knew from what Miss Dash told you,” Ozpin replied mildly. “To be perfectly frank, I’m a little surprised we haven’t discussed this before.”</p><p>"I knew that you trusted her," Ironwood said. "You wouldn't let her into your school if you thought she was dangerous."</p><p>"I'm glad to see that you still trust me enough to credit me that much."</p><p>"I've never stopped trusting you, Oz; I've only ever wished that you'd extend me the same courtesy," Ironwood replied. "So what do you plan to do now?"</p><p>"Well, once Miss Shimmer and Miss Dash have secured Miss Belladonna's release, I believe that I have enough influence with the Council to approve Miss Belladonna's return to attendance at Beacon," Ozpin said. In truth, the real difficulty there would be objections from the more prominent students, like Mister Winchester. His name and reputation carried a lot of weight, but ultimately, the Council answered to the voting public, and they wouldn't risk the wrath of public opinion if it looked to be set too fiercely against him.</p><p>It would be interesting to see how Miss Shimmer intended to manage the situation.</p><p>James looked both exasperated and secretly amused. "For a man who claims not to be omniscient, you certainly know a great deal."</p><p>"In my position, I can hardly afford not to," Ozpin replied. "I must confess, General, that I'm a little surprised. You're putting a great deal of credibility on the line for a former member of the White Fang."</p><p>"Rainbow Dash thinks it will be worth it," James said. </p><p>"And you trust Miss Dash that much, to wield your influence on your behalf?"</p><p>"I do," Ironwood said, without hesitation. "You must trust Miss Belladonna almost as much if you're willing to go against the council for her sake."</p><p>"I believe in second chances," Ozpin said. How could he not, when he had required so many second chances of his own?</p><hr/><p>The interrogation room stank of cigarettes, like the ones that Detective Yuma, Lieutenant Martinez’s partner, was currently smoking, filling the room up with smoke as he did so. It congealed on the table like old gravy, rising over her hands like a tide lapping on the shore. </p><p>Detective Yuma, a square-jawed man with a pair of navy blue eyes, took the cigarette out of his mouth long enough to blow in her face. She didn’t cough or splutter, as much as she wanted to. She wanted to avoid showing weakness more. </p><p>“You have the right to remain silent, but you may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something you later rely on in court; anything you do or say may be given in evidence,” Lieutenant Martinez said. “Understand?”</p><p>Blake glanced at him. “Yes.”</p><p>“Good,” Yuma said. “Now, why don’t you tell us what a White Fang agent is doing at Beacon? You hoping to get close to the Schnee heiress, huh? Kidnap her for ransom?”</p><p>“No,” Blake said firmly. “I’m not with the White Fang anymore-”</p><p>“But you were,” Martinez interrupted. “For the benefit of the tape, you admit that you were a member of the White Fang?”</p><p>Blake’s jaw clenched. “I… I came to Beacon to train to be a huntress.,” she said.</p><p>“Why?” Yuma asked. “I’m a bit of an expert on train robberies, and jJudging by that video of you on the train, you’ve got some serious skills already.” He smirked. “Why do you think Deej here needed a huntsman and a full tactical team before she felt brave enough to bring you in?”</p><p>“Bite my ass, jerkoff,” Martinez hissed. She scowled, though whether at Yuma, Blake, or at herself for her outburst, Blake couldn’t say. </p><p>“Beacon doesn’t train warriors,” Blake explained. “Beacon trains… heroes.”</p><p>“Oh, so you think you’re a hero, do you?” Martinez demanded.</p><p>“No, I… I’m trying to be a better person,” Blake said.</p><p>“Oh, so this is some sort of redemption story?” Martinez asked. She glanced at her partner. “Well, forgive me if I don’t buy it. People don’t change, not like that.”</p><p>“Maybe not,” Blake admitted. “But I’d like to try.”</p><p>Martinez stared down at her for a moment. Then she sat down upon the edge of the table, perched awkwardly upon it, her body half twisted away from Blake. “You want to be a better person? How about you start by doing the right thing now?”</p><p>“Help us by helping yourself,” Yuma added.</p><p>Blake’s eyes flickered between them. The lieutenant was a faunus, but… that kind of thinking had gotten her into a lot of trouble in the past. </p><p>But what excuse did she have for lying? If the White Fang were on the march, then somebody had to stop them, and it wasn’t going to be her… but then, it probably wasn’t going to be these cops either. They might mean well, they might even be good at their jobs, but that didn’t make them equal to this challenge. </p><p>“I don’t want to get anyone hurt unnecessarily,” Blake answeredsaid.</p><p>Martinez frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”</p><p>“It means she doesn’t think we can handle ourselves,” Yuma translated.</p><p>“Oh, is that right?” Martinez demanded. “Listen here, you little-”</p><p>“El-Tee, calm down,” Yuma said.</p><p>“No, I am not gonna calm down when I’ve just been insulted by some snot-nose kid straight out of diapers!”</p><p>“Do you have children, lieutenant?” Blake asked.</p><p>Martinez’s eyes narrowed. “Not that it’s any of your damn business, but I have two sons. Two <em>human</em> sons. Does that bother you?”</p><p>Blake frowned. “Does your husband treat you well?”</p><p>“Like a queen.”</p><p>“Then it doesn’t bother me,” Blake said, and she meant it too. Rainbow Dash had taught her that faunus could be happy amongst humans and also demonstrated the importance of taking the word of a faunus who said they were happy in their situation instead of assuming that they were suffering the pangs of false consciousness. She continued, “And I won’t be the reason you didn’t come home to your sons by giving you information that will put you in danger.”</p><p>Martinez scowled. “Are you trying to get me to beat the crap out of you so that you can scream ‘police brutality’ at trial?”</p><p>“Lieutenant,” Yuma chided.</p><p>“Because if so, you’re doing a pretty good job!”</p><p>“Lieutenant,” Yuma repeated.</p><p>“Has anyone ever told you that you’re incredibly annoying?”</p><p>“Yes,” Blake answered.</p><p>Yuma rubbed the space between his eyes. “It’s cute that you’re worried about us, kid. And I get it. I don’t plan to be involved in any bust on a White Fang base.” He leaned back in his chair and tucked his hands behind his head. “I am going to sit back at the station letting the tactical teams do all the work.”</p><p>Martinez snorted. “Instead of worrying about us, how about you worry about all the felonies that we’re about to throw at you? Armed robbery, membership in an illegal organisation, obstruction of justice for all of our questions you’re refusing to answer.” She stood up. “You in the White Fang-”</p><p>“I’m not with the White Fang.”</p><p>Martinez ignored her. “-might think that you’re helping solve the problems of race, but as far as I’m concerned, the only problem of race in this kingdom is that people like you won’t shut up about it, so if you don’t start talking and help us out, I will make it my business to dig up everything that you have ever done down to that one time you loitered on private property, and I will pin all of it on you until you won’t get out of prison until you’re a shrunken old hag, do you understand?”</p><p>The door into the interrogation room opened, admitting a bald man in a cheap suit. “Detective, Lieutenant, outside.”</p><p>The two detectives glanced at one another. Martinez said, “Captain, we’re in the middle of an interrogation.”</p><p>“Not anymore you’re not,” said the captain. “You’re done. Outside.”</p><p>Martinez frowned. “Captain, is something going on?”</p><p>“I’ll tell you outside,” the captain said, calmly but insistently.</p><p>Yuma shrugged as he stabbed out his cigarette. Martinez growled wordlessly between clenched teeth. If this was a tactic, she was doing a good job at seeming genuinely annoyed.  </p><p>They trooped out, and Martinez slammed the door behind them. </p><p>Blake waited, alone, and stared at the glass. Were they all behind that window now, watching her, deciding how best to come back and break her? </p><p>They could try. Adam hadn’t broken her, and neither would they.</p><p>If she’d known anything about possible future attacks, she would have told them; if she’d known anything that would help them save lives, she would have told them. But she didn’t know anything like that, and even if she gave them her entire life story, there was no way they were actually going to talk to a prosecutor on her behalf. Not for a faunus like her.</p><p>The door opened. Blake blinked in surprise. </p><p>“Sunset?”</p><p>Her fellow huntress-in-training walked in, breathed in, and immediately started to look a little green in the face.</p><p>“Who set off the smoke machine?” she gasped.</p><p>“Sunset, what are you-?” Blake stopped as Rainbow and Ciel followed her inside. “What are <em>you two </em>doing here?” she asked.</p><p>“They’re the bad cops; I’m the good cop,” Sunset said, as she lounged against the wall.</p><p>“Don’t listen to her; the bad cops just left,” Rainbow said with a slight snigger as she and Ciel sat down opposite Blake. “We’re not cops.”</p><p>“Obviously,” Blake said.</p><p>Rainbow grinned. “Do you know why those two cops just left the room?”</p><p>“No,” Blake replied. “What’s going on?”</p><p>“The cops left you alone,” Rainbow said, “because their captain just got a call from the Council’s office, who just got off the phone with the Atlesian consulate, who just spoke to General Ironwood, who placed you under the protection of Atlas for the time being.”</p><p>“How long that protection lasts is up to you, for now,” Ciel said.</p><p>Blake leaned back in her chair. “Let me guess. You have a way of forcing my hand, so you’re going to make me help you whether I want to or not?”</p><p>“You don’t have to help,” Ciel replied. “You can always choose to go to prison.”</p><p>“Ciel,” Rainbow said reproachfully.</p><p>“It’s true, is it not?” Ciel asked.</p><p>“Yeah,” Rainbow conceded, “but don’t say it like that.” She placed her hands on the table and swept some of the vestigial smoke away with a wave of her hand. “Tell me about the White Fang.”</p><p>Blake scowled. “You’re not cops, but you ask the same questions?”</p><p>Rainbow shook her head. “I mean tell me why you joined the White Fang. That night at the docks, I asked why a girl with a stick up her butt about faunus rights quit the White Fang, but I never asked why the Princess of Menagerie joined the White Fang in the first place. I’ve never been to Menagerie, but my parents moved there when my Dad retired. They say it’s a magical place. They also say that folks move <em>to</em> Menagerie; they don’t <em>leave </em>Menagerie. But you did. I want to know why you ran away from paradise and joined a terrorist organisation.”</p><p>“Just because it’s paradise doesn’t mean it has what you’re looking for,” Sunset muttered.</p><p>“I didn’t join the White Fang; I was born into it,” Blake said. “From the time I could walk, I was going on rallies, marches, peaceful protests, and from the time I was old enough to understand, I could see that it wasn’t working. We marched, my parents made speeches, we delivered petitions to the councils of the Four Kingdoms, and none of it worked! Nothing changed! I wanted justice!”</p><p>“Until the killing got too much for you,” Rainbow murmured.</p><p>Blake scowled and leaned back in her chair. “Now… I see that all the violence, the bloodshed… it still hasn’t changed a thing.” She closed her eyes. “All that we wanted… all we ever wanted was a chance to live our lives, to choose our own path, the freedom that every human takes for granted. But then we started taking lives, taking that freedom away from people, and now…” Blake looked away, and for a moment, her thoughts flew elsewhere. She remembered sitting at the feet of Sienna Khan and listening to the leader of the White Fang talk about her love of gothic romance, one of the strongest women Blake had ever met recommending books about helpless maidens held hostage in gloomy castles by brooding aristocrats; she thought about Adam, talking about how once the war was won, he meant to found a new city in Anima where all faunus would be welcome. He had promised to build her a house in that new city, a home where they could live together in happiness and peace. Was anything left of either of them now but bitterness and hatred?</p><p>“Look at me,” Rainbow said.</p><p>Blake turned her head slowly, until she was staring into Rainbow Dash’s magenta eyes. </p><p>They stared at one another for a moment, and then another. Then Rainbow glanced at Ciel and nodded.</p><p>Ciel said, “Miss Belladonna, have you ever heard of the Legion of the Damned?”</p><p>Blake hesitated, the name sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it. “No.”</p><p>“During the Great War, when Mantle had suffered severe losses, it began to be difficult for the kingdom to replenish the ranks of its armies,” Ciel explained. “As a result, the prisoners languishing in Mantle’s jails were given the opportunity to serve their nation: any man willing to take up arms for Mantle would be granted an unconditional pardon for their crimes and allowed to go free once the war ended… if they survived. Though they knew the fighting would be desperate and the risks would be great, nevertheless, thousands jumped at the opportunity for a second chance. They were called the Legion of the Damned.”</p><p>“How many of them survived?” Blake asked. It sounded like the kind of unit that would be used as cannon fodder.</p><p>“Six-hundred and ninety-three men mustered out at the war’s end,” Ciel said. “As promised, they were given their freedom and allowed to go wherever they wished.”</p><p>“Which is more than can be said for the Servian Legions,” Blake said. “I may not have heard of the convicts, but I know that during the Great War, Mantle and Mistral were so desperate for troops that they also offered freedom to any slave – human or faunus – who was willing to fight in their armies.” She snorted. “And then the war ended, and slavery was abolished anyway. Those who had died had done so for nothing.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t say that,” Sunset said. “If it hadn’t been for that hard core of Great War veterans, the Faunus would have been screwed, come the Revolution. It was the refusal of the so-called Servian troops to be disarmed and deported that started the revolution in the first place.”</p><p>Blake was silent for a moment. “Why the history quiz?”</p><p>“Like we said,” Rainbow told her. “You’re under the protection of Atlas.”</p><p>Ciel pulled out her scroll. “The paperwork was a little rushed, but in order. All you need to do is sign.”</p><p>“And then what?”</p><p>“And then you join the Atlesian military; like the Legion of the Damned, you fight for us, and we give you a fresh start,” Rainbow said. “You help us stop the White Fang here in Vale, and everything that you did before gets wiped away. No cops, no cell, nothing. You can walk out of here. You can even go back to Beacon if they’ll let you in. All you have to do is help when we ask, and the rest of the time… you’re free to do as you like.”</p><p>“Really?”</p><p>“Really,” Rainbow said.</p><p>“And when that’s done, then what?” Blake said. “Will you want me for something else? If I take this offer, then Atlas owns me, and I don’t get to say when I walk away.”</p><p>“You’re not walking anywhere right now,” Rainbow said. “If it helps, I give you my word that I won’t ask you to do anything else other than help defeat the White Fang in Vale.”</p><p>“Your word?”</p><p>“My word,” Rainbow repeated. “Which I never go back on. Once I make a promise, you can bet I stick to it. So what do you say?”</p><p>Blake said nothing. She didn’t know <em>what </em>to say. Yes, they were offering to let her walk out of here a free person, with the threat of law permanently banished from her life… but on the other hand, in order to do it, she would have become a soldier of Atlas, a part of the military that did more than anything else – maybe even more than the Schnee Dust Company – to keep the faunus in their place, to maintain and defend the system of the world that was so stacked against their kind. </p><p>And she would have to give up her freedom. No longer would she be free to go where she wished, when she wished. She would be bound to the will of Atlas, to the will of Rainbow Dash until she and Atlas both were done with her. </p><p>And only Rainbow Dash’s word – and her assurance that it was her bond – that Atlas would be done with her before she died.</p><p>“We’ll give you a minute to think about it,” Rainbow said as she got up. Ciel followed her example, and they both left one after the other. Sunset remained, leaning against the wall, arms folded, not looking at Blake.</p><p>“It’s a good offer,” Sunset said.</p><p>“Would you take it?” Blake asked.</p><p>“I’m not the one looking at prison.”</p><p>“That’s what I thought,” Blake said.</p><p>Sunset walked towards her. “I’m not going to say that this is the only way to save you, Blake. Because it might not be; I haven’t had a chance to think. But it’s certainly the easiest way.”</p><p>Blake looked up at her. “Why do you care about saving me?”</p><p>Sunset shrugged and was silent for a moment. “I… I care because you wanted more than the world was willing to give you, and so you tried to take it regardless. I… I admire that. I guess I can relate.” Sunset leaned on the table. “Take the offer.”</p><p>“They want my freedom.”</p><p>“They want you to do what you wanted to do so badly anyway,” Sunset said. “Stop the White Fang, find out the truth, save Vale.”</p><p>“I wanted to do that alone.”</p><p>“You wanted to do it with me, but that was never going to work, was it?” Sunset asked. “Two of us, alone, against the whole White Fang? We couldn’t even take out Torchwick and Adam by ourselves. I’ve been telling you since yesterday that we couldn’t do this alone. I’ve been telling you since yesterday to take Rainbow Dash’s help.”</p><p>“You didn’t say that I should join the Atlesian military.”</p><p>“It’s a paper thing!”</p><p>“It’s my name,” Blake said.</p><p>Sunset sighed as she straightened up. “They’re going to throw the book at you if you don’t do this. And it’s just what the White Fang want, too.”</p><p>Blake cocked her head a little. “You guessed that as well.”</p><p>“It seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?” Sunset asked. “Someone wants you inside a cell, not out on the street. I say you should never give your enemies what they want.”</p><p>Blake hesitated.</p><p>“Where do you want to be?” Sunset asked. “In a cell, accomplishing nothing while things get worse? Or out on the streets stopping a terrible tragedy from unfolding?”</p><p>Blake closed her eyes. Her freedom or her cause? Her principles or her dislike for Atlas?</p><p>In the end, there was only one adult choice that she could make. </p><p>She nodded her head. </p><p>She heard, rather than saw, the door to the interview room open. “Well?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>“I’ll do it,” Blake said. “Though I still don’t see why Vale is agreeing to this.”</p><p>“Because Atlas desires it,” Ciel said, “and Atlas tends to get what it wants, these days.”</p><p>That, Blake reflected, was uncomfortably true. She opened her eyes to see Rainbow smiling at her.</p><p>“Congratulations, you’re about to join the greatest fighting force Remnant has ever seen,” Rainbow comforted her. “Trust me, one day, you’ll thank me for this and call it the best day of your life.”</p><p>“I somehow doubt that.”</p><p>“Give it time,” Rainbow told her. “Now, let’s get you signed up and get out of here.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Reception and Reaction</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Welcome home, Blake</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Reception and Reaction</p><p> </p><p>Ozpin got the impression that if First Councillor Aris had been speaking to him in person, she would have been pacing up and down. As they were talking on a screen, she was forced to remain where he could see her, but nevertheless, he could spot the nervous energy that was consuming her. Her entire body was trembling.</p><p>Or that might have been simply a sign of how upset she was. </p><p>“This… this is the biggest stab in the back by Atlas since their refusal to help us retake Mountain Glenn!” Novo snarled. “I’m starting to wonder if Aspen isn’t right about Atlas after all.”</p><p>“Please, Madame Councillor, let’s not get lost in the weeds of hyperbole,” Ozpin pleaded. “To be frank, and speaking as someone who was there at the time, the Atlesian decision with regard to Mountain Glenn was eminently correct: even if the city could have been retaken, to what end? It had been amply demonstrated that it was unsuitable for further settlement. Any further attempts to reoccupy the territory would have been a waste of manpower, and any attempt to recolonise the city would have been throwing good men after good.”</p><p>“We are their ally, Ozpin,” Novo insisted. “What price the special relationship if they won’t support us when we’re counting on them?”</p><p>It was Ozpin’s considered opinion that the so-called "special relationship" existed only in the minds of Valish politicians and journalists; in Atlas, it figured not at all. In Atlas, there were those who were only looking for the interests of Atlas and those who took a more high-minded view that encompassed the entire world. No one, or at least no one in any position of authority, saw Vale as being more important than Mistral or even Vacuo. </p><p>“I have my disagreements with General Ironwood,” Ozpin said delicately, “and there are certainly areas of Atlesian policy which I find somewhat vexing.” He doubted that anyone else was as vexed by them as he was, but he found the Atlesian tendency to push Atlas students towards the Atlesian Corps of Specialists to be counterproductive at best and dangerous at worst. Huntsmen were supposed to be free to choose their own allegiance without pressure; having them groomed for four years to enlist in the Atlesian military as a better class of soldier was not what he had had in mind when he set up the academy system. “Nevertheless,” Ozpin continued, “I trust the good intentions of General Ironwood. In my experience, Atlas will always do the right thing.” <em>Even if they have to try everything else first.</em></p><p>“I’m not sure how granting diplomatic status to a White Fang terrorist-”</p><p>“A <em>former</em> White Fang terrorist,” Ozpin corrected her.</p><p>Novo glowered at him from out of the screen. “Once again, you assert that without proof.”</p><p>“Miss Belladonna has harmed no one during her time at Beacon, save for genuine White Fang insurgents whom she has resisted with all her might,” Ozpin replied. “Does that not prove something?”</p><p>“An argument she could have made in court if the Atlesians had not granted her diplomatic status,” Novo declared. “Why? Why would they humiliate me in this way?”</p><p>“I’m sure it was not General Ironwood’s intent,” Ozpin said diplomatically.</p><p>“It was the outcome!” Novo snapped. “Our much trumpeted arrest of a terrorist has now backfired completely, and the suspect, whom we took into custody with so much fanfare, is now free to walk the streets under the protection of Atlas!”</p><p>“With respect, Madame Councillor-”</p><p>“If you’re going to say that this is my fault for making a fuss, I would advise you not to,” Novo growled. “I am not in the mood for anyone to say 'I told you so.'”</p><p>“In which case, I wouldn’t dream of it,” Ozpin murmured. “Nevertheless, the situation is now what it is. Miss Belladonna’s status places her beyond the reach of Valish law.”</p><p>“Why?” Novo demanded. “Why would Atlas do such a thing?”</p><p>“I think,” Ozpin said, choosing his words carefully, “that the Atlesians believe that Miss Belladonna can be of use to them in their efforts against the White Fang here in Vale.”</p><p>Novo’s eyes narrowed. “You mean… she is their informant?”</p><p>“Something like that, yes.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Novo murmured. “That… yes, I could spin that. We will tell the press that she was always an Atlesian agent within the White Fang, that her cover was blown and that we acted based on incomplete information fed to us from within the White Fang who hoped to punish her for what they perceived to be her betrayal. Do you think the press and public would buy that?”</p><p>“I think you have the bones of a fascinating story, Madame Councillor, full of intrigue, espionage, and betrayal,” Ozpin declared, “and the people love a good story.”</p><p>“I hope so,” Novo said. She exhaled loudly. “Are you going to let the girl back into your school?”</p><p>“If she is a former Atlesian agent whose cover was blown, then how can I not?”</p><p>“Very droll, professor.”</p><p>“In all seriousness, Madame Councillor, Miss Belladonna completed Initiation successfully and has not committed any offence since arriving at Beacon that would warrant her expulsion.”</p><p>“Your students might not feel the same way,” Novo pointed out.</p><p>“Without meaning to sound unduly harsh, I don’t poll the students on whether they approve of all their classmates, although I will admit there may be issues with her teammates,” Ozpin replied. “But nothing unmanageable.” He hoped not, at least.</p><p>“I see,” Novo said. “Very well, Ozpin. I hope you know what you’re doing.”</p><p>“So do I, Madame Councillor.”</p><hr/><p>The elevator ground its way to the top of the tower with what seemed to Sunset to be an agonising slowness. She could hear the cables rattling above her as they bore her up to Professor Ozpin's office.</p><p>She wanted to get there quickly. She didn't want to get there at all. There was a part of her that wanted to rage at how terribly slowly this stupid elevator cab was moving; there was another part of her that wanted to push all the buttons so that they'd get there even more slowly, although the fact that she was not alone – that she was accompanied by Rainbow Dash, of all people – meant that that part of her was being quieter than it might otherwise have been. She had a care for her dignity, after all; if Rainbow caught her futzing around with the lift buttons like a kid, then she'd never hear the end of it.</p><p>Nevertheless, even a concern for her precious dignity couldn't stop Sunset from visible fidgeting as the lift rose inexorably to the highest height in Beacon Tower.</p><p>"Are you nervous?" Rainbow asked.</p><p>Sunset couldn't hear any scorn in the other girl's voice, only curiosity, but still, she reacted with a snap as though Rainbow had sneered at her. "No, I'm not nervous! Don't be ridiculous."</p><p>A moment of silence descended between the two of them.</p><p>"So, what are you nervous about?" Rainbow asked.</p><p>"I told you that I wasn't nervous!"</p><p>"And I didn't believe you," Rainbow clarified. "So, what's up?"</p><p><em>'What's up'? Seriously?</em> "It doesn't matter."</p><p>"Come on, we're both in this together."</p><p>"The fact that you can say that reveals the paucity of your understanding."</p><p>"Oh, so you think you're running a bigger risk than me, is that it?"</p><p>"I think that..." Sunset trailed off. "I said it doesn't matter. You wouldn't understand anyway." She shuffled from side to side and willed the elevator to move faster.</p><p>Rainbow snorted derisively. "Why wouldn't I understand? Because I'm not as smart or deep as the great Sunset Shimmer?"</p><p>"Because you never had to struggle to be a good person!" Sunset snarled, recoiling as she realised what she'd just said. <em>If I knew a spell that could erase memories or turn back time, I would use them both in a heartbeat.</em></p><p>Rainbow stared at her as though she'd grown another head. "I... huh?"</p><p>"I'm about to go to bat in front of Professor Ozpin for a former terrorist," Sunset muttered. The leather of her jacket creased as she folded her arms. "I want to help Blake, but... all I can think of as this damn stupid slow elevator crawls up the shaft is that I'm about to put my credibility on the line for an ex-White Fang... whatever she was. And I know it's selfish, and I know that her problems are much worse than mine and that whether or not anyone still respects me at the end of this is the last thing that I should be worrying about, but this is who I am, okay? You can... you can't ever understand that because you always made being nice look easy. That's one of the many reasons why I never liked you."</p><p>"You disliked me specifically?" Rainbow asked. "I always just figured you were just a mean-tempered jerk."</p><p>Sunset exhaled loudly. "You were popular when I wasn't, so I couldn't blame everything on me being a faunus, your powers aren't nearly as cool as mine, but everybody fawned all over you; you're cocksure, arrogant, <em>unbelievably </em>annoying, and so... so <em>nice</em>. Like, why did you used to stick up for Fluttershy when you had it worse than she did? How were you so nice? You were a faunus in Atlas, just like me, how did that not fill your stomach with so much rage? How did that... didn't you ever want to scream and shout in the faces of those human friends of yours, didn't ever just want to hurt them the way the world kept hurting us?"</p><p>"No," Rainbow said, leaning slightly away from Sunset as though she were suddenly afraid of her. "No, I never wanted to do that."</p><p>"Why not?" Sunset demanded. "Why weren't you as pissed as I was?"</p><p>"Because things weren't that bad," Rainbow said. "Sure, some people were assholes about my ears, but who cares? I didn't. So long as I had my friends, I didn't need to care what random people thought about me. They were just... air on my face as I flew, you know? I felt them for a moment, and then I left them behind. You know what the difference is between you and me?"</p><p>"Do I want to know?"</p><p>The elevator shuddered to a halt.</p><p>"I don't need other people to tell me how awesome I am," Rainbow answered.</p><p>The doors opened before Sunset could form a response – something along the lines of she didn't need to be told that she was great; she just needed her greatness to be appreciated by others, that was all – before they both had to step out of the elevator cab and into the headmaster's spacious tower office.</p><p>The gears of the clock ground away above their heads and cast their shadows on the floor.</p><p>Professor Ozpin sat enthroned in his seat, silent and inscrutable as the two young huntresses walked in. The only sound apart from the grinding gears were the footfalls of Sunset and Rainbow as they crossed the floor.</p><p>Two chairs had been placed in front of the headmaster’s desk – like he’d been expecting the pair of them – but neither of the two girls sat down. Rainbow stood at ease, her feet spread apart and her hands clasped behind her back, and Sunset found herself doing the same, if only to have something to do with her hands.</p><p>"Please, Miss Shimmer, Miss Dash, there's no need to stand on ceremony with me," Professor Ozpin said, sounding genial enough. "Sit, both of you."</p><p>Sunset took one of the two chairs in front of the headmaster's desk. Rainbow, a moment later, followed suit.</p><p>"Now," Professor Ozpin said, "why don't you tell me why you wanted to see me?"</p><p>Rainbow said nothing; she had already agreed to let Sunset take the lead on this. As an Atlas student, she would let Sunset make the running and only intervene if necessary or when questioned, so it was Sunset who said, "It's about Blake."</p><p>Professor Ozpin nodded sagely. "An unfortunate business. And yet I gather that Miss Belladonna has already been released from police custody."</p><p>"Yes, Professor, she has," Sunset said. "Blake has... she's entered into an arrangement with Atlas."</p><p>"I see," Professor Ozpin said, leaving his opinion on what he saw unclear. "The terms of said arrangement being what?"</p><p>"Service, sir, in exchange for immunity,” Rainbow said softly.</p><p>"It means that Blake will be undertaking missions for Atlas for a while, against the White Fang here in Vale," Sunset said. "But when she isn't... we were hoping that she could come back to Beacon."</p><p>Professor Ozpin cradled his hands together and rested his elbows upon his desk. "There are some who would find the very idea of what you're suggesting to be absurd, Miss Shimmer."</p><p>"Unless any of those people are in this room, I don't see the relevance of their opinion, Professor."</p><p>Professor Ozpin chuckled. “You have a point, Miss Shimmer. I have no objection to Miss Belladonna returning to school if she wishes to do so. Indeed, it would be a shame to lose such a promising young huntress in training at this stage, and after the two of you have gone to such lengths to secure her release from police custody. You may tell Miss Belladonna that she may return and be welcome. Although…”</p><p>“Professor?”</p><p>“There is the question of Team Bluebell,” Ozpin said. “It will be difficult for Miss Belladonna to continue leading a team if she is at the beck and call of Atlas. And then there is the question of whether Team Bluebell will want their leader back. You are correct that most of the objections other students might make are of little consequence, but with a team, it is a little different. In order to fight together, there must – or at least should be – absolute trust between teammates. That may be difficult to achieve in this case.”</p><p>“Can’t you just order them to suck it up, sir?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>Professor Ozpin chuckled. “This is not Atlas, Miss Dash; we do things a little differently here.”</p><p>Rainbow muttered something about doing things worse, to which Professor Ozpin did not deign to respond.</p><p>Sunset’s brow furrowed. “If… if Blake can’t be with her team… what place is there for her here?”</p><p>“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Miss Shimmer,” Professor Ozpin said. “Will you please speak to Team Bluebell on Miss Belladonna’s behalf and take their temperature?”</p><p>Sunset’s brow furrowed. “Professor… is this some kind of test?”</p><p>Professor Ozpin stared blankly at her for a moment. “Whatever would give you that idea, Miss Shimmer?”</p><p>“The fact that you want me to do this instead of doing it yourself or asking one of the teachers,” Sunset said.</p><p>“Do you object?” Professor Ozpin asked.</p><p>“I think that this is Blake’s life we’re talking about, not a chance for you to see how I interact with other people,” Sunset snapped.</p><p>The professor’s smile broadened. “But who else could I ask who would be as concerned for Miss Belladonna as you, Miss Shimmer? I must say, I’m impressed; you’ve grown a great deal since the year began.”</p><p>Sunset coughed into one hand. “I… thank you, Professor. I’ll do it, I just- is there no one else?”</p><p>“I think a friend will be better at conveying Miss Belladonna’s merits than a more remote figure of authority,” Professor Ozpin said. </p><p>“I see. Very well, Professor,” Sunset said as she got up from her seat. “And thank you.”</p><p>“Don’t thank me, Miss Shimmer,” Professor Ozpin said. “As of yet, I’ve done absolutely nothing to be thanked for.”</p><p>“Professor,” Rainbow said, “do you not need to talk to the Council about this?”</p><p>Ozpin smiled. “Oh, did I forget to mention, Miss Dash? I already have.”</p><hr/><p>“So Blake’s been hiding a pair of cute little kitty ears under the bow the entire time?” Nora asked rhetorically, flopping down onto her bed.</p><p>“She did wear it all the time,” Ren pointed out.</p><p>“Ren, we <em>all</em> wear the same outfits all the time,” Nora replied.</p><p>Ren considered that for a moment. “Fair point,” he conceded.</p><p>“Isn’t the fact that she’s a member of the White Fang more important than the fact that she’s a faunus?” Dove asked.</p><p>“She <em>used to be </em>a member of the White Fang,” Yang replied.</p><p>Nora sat up and looked at Yang from across the dorm room. “You knew!” she cried, pointing at Yang accusingly.</p><p>Yang laughed nervously. She scratched the back of her head with one hand, her fingers running through her luxurious blonde hair. “Well… a little, yeah. How do you think I knew to be at the docks last semester?”</p><p>“We never found out,” Ren reminded her.</p><p>“Because <em>you</em> kept it to yourself,” Nora added.</p><p>“I take it that Blake found out about the robbery and asked you to help her stop it?” Ren suggested.</p><p>“Pretty much, yeah.”</p><p>“But how did she know there was going to be a robbery if she is only a former member of the White Fang?” inquired Ren.</p><p>“She’s still got a few contacts on the inside, or she did,” Yang admitted. “People like her who aren’t thrilled about what the White Fang is turning into.”</p><p>“What <em>is </em>the White Fang turning into?” demanded Dove. “Aren’t they just a pack of thieves and murderers?”</p><p>Yang looked at him. “How much did you know about the wider world before you came to Beacon, Dove?”</p><p>“Not much,” Dove admitted. “We didn’t get a lot of contact with the outside world.”</p><p>“Right,” Yang said. “Well, when we were growing up, the White Fang used to be a peaceful organisation; they used to hold rallies and stuff. It’s only in the last five years or so that they started using violence to try and get their way. Blake could explain they changed, but the point is that Blake saw them getting more and more violent, and so, she saw that it wasn’t for her. So she decided to quit and devote herself to becoming a huntress, just like us.” She grinned. “Just like me and Nora, anyway.”</p><p>“I see,” Ren murmured.</p><p>“Do you?” Yang replied. “She’s not a bad person, Ren.”</p><p>“Has she killed people?” asked Dove.</p><p>Yang’s mouth opened, but no words emerged. “I don’t know,” she confessed. “We’re not close, and we haven’t talked about it. In fact, we haven't talked about it at all because – repeat after me – we’re not close. Maybe, or maybe not.”</p><p>Dove balled his hands into fists and rested them upon his knees. “What are Team Bluebell going to do with only three members?”</p><p>“Maybe they won’t be a man down for very long,” Yang suggested.</p><p>“You mean Professor Ozpin will admit a new student?”</p><p>“No, I mean Blake will be back,” Yang explained. “I think Sunset and Rainbow Dash have a plan to… rescue her? Save her? Fix things? They’ve got a plan, anyway, and that’s where they went after Blake was arrested.”</p><p>Ren opened up his scroll and, with one finger, opened up an app that seemed to be news related, although Yang didn’t recognise the exact app he was using. “Hmm,” he murmured.</p><p>“Well don’t keep us in suspense, Ren!” Nora cried. “What’s going on?”</p><p>“Blake has been released,” Ren declared. “According to these reports, she was an Atlesian agent within the White Fang, wrongfully detained by Valish authorities unaware of all the facts.”</p><p>“That’s a great cover story,” Nora said. “Really helps everyone save face.”</p><p>“You don’t believe it?” asked Dove.</p><p>“Yang, did Blake ever mention to you then she was really an Atlas agent?”</p><p>“No, but-”</p><p>“No, I don’t believe it,” Nora interrupted. “But good news, Dove! Team Bluebell is back up to four members!”</p><p>Dove didn’t look very reassured by that. He scowled. “She shouldn’t be allowed back into this school. Huntsmen are supposed to be paragons of virtue and integrity.”</p><p>Yang chuckled. “Okay, anyone in this room who thinks that they are flawless, raise their hand.” She didn’t raise her own hand, and nobody thought so highly of themselves as to do so. </p><p>“I never said I was flawless,” Dove declared, “but there’s a difference between being flawed and being vile! She joined a violent gang of brigands; the fact that they eventually got too violent for her doesn’t change that.”</p><p>“So she was just supposed to smile and take whatever the world dished out to her?” Nora demanded. “Do you think that the violence of the White Fang is worse than what the faunus have to go through every day?”</p><p>“I don’t know what the faunus go through,” Dove admitted, “but I know that nothing justifies violence against the innocent.”</p><p>“Well, that’s very chivalrous of you, Dove,” Nora said with evident sarcasm, “but the world is full of people who are getting put down all the time, and not all of the people who are putting them mean to do it, but nothing ever changes because of people like you who see any attempt to change anything as bad and wrong just because it upsets people!”</p><p>“There’s a difference between upsetting people and killing them!” Dove cried. “And if you can’t see that then maybe you shouldn’t be at Beacon either!”</p><p>“Calm down, guys,” Yang said, standing up and casting a shadow over Dove. “We’re not here to debate whether violence for change is justified or not. The point is, Blake’s been let out, and she’s going to be coming back to Beacon. Dove… I know that it doesn’t seem like a very huntsman thing to do, but I really do believe that Blake is trying to make amends for her past. And I think that she deserves a chance to do that. You’re not going to make trouble for her, are you?”</p><p>“No,” Dove said at once. “But…”</p><p>“But?” Yang asked.</p><p>“I wish Lyra and Bon Bon didn’t have to go through this.”</p><hr/><p>“So she’s <em>not </em>an Atlesian agent?”</p><p>“No,” Novo said, her voice echoing out of Cardin’s scroll to strike at his very soul. “Blake Belladonna is nothing more than a White Fang agent.”</p><p>“'Is'?” Cardin demanded.</p><p>“Professor Ozpin says that she is no longer with them, but he has no proof of that,” Novo said.</p><p>“And despite that, he’s still letting her come back to Beacon?” Cardin snapped. “And there’s nothing you can do about it… ma’am,” he added quickly, remembering just who he was talking to.</p><p>“Don’t apologise for your temper, Cardin; I share your aggravation,” Novo informed him. “But no, there is nothing I can do. Now that she is under Atlesian protection, I can’t order her arrest, and Professor Ozpin can admit anyone he likes to Beacon.”</p><p>“And everything about her having been in Atlesian service-”</p><p>“Is just a cover story for the press, to lessen my humiliation,” Novo confessed.</p><p>“And so we have a-” Cardin stopped himself from saying something he would regret. Novo Aris’ sister had married a faunus, after all, and she seemed to get on with her niece and nephew as much as Skystar did. As much as Cardin might find it disgraceful that even more faunus were walking the halls of Beacon, the First Councillor probably wouldn’t feel the same way. “And so we have a terrorist in the school. Why are you telling me this?”</p><p>“Because Skystar’s role as Amity Princess means that she’ll be going up to Beacon not infrequently,” Novo reminded him. “While she’s there, and while that terrorist is there… I’m trusting you to keep my daughter safe.”</p><p>“She will be safe, with me.”</p><p>“I hope so,” Novo said. “I’m trusting you with what is most precious to me in the whole world, Cardin.”</p><p>“You can rely on me, ma’am,” Cardin declared. He’d die before he let anything happen to Skystar.</p><p>“Thank you, Cardin,” Novo said. “That’s a load off my mind.” She smiled at him. “Are you still going to come over for dinner this weekend?”</p><p>“I wouldn’t miss it, ma’am.”</p><p>Novo chuckled. “Good boy; it will be wonderful to see you again. Take care.”</p><p>“You too, ma’am,” Cardin said as Novo hung up on him. He shut his scroll with just a little more force than necessary, and then remembered that he needed to use it to open the door into the dorm room, at which point, he opened it – again, just a little too forcefully – and stalked back inside. </p><p>“How was the mom-in-law?” Russell asked.</p><p>Cardin ignored him. “I can’t believe that they’re letting a terrorist back into this school!”</p><p>“A former terrorist,” Weiss corrected him.</p><p>Russell grinned. “You two already knew, didn’t you?”</p><p>Weiss fixed him with a glare. “Sometimes, Russell, you can be a little too smart for your own good.”</p><p>“Or yours,” Russell replied, still with that easy grin on his face like this was all some kind of big joke to him.</p><p>“You knew?” Cardin demanded. “Both of you?”</p><p>“How do you think Team Sapphire ended up down at the docks fighting the White Fang?” Russell asked. “I may not talk much, but I can put the pieces together.”</p><p><em>Well, when you put it like that, it makes perfect sense.</em> “If you knew, then why didn’t you report this to the authorities?” Cardin demanded. “You should have had Blake arrested long ago.”</p><p>“Cardin, you’re overreacting,” Weiss declared, standing up and doing that weird thing she did where she managed to look down on him despite the fact that she was about half his height. “Blake is no longer a member of the White Fang. Yes, I admit, the fact that she had been a member was concerning, at first, but she has promised that she is no longer with them and I believe her.”</p><p>“So that’s it?” Cardin yelled. “She says that she’s sorry, and we all have to be okay with this?” He gestured at Flash. “How can <em>you</em>, of all people, be okay with this?”</p><p>“Don’t use my father’s name to justify your bigotry, Cardin,” Flash said, quietly but firmly. “Enough people have tried to do that already; I won’t have you be one of them.”</p><p>“Sorry,” Cardin grunted. “But after everything the White Fang has done to Atlas and the Schnee Dust Company-”</p><p>“Blake isn’t the White Fang,” Weiss said.</p><p>“That was her robbing an SDC train,” Cardin pointed out.</p><p>Weiss was quiet for a moment. “True,” she conceded. “But I talked to Blake about that, and she had the chance to massacre the crew aboard the train… but she didn’t. She chose to spare them instead. And that was when she left the White Fang; she could have walked away and left them to die, but she didn’t; she saved all of them. That… is not something that I can just ignore. That’s something that I think deserves to be kept in mind before we rush to judgement.”</p><p>“She’s broken the law!” Cardin shouted.</p><p>“Would that matter so much if she were human?” Flash asked.</p><p>“Don’t make this into a race thing.”</p><p>“Isn’t it already a race thing with you?” Flash replied.</p><p>“Says the guy who broke up with his girlfriend because he couldn’t stand her tail,” Russell pointed out.</p><p>“It doesn’t matter whether she’s a faunus or not,” Cardin lied. “She’s still a terrorist, a lawbreaker.”</p><p>“Whom the law isn’t punishing,” Flash insisted. “You can agree or not with that decision, but the decision has been made. And if you go outside the law to punish Blake when the law won’t… then you’re no different from the White Fang.”</p><p><em>The hell I’m not,</em> Cardin thought. He wasn’t just going to let this lie. This wasn’t about faunus or human; this wasn’t some stupid feeling of unearned entitlement like his resentment of Sunset or Jaune Arc; this was more than that, bigger than that; this was actually important. Skystar’s safety, the safety of Beacon itself, could be at stake.</p><p>He wouldn’t be the only person who felt that way. He <em>couldn’t</em> be the only person who felt that way. He would find others who felt like he did.</p><p>And together, they would drive that damned faunus right out of Beacon. </p><hr/><p>“He knew,” Sunset muttered. “He knew all along, and he just let us witter on regardless.”</p><p>“So?”</p><p>“What do you mean, 'so'?” Sunset demanded as she and Rainbow descended back down the tower in the elevator that seemed to be moving much faster going down than it had coming back up again. “The headmaster just played us; doesn’t that bother you?”</p><p>“It would bother me more if he <em>didn’t</em> know what was going on,” Rainbow replied. “It’s good that he’s on top of things.”</p><p>“He’s on top of us, pulling our strings,” Sunset replied. “I don’t trust him.”</p><p>“Do you trust anyone?”</p><p>“Yes, I trust lots of people, as it happens,” Sunset snapped. “Professor Ozpin just isn’t one of them.”</p><p>“Huh,” Rainbow muttered as she looked at her scroll. </p><p>“What?” Sunset asked. “And how is your scroll still working in here?”</p><p>Rainbow looked up. “Huh? Oh, Twi did some modifications to it; I can get reception even in places like this.”</p><p>“Lucky you.”</p><p>“Yep.”</p><p>“So,” Sunset said, “what’s so interesting?”</p><p>“Apparently,” Rainbow said, “Blake was an Atlesian mole in the White Fang all along.”</p><p>Sunset couldn’t help but chuckle. “She’s going to love that.”</p><p>“Yeah, I don’t plan on letting her live this down for a while,” Rainbow replied. “Or perhaps I should.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because I am going to win that girl over to the side of Atlas,” Rainbow declared.</p><p>“Again, why?”</p><p>“Because I think she needs a cause to fight for,” Rainbow said. “In fact, scratch that, I <em>know </em>she needs one. I can see it in her eyes. That’s the difference between the two of you, the reason you don’t actually like each other, even though you can trust one another: you can get by just living for yourself, but Blake needs to fight for something bigger. She’s like me that way. I was just… I was just drifting through my life until I met Twilight, but once I got my eyes opened to what I could do for Atlas, once I had something to strive toward…” She grinned. “Well, you know, I became this totally awesome person you see before you now.”</p><p>“Humble, too.”</p><p>“And I think Blake is the same way,” Rainbow continued. “She needs something to fight for, and I think that thing can be Atlas. It doesn’t have to be, but I hope at least I can show her that we really are the good guys, protecting the world and shielding it from harm.”</p><p>“To be honest? I think you’ve got your work cut out if that is what you’re aiming for,” Sunset said.</p><p> The smile returned to Rainbow’s face. “You know how much I like a challenge, Sunset.”</p><p>Sunset rolled her eyes. “You’re going to go with me to speak to Team Bluebell, right?”</p><p>“Sure.”</p><p>The elevator stopped, and the doors opened to let them step out of the elevator and into the tower lobby, where Pyrrha was waiting for them.</p><p>“Pyrrha?”</p><p>“Hello again,” Pyrrha said, a soft smile playing upon her lips. “How did it go up there?”</p><p>“Pretty well,” Sunset replied. “Blake can come back; we just need to speak to her teammates about it first.”</p><p>“I’m glad,” Pyrrha murmured. “Blake… deserves a second chance.” She hesitated. “It was her you were out with last night, wasn’t it?”</p><p>Sunset raised one eyebrow. “How did you guess?”</p><p>“The fact that you’re helping her now… no offence, but there aren’t that many people outside of the team you’d do this for.”</p><p><em>I don’t know whether to feel praised or insulted. Neither, I suppose, since it’s the truth. </em>“Honestly… I don’t really know why I’m helping her now <em>or </em>why I helped her last night. But since Rainbow did all the hard work, there’s only a little left to do before Blake returns.”</p><p>“As I said, I’m glad Blake isn’t suffering unduly.”</p><p>They passed through the lobby – charting a slightly winding course between the students and the visitors – out into the open plaza beyond the tower. Sunset shielded her eyes briefly against the sudden return of the light compared to the darkness within the elevator and the dim, blue artificial light within the lobby as she stepped out into the courtyard.</p><p>“Sunset!” Sun cried as he ran across the open square, marked with the double-axes of Beacon, towards them. His blue-haired friend Neptune trailed after him. Sun came to a halt in front of her. “Is Blake okay?” he asked. “Where is she? Do the cops still have her?”</p><p>“No,” Rainbow said. “She’s on the <em>Valiant</em> until we sort out what’s going to happen to her now.”</p><p>“The <em>Valiant</em>?” Sun repeated. “Is that like an Atlas ship or something?”</p><p>“Yes, it’s an Atlas ship,” Rainbow replied patiently. “It’s the flagship, safest place in Vale right now.”</p><p>“Why is Blake on an Atlas warship?”</p><p>“Maybe they’re holding her there so she can’t hurt anyone else?” Neptune suggested.</p><p>“Dude, for the last time, Blake’s not a terrorist!” Sun snapped at him.</p><p>“But she was,” Neptune insisted.</p><p>“Just because you’re lucky enough to have never done anything that you regret doesn’t mean that we’re all so fortunate!” Sunset snarled, making Neptune recoil a step away from her. “Blake’s done things that she regrets. She isn’t the only one. But she’s trying to do better; that’s about all we can do, since we can’t change the things that we did. She’s made mistakes… but just because <em>you’ve </em>been lucky enough to never be in that position doesn’t mean that you can judge.”</p><p><em>Listen to me, I sound like… I don’t even know what I sound like, but… if Princess Celestia could hear me now, what would she think?</em> Ponies believed in forgiveness; they even took it to a fault. Whatever you’d done, no matter how terrible, all your sins would be forgiven so long as you were penitent and appropriately sorrowful. Repentance would wipe away all crimes, and redemption obviate the need for punishment. <em>I always thought that I was different from other ponies, but listen to me now, preaching Equestrian values.</em></p><p>She closed her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. When she opened them again, she saw that Neptune looked mildly ashamed of himself.</p><p>Sunset looked at Sun. “Atlas got Blake out of jail. She’s free… but she’s going to have to do some work for Atlas on the side for a while against the White Fang.”</p><p>“Pffft, so all she has to do is get back at that Adam guy?” Sun asked. “That’s nothing, Blake was gonna do that anyway.”</p><p>Sunset snorted. “I wouldn’t necessarily put it like that to her when you see her again… but you’re not wrong.”</p><p>“So when’s she coming back to Beacon?” Sun asked.</p><p>“Soon,” Rainbow said. “We just need to talk to her teammates first and make sure they won’t make a fuss.”</p><p>“Why would they?” Sun demanded. “Why would anyone object to having Blake back?”</p><hr/><p>“Yeah, no,” Bon Bon said flatly. “I’m afraid that’s not happening.”</p><p>“You barely let us finish!” Rainbow cried.</p><p>“I’m sorry-” Bon Bon began.</p><p>“Yeah, you really sound sorry, too,” Sunset muttered.</p><p>Bon Bon continued as though Sunset hadn’t spoken, “-but we just can’t take her back as though today didn’t happen.”</p><p>Rainbow sat down on the vacant bed; Blake’s bed. “Listen, Bon Bon, Lyra, you know me, right?”</p><p>“Of course we know you,” Lyra said. “You’re Rainbow Dash, the Ace of Canterlot.”</p><p>“Right, and you trust me, don’t you?” Rainbow went on.</p><p>“We trust <em>you</em>,” Lyra replied.</p><p>“So trust me when I vouch for Blake,” Rainbow said. “She’s kind of clueless, but she’s going to do a lot of good for Vale, maybe for Remnant.”</p><p>“Just because we trust you doesn’t mean that we can trust Blake based on your word,” Bon Bon replied. “Blake lied to us.”</p><p>“Technically,” Sunset pointed out, “it’s more that she kept secrets.”</p><p>“Whatever,” Bon Bon said. “She lied, she didn’t tell us the truth, it all comes to the same thing in the end. We’re supposed to be a team. We’re supposed to be like family, but she didn’t trust us with the truth about her.”</p><p>“It’s more than that,” Lyra said. “Blake has never behaved as though she were a part of this team, so why should we show her any loyalty now?”</p><p>“Because she needs it.”</p><p>“Where was she when we needed her?” Lyra replied. “Where was she when I was struggling with my homework?”</p><p>“Oh, boo hoo!” Sunset snapped. “That’s your response? Blake didn’t do your homework for you, so you’re going to cut her loose now? How about I ask where you were when Blake was studying with us in the library?”</p><p>“Isn’t that the point?” Sky demanded. “Blake was <em>with you</em>-”</p><p>“While you were at the movies!” Sunset cried. “Did you invite Blake?”</p><p>A guilty silence settled over the three present members of Team BLBL.</p><p>“Dove was the one who invited us,” Lyra murmured.</p><p>“Oh, so you’re blaming the guy who isn’t here, very brave of you,” Sunset said derisively.</p><p>“That’s not the point,” Bon Bon said sharply.</p><p>“The point is that you three are a bunch of hypocrites-”</p><p>“The <em>point</em>,” Bon Bon insisted, “is that Blake trusted you before she trusted any of us.”</p><p>“She was trying to protect you,” Sunset said.</p><p>“That wasn’t her decision to make. Maybe we’re not the best students or the best fighters, but we’re Blake’s team, and she should have had faith in us. But she didn’t.”</p><p>“She lied to us,” Lyra said. “We just can’t forgive that.”</p><p>“Sometimes, people lie for good reason,” Rainbow said.</p><p>“Would you forgive Pinkie if she lied to you?” Lyra replied.</p><p>“Pinkie forgave <em>me</em> when I lied to her for years about liking her pies,” Rainbow reminded her.</p><p>Lyra blinked. “Oh, yeah, that was a thing, wasn’t it?”</p><p>“Maybe we’re just not such good friends as you and this Pinkie,” Sky muttered.</p><p>“Something we can agree on,” Sunset growled.</p><p>“Blake can’t come back,” Bon Bon said. “Or rather, she can’t come back to this team. We’re not bullies, we don’t have a problem with her being at Beacon, but we don’t want her back on this team.”</p><p>“How are you three going to manage without a fourth person on your team?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>“We’ll figure something out for now,” Bon Bon said. “Having a fourth teammate we couldn’t trust would be a lot harder.”</p><hr/><p>The sun was beginning to set beneath the far away horizon by the time that Blake disembarked from the Atlesian airship and began to walk back towards Beacon, escorted by Sunset Shimmer and Rainbow Dash.</p><p>The tower loomed above her; the whole school seemed less like a welcoming place and more like a fortress that she had to assault for… for the reason that it was the only place that she had left to go.</p><p>Her steps dragged a little; she felt as though weights were burdening down her feet and making her slow and heavy in her progress here… towards whatever was waiting.</p><p>Rainbow Dash must have sensed that, because she said, “It’s going to be okay. Nobody’s going to give you any trouble.”</p><p>“I doubt that’s entirely true,” Blake murmured.</p><p>“Nobody important,” Sunset said. “No one who matters.”</p><p>“And if anyone not important <em>does</em> make trouble, we’ve got your back,” Rainbow assured her.</p><p>“Because we faunus have to stick together?” Blake guessed.</p><p>“I hope not, or we’ve been doing an awful job,” Sunset muttered.</p><p>“Nah, it’s nothing like that,” Rainbow said.</p><p>Blake looked at her. “Then what is it? Was this really all about getting my help against the White Fang?”</p><p>Rainbow shook her head. “Once upon a time,” she said, “there was a punk called Rainbow Dash who didn’t have any prospects, who didn’t have a future, who was never going to amount to anything. And then, one day, another girl, an Atlas princess with all the gifts in the world, held out her hand to me and changed my life so completely that… that anything is possible for me now. I wasn’t born as General Ironwood’s protégé; I wasn’t born with opportunities that most faunus don’t have. I got this way because someone held out their hand to me… and now, I’m holding out a hand to you. Paying it forward, you know?”</p><p>“I see,” Blake said softly. She hesitated. “So… my team doesn’t want me back.” They had broken the news to her already, but it was something that she found she kept coming back to, like a dog worrying at an old bone.</p><p>Rainbow cringed. “That’s… that’s rough, yeah. But, all the same… no offence, but that’s kind of your fault, a little.”</p><p>Blake glanced at her. “Thanks,” she said flatly.</p><p>“Look, I said no offence, okay?” Rainbow said. She fell silent for a moment. “You remember the first leadership class that I joined you two for? You remember what I said when Professor Goodwitch asked me what made a good leader? It was General Ironwood who told me that the first step to being a good team leader is to know your team better than their mothers do and love them as much. Everything else, the strategy, tactics, you can learn all that stuff. But if you don’t start by learning to know and love your team, then you’ll never get anywhere.”</p><p>“And you do that?” Blake asked.</p><p>“I try,” Rainbow said. “I don’t know if I succeed, but… did you try?”</p><p>Blake didn’t say anything, the answer was so plain to see that it didn’t need to be vocalised by her or Rainbow Dash or anybody else. She hadn’t ever truly embraced her team; had she ever even tried? She’d envied the bonds that Sunset shared with her teammates, but she hadn’t tried to act on that sense of longing by replicating those bonds with her own teammates. She had shut them out, and as a consequence, they no longer trusted her.</p><p>She didn’t blame them for not wanting her back.</p><p>She didn’t deserve to be welcomed back. Not to her team, not – she thought as she passed into the spacious courtyard – into Beacon at all.</p><p>“Don’t worry about it,” said Sunset, the bad influence upon her other shoulder. “I don’t know what Professor Ozpin has in mind for you, but until he makes his mind up, you’re welcome to crash with us.”</p><p>“With you?” Blake said. She glanced at Rainbow Dash. “Shouldn’t I be staying with you, or at least with the Atlesians?”</p><p>“You would look good in an Atlesian uniform,” Rainbow admitted, “but you’re not technically an Atlas student or an Atlas soldier. You’re like… imagine if you were a graduated huntress, and the local Atlas garrison needed your help on account of you had special skills. So they hired you. You’d be working with Atlas, but you wouldn’t <em>be</em> an Atlas soldier. That’s you, only we aren’t paying you – not in anything but freedom, anyway. So keep your Beacon uniform, crash with the Sapphires, and when you do find a billet, it will probably be with another Beacon team. You’ll just be helping us out when we need it. Beacon’s still your home.”</p><p><em>I’m not so sure about that,</em> Blake thought.</p><p>“Hey, Blake!” Sun called out to her as he approached. He wasn’t alone either; the three other members of Team SAPR were with him. Nevertheless, it was Sun who was jogging towards her and Sun who reached her first. “You’re back.”</p><p>“Yes,” Blake said. “I am back.”</p><p>“So,” Jaune said, as he became the next to arrive, “all your problems are taken care of?”</p><p>“I wouldn’t say <em>all </em>my problems,” Blake replied. She glanced at Rainbow Dash. “Some problems are just beginning. But what you meant… yes, I don’t have anything to fear from the law in Vale any more.”</p><p>“That’s good to hear,” Jaune said. “Welcome home.”</p><p>“'Home'?” Blake repeated, wondering why everyone had suddenly started saying that.</p><p>“Yeah,” Ruby said. “Whoever we are, wherever we came from, Beacon is our home now for the next four years, and you belong here as much as anyone.”</p><p>“Welcome home, Blake,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>Sun put his arms around her, drawing her in and squeezing her tight. “Welcome home, Blake.”</p><p>“I…” Blake began, then trailed off. “I’m home.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. A New Semester Begins</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Team SAPR welcomes their new roommate, and Blake faces the school at the start of a new day.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A New Semester Begins</p><p> </p><p>Blake stepped lightly into the SAPR dorm room. Sunset had already made it inside, but her hand glowed as, with a light touch of telekinesis, she shut the door behind their guest. The sudden noise of the door closing made Blake start, or start to start, before she mastered herself with an effort that she tried to hide but which Sunset fancied that she caught regardless. Was she frightened? Of a closing door?</p><p><em>Or a man with a red sword. </em>Sunset could understand that, although she wasn’t afraid of Adam here. She was afraid of him when she faced him, as much as she might wish that she were not, but not here. </p><p>Here was her sanctum. Here was her home. Here, she had Pyrrha Nikos sleeping one bed over.</p><p>Here… well, if Adam got in here, then they were in big trouble, weren’t they?</p><p>Still, Blake hadn’t actually jumped; she’d just looked as though she might, so Sunset didn’t say anything about it, and no one else said anything either, if they’d even noticed. Nobody wanted to embarrass Blake, after all. </p><p>Some might say that what she’d been through already was embarrassing enough. </p><p>Blake glanced down at the camp bed sitting beside the door. The mattress was only about half the size of the ones on the normal beds, if that. “So, this is where I’ll be sleeping?”</p><p>“Actually,” Sunset said, and her hand once more acquired the distinctive green glow of her magic as she summoned her stuffed unicorn into her waiting grasp, “that’s where <em>I’ll</em> be sleeping. You can take my bed. I hope you don’t mind me leaving my stuff underneath it. Please don’t touch it.”</p><p>“No, I wouldn’t dream of it,” Blake said softly. “Are you sure about giving me your bed?”</p><p>“I’m the team leader,” Sunset replied. “What else can I do?” Any other option – either making Blake take the inadequate bed or else forcing one of her teammates to do so – would make her look like a jackass if it got out, which it almost certainly would. For the sake of her standing and reputation, she had no choice but to be self-sacrificing. </p><p>It was hard work, sometimes, trying to make people think well of you. </p><p>Blake hesitated for a moment. “Are you… certain?”</p><p>“Yes,” Sunset said, more sharply than the situation really called for. “Yes,” she repeated, more softly. “The bed is yours. I’ll manage.”</p><p>“Thank you, and thank you all for taking me in,” Blake murmured as she put down her case. After dinner, it had taken most of the rest of the evening to gather all of her stuff out of the BLBL dorm room and pack it up for her to bring here. It had been a process made harder by the way that Bon Bon kept sniffing as she stood there with her arms folded, glaring at them as they worked. It had gotten to the point where one more sniff, and Sunset would have shoved a handkerchief up her nostrils. </p><p>But it was done now, just as the day was done, and they wouldn’t have to deal with Team BLBL – or Team LBL, however you might pronounce that – again. Or at least, Sunset hoped not; she’d always thought that Lyra and Bon Bon were a pair of idiots, but she’d also thought that they were basically without malice. She no longer thought that. </p><p>
  <em>So much for the magic of friendship. I wonder what Twilight’s going to say when I tell her about this?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘Well, Sunset, friends fight all the time; why, I remember when my good friend Fluttershy turned out to be a changeling, but we all forgave her for it, and soon, so will Blake’s teammates.’</em>
</p><p><em>Actually, Princess Twilight probably </em>does<em> have a changeling friend. She’s that sort of person.</em></p><p>“It’s no trouble at all,” Jaune said warmly. </p><p>“You’re an honorary member of Team Sapphire now,” Ruby added. “Ooh, we should think about integrating you into our team attacks.”</p><p>“Let’s not depend on Blake too much,” Sunset said. “We don’t know how long she’ll be with us.”</p><p>“Okay, but we could still come up with some paired attacks with Blake, right?” Ruby asked. “Ooh, you and her could be called ‘Dark Phoenix’!”</p><p>Pyrrha chuckled. “Why don’t we give Blake a chance to settle in first? Please, make yourself at home.”</p><p>Blake looked around a dorm room which, honestly, they hadn’t personalised all that much. They had a couple of lamps – a table lamp shaped like a vase that Pyrrha had brought with her from home and a floor lamp that they had bought in Vale – and a lot of books on the shelves, and of course, there was Sunset’s unicorn, but other than that, the room was pretty bare. </p><p>“You’ve certainly done a good job of that,” Blake muttered.</p><p>Pyrrha chuckled nervously, looking away as if she was embarrassed by the fact that she didn’t have an enormous quantity of things with which to personalise her living space. </p><p>Sunset folded her arms. “Well, after we carved on the walls, we thought that was probably enough making ourselves at home to be getting on with.”</p><p>Blake blinked. “You carved on the walls?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Ruby cried excitedly. “Come on over here and see,” she gestured eagerly, and Blake smiled fondly as she walked with – Sunset fought the urge to use the term "feline" – grace across the dorm room floor to Ruby’s bed, where the youngest member of the team gestured to the marks that had been made on the white plaster by themselves and by the generation that had preceded them. “You see, it turns out that this room is where my parents’ team used to live when <em>they</em> were at Beacon, and they carved their initials into the wall right there.”</p><p>“S T R Q,” Blake read out. She paused for a moment. “Team… Stroke?”</p><p>“Stark,” Ruby corrected her. “Summer Rose, Taiyang Xiao Long, Raven Branwen, and Qrow Branwen.”</p><p>Blake was silent for a moment. “I don’t know who any of those people are,” she said, “but at the same time… it’s comforting to think that we are but one link in a chain of huntsmen and huntresses stretching back to the time of our parents, and beyond that to the founding of Beacon, and which will continue out long after we have left this school… long after we are gone.”</p><p>“Indeed,” Pyrrha said gravely. “We are not the first, nor will we be the last, if fate be kind. The world has been left to us by those who went before; it is our task to leave it to those who will come after, along with a legacy which, if we are fortunate, will inspire them to fight as bravely as we, inspired by those who preceded us, should strive to fight.”</p><p>“You’re a morbid bunch, aren’t you?” Sunset muttered.</p><p>“I don’t think that’s morbid,” Jaune replied. “I think it’s kinda nice, actually.”</p><p>“For myself, I think being reminded that we’re just one amongst many is a pretty gloomy prospect,” Sunset declared. “I suggested that we should make our marks upon the wall so that future generations can-”</p><p>“Wonder how you’re supposed to pronounce ‘S A P R’?” Blake suggested, looking over her shoulder with a mischievous glint in her eye.</p><p>Sunset snorted. “Marvel in awe at the fact that they are so privileged as to live in a room that was once occupied by the most famous huntsmen ever,” she corrected Blake. </p><p>“Hmm,” Blake mused. “Either way, I think it’s a pretty cool thing to do, although I’m a little surprised that you’ve gotten away with defacing school property like that.” She stepped away from Ruby’s bed and turned to look at the books in the shelves above the desks that lined two walls of the room. One of them must have caught her eye, because she stepped closer to Ruby’s desk. “Is that the <em>Song of Olivia</em>?”</p><p>“Yep,” Ruby said. “It’s super rare. Dove gave it to me.”</p><p>Blake looked at Ruby. “Dove gave it to you? But it’s supposed to be nearly impossible to find copies of it nowadays.”</p><p>“I know,” Ruby said, pride and self-consciousness mingling in her voice. “It belonged to his grandfather, he said; he probably shouldn’t have given it to me, but he said… there was something that he wanted to make up for.”</p><p>“A princely gift for someone who would appreciate its worth,” Blake murmured. “Whatever he did must have been quite bad to warrant such an apology.”</p><p>“Not really,” Ruby admitted. “It… it’s complicated. I probably didn’t deserve it, but… I couldn’t say no.”</p><p>“I don’t blame you,” Blake declared. “I probably would have accepted it as well.”</p><p>“You know the story too?” Ruby asked.</p><p>Blake nodded. “It’s referenced in a number of works on fairy tales and legends, and even summarised in a few, but as you know, very hard to find in its complete form. Tukson couldn’t find a copy anywhere.”</p><p>“Why is that?” Jaune asked. “I mean, if it’s such a well known story, then why has it gone out of print?”</p><p>“It’s well known, yeah, but it’s also out of fashion,” Ruby said, with a touch of melancholy in her voice. “It’s too long for a fairy tale collection, and nobody seems to read long fairy tales or myths that take more than a few pages like the ones in the school textbook. And the story is… I guess nobody wants stories about heroes anymore.”</p><p>“Everyone in here seems to,” Sunset observed dryly.</p><p>“Perhaps we are out of fashion also?” Pyrrha suggested. </p><p>“That…” Sunset began, and then trailed off because that was pretty inarguable in Pyrrha’s case and certainly could be argued for in Ruby’s. “I think Jaune and I manage to be somewhat modern.”</p><p>“Jaune, maybe,” Ruby said. “I’m not so sure about you, though.”</p><p>Sunset frowned. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“You were very at home in my house in Mistral,” Pyrrha pointed out.</p><p>“What’s this?” Blake asked.</p><p>“Sunset taught me manners when we were staying at Pyrrha’s place over the vacation,” Jaune explained. “Bowing and speaking and stuff.”</p><p>“Really? That… is not exactly the behaviour of a modern girl.” Blake observed.</p><p>“Okay, now I just feel picked on.” Sunset groaned.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Pyrrha apologised at once.</p><p>“There’s nothing wrong with being a little old-fashioned,” Ruby insisted. “The world could use some old-fashioned heroes.”</p><p>“Like Olivia?” Blake suggested. “Is that the kind of heroine you’d like to be?”</p><p>Ruby shuffled uncomfortably on the floor. “Maybe… kind of. For most of the story, yeah; I know we don’t have a king, but I’d like to travel up and down the kingdom, righting wrongs and fighting monsters and villains. That’s just the life of a huntress. But I’m not sure about the ending, though; I’ve gotta say I don’t think that’s very heroic.”</p><p>“Don’t you?” Blake asked in surprise. “From what I know of the story, Olivia’s end is also her <em>most</em> heroic moment.”</p><p>“She gets herself killed because she’s an idiot!” Sunset cried. She paused. “Okay, I can see why that would appeal to you.”</p><p>Blake’s eyes narrowed. </p><p>“Don’t glare at me just because I’m right,” Sunset told her.</p><p>“Olivia doesn’t perish because she’s an idiot,” Blake explained. “She perishes because she has her pride; I would have thought that you of all people would have seen the value in that. Sometimes, we have to stand up for what we believe in, even if it costs us everything.”</p><p>“But there was nothing at stake,” Ruby said. “They weren’t defending anywhere; there was no one in danger. It’s a great fight, but at the same time, it’s just so pointless. When I think of all the other people Olivia could have protected, all the good that she could have done… the ending just makes me sad.”</p><p>Blake was silent for a moment. "You're a very selfless person," she murmured. "But, for myself, I don't think that I could ever judge someone who chooses to stand up for what they believe, no matter the cost, and sticks to their principles to the end. We should all hope to be so steadfast."</p><p>"Only if we choose the right beliefs," Sunset argued.</p><p>"Well… I suppose... that brings us right back to what we think of Olivia's beliefs, doesn't it?" Blake asked.</p><p>"I've gotta admit," Jaune said tentatively, "that from what Ruby's told us, Olivia sounds like a really admirable person… until you get to that part."</p><p>"Ah, but if you took away her pride, would she still be Olivia?" Blake replied.</p><p>"Yes," Sunset said. "She'd be the same Olivia she was before, just better."</p><p>"You're that confident that we can separate our flaws from ourselves and still retain everything else that makes us who we are, our virtues and our character?"</p><p>"You are not, I take it," Pyrrha said. "Which is a rather Mistralian attitude, I must say."</p><p>"My mother was Mistralian," Blake explained. "I mean… she's still alive," she added quickly, lest anyone get the wrong idea from her use of the past tense, "but she moved to Menagerie a few years ago, and before that… my parents moved around a lot when they led the White Fang. And yet… I suppose that she kept the attitudes, and that they rubbed off on me."</p><p>"Including that the hero's flaws are part of what makes them a hero," Pyrrha suggested.</p><p>Blake smiled. "Exactly," she agreed. She returned her gaze to Ruby and softly added, "Have you read it yet?"</p><p>Ruby nodded. "It lives up to its reputation. It's a pity that such a great story has been allowed to die out."</p><p>Blake hesitated for a moment. "I know that it was a gift, but… may I read it? It's something that I've heard of, but… to be honest, you haven't done anything to convince me that it's not worth reading."</p><p>"Sure," Ruby said. "You can read it if you want." She paused for a moment, before her face lit up eagerly, illumination by a sudden flash of inspiration. "Or you could read it out to us!"</p><p>Blake blinked. "You mean… like a bedtime story."</p><p>Ruby pouted. "You don't have to make it sound childish," she declared. "I just thought… we've all talked about it; it might be cool if everyone could hear it, and then we could all talk about it actually knowing what happens instead of just what we're told. And without having to pass the book around for everyone to read too! Like a book club or something. What do you guys think?"</p><p>Jaune shrugged. "I've got no problem with it. It might be fun, if the story is as good as you say."</p><p>"I have no objections," Pyrrha added.</p><p>"Nor me," Sunset said, as she sat down on the camp bed. She grinned. "It'll be like being a kid again, when my teacher and I used to sit in front of the fire with hot chocolate while she told me stories." She frowned. "Do you guys want some hot chocolate?"</p><p>"It's a good idea, in theory," Blake said softly, "but I'm not sure that I've got a voice for reading stories."</p><p>"I wouldn't mind reading," Pyrrha volunteered. "If nobody has any objections."</p><p>Nobody did, and so, Jaune ducked out to make hot chocolate for everyone – minus Pyrrha, who didn't want to risk damaging the old and venerable book. While he was out, Pyrrha plucked <em>The Song of Olivia</em> off the shelf and carried it to another bookshelf underneath the window with a surface flat enough to serve as a seat. Pyrrha tucked her scarlet sash underneath her miniskirt and sat down delicately atop the shelf, her legs positioned as though she were riding sidesaddle, while Blake and Ruby sat down side by side on Ruby's bed.</p><p>Jaune returned shortly after with the drinks, and no sooner had he distributed them than he, too, was sat on the bed, waiting.</p><p>Pyrrha's hands were gentle as she opened up the book, resting it upon her gleaming cuisses. Her lips twitched in the slightest smile, and her voice sounded as gentle as her hands had seemed as she began to read.</p><p>"'Once upon a time, in the days of King Charles, whom men called the Great, in a little village to the north, there lived a girl named Olivia. The daughter of a shepherd, Olivia spent her days watching her flock, keeping a weather eye out for wolves or grimm – although men knew that grimm rarely troubled the flocks, a fact for which they were exceedingly grateful. Nevertheless, the village in which Olivia lived sat hard beside a dark and looming forest, a forest which all knew to be the haunt of the creatures of grimm, a place into which few dared venture and from which all feared the grimm might emerge, hungry for bloodshed.</p><p>"'Olivia, for her part, was not afraid; she knew what others could not see: that she had it in her to be so much more than just a shepherdess. She would have welcomed an appearance by a beowolf, or even an ursa, for then, she might have proved to her father and to all the world that she was brave enough and strong enough to travel to Vale and join the gallant knights who served King Charles and rode forth across all of Vale to keep the kingdom safe from danger. But Olivia's father mocked her ambitions, telling her that if she ever saw a grimm, she would soon think better of her foolish dreams. And so Olivia watched her flock until, one day, she awoke to find that one sheep had wandered away from the others – and into the grimm-infested forest.</p><p>"There was only one thing Olivia could do: she was too kind of heart to abandon any part of her flock to the wilds, and she was too proud to admit to her father either that she had failed to keep watch or that she was scared of the forest or the grimm who lurked within its shadows. And so, with a staff in one hand and a sling in the other, she ventured forth into the woods…"</p><hr/><p>“May we join you?”</p><p>“Cinder,” Sunset said, looking up into the face of Cinder Fall, wearing her black Haven uniform, casting a shadow over the table as she stood nearby. She held a tray in her hand, but there was precious little actually on it: a glass of plain water and a flaky pain au chocolat that looked as light as air and only a little more filling. Three other students, whom Sunset believed to be her teammates, stood a little way behind her. </p><p>She smiled. “Sorry,” she murmured. “I should have opened with ‘good morning’ shouldn’t I?” She chuckled. “Good morning, boys and girls, may we join you?”</p><p>Sunset glanced at the empty seats on the other side of the table. Blake had joined Team SAPR for breakfast, but none of their usual dining companions – Team YRDN, Team RSPT, not even Team WWSR – were down for breakfast yet to join them. They were all alone on the long table, even as the dining hall filled up around them. </p><p>“Be our guest,” she said. Team YRDN would just have to sit a little further down the table than usual. </p><p>“Much obliged,” Cinder purred, as she took the seat opposite Sunset at the head of the table. Her teammates took the seats on her left, facing off against the members of Team SAPR. </p><p>“So,” said a dark skinned girl with vivid red eyes, who wore her bright green hair in a bowl cut with two long tails descending down to her waist, “you must be Team Sapphire. Cinder’s talked about you a lot.”</p><p>“Only good things, I hope,” Jaune ventured.</p><p>The green-haired girl smiled at him. “Of course. Nothing but the highest compliments.”</p><p>“Always nice to have our reputation spread,” Sunset said. “I’m Sunset Shimmer, leader of Team Sapphire; this is Ruby Rose-”</p><p>“Nice to meet you,” Ruby added.</p><p>“Jaune Arc.”</p><p>“Hi.”</p><p>“And of course, Pyrrha Nikos needs no introduction.”</p><p>Pyrrha laughed nervously. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”</p><p>“And this is our guest, Blake Belladonna.”</p><p>“Hello,” Blake said quietly.</p><p>“Of course,” Cinder replied. “You’re the one who… well, we won’t talk about that; you must have suffered quite enough with your time in the Atlesian service.”</p><p>Blake made a sort of noise from the back of her throat that gave nothing away. </p><p>Cinder chuckled. “In any case, I’m Cinder Fall, leader of Haven’s Team Clementine. These are my teammates,” she gestured to the girl sitting immediately to her left. “Lightning Dust.”</p><p>“Yo,” Lightning Dust muttered as she dug into a plate piled high with meat, all slathered under a thick layer of red sauce. She was a muscular pony faunus, with eyes of dark yellow set in a hard-looking face that was not devoid of scars, upon her cheeks and beneath her eye. Her hair was amber streaked with gold, shaved on the sides of her head and worn in a backwards-sloping crest down the middle of her head. Her tail was the same colour as her hair and brushed the floor as it swished side to side as she sat. </p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose. <em>Lightning Dust? Did you choose that name yourself?</em> She would have remarked upon it, but this was Cinder’s team, and there was such a thing as courtesy; she wouldn’t allow Cinder to speak ill of her team, and she wouldn’t speak ill of Cinder’s team, either. </p><p>“Emerald Sustrai.”</p><p>“Hey there.”</p><p>“And Mercury Black.”</p><p>Mercury smirked. “What’s up, guys?” He was a tall young man, not exactly lithe but not so broad in the shoulders as Lightning Dust, with an untidy mop of silver hair atop his head worn in a very self-consciously cool style that put Sunset a little in mind of Jaune, if Jaune could be bothered to style his hair in the morning instead of letting it flop about all over the place. His eyes – partially hidden beneath his fringe – were grey. His features were sharp, like a knife. </p><p>“It’s a pleasure to meet all of you,” Ruby greated. “Are you excited about the Vytal Festival?”</p><p>“There’s a long way to go before that,” Emerald pointed out.</p><p>“There’s a long way to go until the tournament,” Ruby acknowledged, “but what about everything else? All the students from different schools, all the rest of the festival, you being in Vale?”</p><p>“Of course, Ruby,” Cinder agreed. “We’re delighted to be here in your fair city, and we fully intend to make the most of our time here.”</p><p>“If you ever need someone to show you around the city, I’d be happy to take you into Vale sometime,” Sunset said. “I’m not a native here, but after a whole semester, I know my way around.”</p><p>Cinder smiled. “Thank you, Sunset. I think I’ll take you up on that some time. Perhaps this weekend?”</p><p>“Sure,” Sunset agreed, “so long as neither of us gets spirited away on some training mission that comes up urgently.”</p><p>“Oh, I haven’t signed my team up for training missions,” Cinder declared.</p><p>“Really?” Sunset said, her eyebrows rising. “I have to say I’m surprised.”</p><p>“Me too,” Ruby agreed. “You were really good out there against the karkadann.”</p><p>“You flatter me, Ruby, but the truth is, I did very little out beyond Mistral,” Cinder replied. “It was your team that did all the work and rightly reaped the glory for your accomplishment. I was, for the most part, merely a bystander.”</p><p>“You give yourself too little credit,” Pyrrha said. “You were of great assistance.”</p><p>Cinder stared at Pyrrha for a moment before answering, “Your praise warms my heart, Pyrrha Nikos, whether I have earned it or no.”</p><p>“Why haven’t you signed up for training missions?” Sunset asked. “You can’t tell me that you don’t feel ready; you were prepared to go out and face a grimm beyond Mistral with only Pyrrha to support you.”</p><p>“Perhaps the experience chastened me and taught me my limitations.”</p><p>Sunset smirked. “I don’t believe that for an instant.”</p><p>Cinder stared into Sunset’s for a moment before she chuckled, “Of course not, that idea is quite absurd. No, I’m afraid it’s my team who I don’t think are quite ready for that sort of thing yet. It may be Ozpin’s way to throw his students into the fire and see who burns to ash and who is forged in flame, but Professor Lionheart favours a more gentle, nurturing approach; I think my teammates need a little more seasoning before they face real battle.”</p><p>Sunset looked down the line of Cinder’s teammates. She found it hard to agree with Cinder’s rather condescending assessment of her own subordinates. Lightning Dust looked positively mutinous at the assertion that she wasn’t ready for combat, and Mercury looked as though he was struggling to restrain a sneer of contempt. </p><p>But Sunset supposed that Cinder knew her own teammates best. All the same, she couldn’t resist saying, “You know you’ll never win the tournament with an attitude like that.”</p><p>“Oh, don’t worry about us,” Cinder said. “By the time of the tournament, I’ll have everyone seasoned to perfection.”</p><p>“Now you make us sound like a steak,” Lightning muttered.</p><p>Cinder laughed. “It’s a figure of speech, Lightning, meaning that by the time of the tournament, everything is going to be just the way I want it.”</p><p>“Unacceptable!” the shrill voice of Nora Valkyrie turned the heads of all eight students to see Team YRDN approaching the table. </p><p>Cinder quirked one eyebrow. “Is something wrong?”</p><p>“No, nothing,” Ren assured her. “It’s just that you’re sitting in our usual seats.”</p><p>“Nothing’s wrong?” Nora demanded. “Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand, but you can’t take my seating arrangements from me you… you Haven interlopers!”</p><p>“Calm down, Nora,” Yang said good naturedly, with an undercurrent of humour in her voice. </p><p>Cinder started to rise to her feet. “I wouldn’t dream of-”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Yang assured her. “Plenty of room to go around, right?” Her eyes flashed momentarily red. “Provided that it only happens this once.”</p><p>Cinder stared at Yang with a nonplussed expression. “Was that supposed to be intimidating?”</p><p>“Or funny,” Yang admitted. “But, uh, apparently it was neither.” She chuckled uncertainly. “Tough crowd,” she murmured, before walking around the other side of the table to sit down beside Blake. Nora sat down next to her, with Dove and Ren taking the seats opposite Blake and Yang next to Mercury as introductions between Team CLEM and Team YRDN followed. </p><p>“Hey, Haven guys,” Yang said. “Did you have a Legends class over at Haven?”</p><p>“You mean, did we have to study fairy tales?” Mercury replied. “No, we didn’t.”</p><p>“Do you think there’s something wrong with fairy tales?” Blake asked calmly.</p><p>“He might,” Cinder said, “but don’t mind him. He’s an ignoramus. Those of us with more open minds know that there is a great deal of truth to be gained from the old stories.”</p><p>“You mean universal truths about the human condition?” Pyrrha murmured.</p><p>“Indeed,” Cinder agreed, “but also more concrete truths, facts buried within the myths. I believe that behind every fairy tale, there was someone to which it really happened, if not just like that, then certainly at least in a somewhat similar way.”</p><p>“Really?” Sunset said. “<em>All</em> fairy tales?”</p><p>“Why ever not?”</p><p>“Some of those stories are pretty far out,” Sunset pointed out.</p><p>Cinder chuckled. “That’s what makes it so intriguing to imagine that they might be true.”</p><p>“If some of them were true, it would be rather horrifying,” Pyrrha said softly. “At least, that is how I feel. There is so much power in some of those tales, unspeakable quantities of it. Power that we are probably better off without.”</p><p>“That might have been true, once,” Cinder conceded, “but not anymore. Now, when men are capable of creating such power as can, well, as can create a fleet of flying fortresses and hang them from the sky like stars set in the firmament, then what is there to fear from a little touch of magic?”</p><p><em>What indeed?</em> Sunset thought. She was proud of her magic, but she wouldn’t pretend that it was anything special compared to the power of an Atlesian warship. She couldn’t swat one of the northern cruisers out of the sky with the power that was in her; she doubted that even Celestia could have achieved as much. They were too big, too well-armoured, and too sturdily-built, and that was without getting into the guns. </p><p>“That kind of power can be understood, if only by Atlesian scientists,” Pyrrha said. “What you are describing would be… incomprehensible.”</p><p>“Isn’t that part of the fun of imagining?” Cinder replied. She chuckled. “Apparently not. I would have thought that the Champion of Mistral would be more bold.”</p><p>“You’ve seen Pyrrha fight; you know that she is fearless in battle,” Sunset declared. </p><p>“In battle, yes, you are without fear,” Cinder acknowledged. “In battle, you are confidence itself, but… there are many kinds of…” She trailed off. “Never mind. Suffice it to say that no, we do not have a class of myths and legends at Haven, but I’m eager to see how Beacon approaches the subject.”</p><p>“I’m surprised,” Sunset said.</p><p>“That I’m eager?”</p><p>“That you don’t have anything like this,” Sunset explained. “It’s not just fairy tales; it’s ancient history too. I’d have thought you’d be all about that at Haven.”</p><p>Cinder laughed. “Oh, we are taught Mistralian History, from the foundation of the Kingdom by Theseus, but without any of the sprinkling of lore and myth from other kingdoms that I think will make your class much more interesting. Forgive me, Pyrrha, but memorising the long line of your ancestors begins to verge upon the tedious after a while.”</p><p>“I don’t blame you,” Pyrrha replied gently. “There are a great many of them.”</p><p>“Are you having those classes while you’re here at Beacon, like the Atlesians are having Etiquette classes?” inquired Ruby.</p><p>“No, thank gods,” Lightning Dust spat. “And you won’t catch me going into an Etiquette class either.”</p><p>“Did somebody say ‘Etiquette Class’?” Ciel inquired, as Team RSPT walked towards the table. “I see that you have unexpected company.”</p><p>“This is Team Clementine of Haven,” Sunset announced. “Cinder Fall, Lightning Dust, Emerald Sustrai, Mercury Black. And this is-”</p><p>“Team Rosepetal of Atlas,” Rainbow interrupted her. “I’m Rainbow Dash, the team leader, and these are my teammates: Ciel Soleil, Penny Polendina, and Twilight Sparkle.”</p><p>“Good morning,” Ciel said.</p><p>“Hello!” Penny cried cheerfully, giving a wave with one hand.</p><p>“It’s nice to meet you,” Twilight added.</p><p>Lightning Dust stared at Rainbow Dash. “You’re a faunus,” she observed.</p><p>“So are you,” Rainbow said, with equal astuteness.</p><p>“Yeah, but they made <em>you</em> team leader.”</p><p>Rainbow smirked. “I don’t like to brag-”</p><p>Sunset snorted. </p><p>Rainbow ignored her to continue on “-but I am kind of awesome.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Lightning mused.</p><p>“Don’t get any ideas,” Cinder muttered dryly. </p><p>Team RSPT took their seats, and the conversation meandered largely aimlessly as more and more students came into the dining hall. They talked about what the day and the week might bring, whether Team RSPT had signed up for field missions – they had – and what kind of missions the three teams that had actually signed up for field missions might like. </p><p>“If there are any missions available out in the regions, I might like that,” Ren said. “Assisting with village security in some way, especially with the grimm threat so… unusually prevalent at the moment. Such places need help more than most.”</p><p>“Those kinds of places mostly manage not to attract the grimm,” Dove replied.</p><p>“Mostly,” Ren declared. “Not always.”</p><p>Dove was quiet for a moment, before he nodded. “True,” he said quietly.</p><p>“Personally, I’m hoping for something a little more grandiose,” Sunset said. “Another dangerous grimm hunt perhaps.”</p><p>“I would rather a singularly dangerous grimm did not approach Vale simply so that we can hunt it,” Pyrrha replied.</p><p>“Hey, Blake,” Rainbow said. “Are you going to come to Etiquette class?”</p><p>Blake looked at her across the table. “I think I’ll pass.”</p><p>“Ah, come on!” Rainbow cried. “It’ll be… okay it won’t be <em>fun,</em> but you’ll get something out of it.”</p><p>“Really?” Blake replied sceptically. “Such as?”</p><p>“Such as…” Rainbow trailed off. “You’ll know how to behave if you find yourself in Atlas and have to go to a fancy party.”</p><p>“You’ve never been to any of the fancy parties I’ve invited you to,” Twilight pointed out.</p><p>“Yeah, but if I ever did, I’d know how to act,” Rainbow told her.</p><p>“I don’t think I’m ever likely to find myself in Atlas,” Blake said.</p><p>“Never say never,” Rainbow said.</p><p>“Why do you want me to come to your Etiquette class so much?” Blake asked.</p><p>“Because I think it will be good for you,” Rainbow said. She grinned. “And because if I have to suffer through it, so should you.”</p><p>Blake shook her head, and the conversation flowed on like a river rushing towards the sea.</p><p>The dining hall filled up as they spoke of trivialities, and as it filled up – as more and more people passed their table – so more and more of those people glanced at Blake with a mixture of curiosity or naked hostility. The other three members of Team BLBL – Sunset was going to have to get used to thinking of them as Team LBL and trying to find a way to pronounce it in her head – very pointedly <em>did not</em> look at Blake, but in a way that drew attention to her nonetheless. Blake’s eyes followed them as they walked ostentatiously to a different table. Dove’s gaze followed them too, but only Blake’s ears drooped unhappily as they sat down. </p><p>Blake’s ears continued to droop, and she started bowing her head too, as the curious, nervous, almost frightened gazes kept coming, as they mingled with the hostile stares, as the whispers of ‘White Fang’ and ‘don’t believe that she was a spy’ and ‘can’t believe they let an animal like her’ passed by, thrown out like grenades by the students as they walked on to their seats. Nobody said anything to Blake; nobody wanted to draw attention to her plight and position any more than they had to, but in spite of game attempts to keep the conversation going to distract her, there was no getting away from the fact that – face-saving Valish cover story notwithstanding – she had become an object of fear for some and hatred for others. Rare it seemed was the student who did not have some opinion upon the presence at Beacon of Blake Belladonna of the White Fang. </p><p> Or perhaps they just noticed the ones who had an opinion more than those who did not.</p><p>Ruby was the first one to actually dare draw attention to the goliath in the room as she placed one hand on Blake’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay, Blake,” she said. “In a couple of weeks, everyone will have forgotten all about this.”</p><p>Blake glanced at her, an indulgent smile upon her face. “I know you mean well, Ruby, but I didn’t spill punch all over myself at the dance; people found out who… what I really was. That isn’t something that people will just forget about when something new comes along. This… is something that I’ll have to live with.” Blake looked away from Ruby, looking down at her breakfast where it sat, half-eaten, in front of her. </p><p>A commotion from the cafeteria doorway drew the attention of Sunset. Team WWSR had just collected their breakfasts and were now embroiled in a dispute of some description. </p><p>It didn’t take Sunset very long to work out what the source of the dispute was. </p><p>Cardin was holding his breakfast tray in one hand, gesturing aggressively towards Blake, who had – unfortunately – noticed it by now. Cardin was also saying something, although thankfully, he was too far away for any of them to hear it. Weiss was replying, seeming to be most put out, and Flash chipped in with his own opinions on the matter. </p><p><em>Probably backing Cardin up in talking all manner of slanders about Blake; that seems about his style, </em>Sunset thought. <em>He wouldn’t stand up for me; why would he stand up for her?</em></p><p>Russel, as was his wont, said very little. </p><p>Whatever was passing between the members of Team WWSR, it ended with Cardin stomping off on his own to sit with the Blake-less Bluebells, while Weiss, Russel, and – strangely – Flash walked towards the table occupied by SAPR, CLEM, RSPT, YRDN… and Blake. </p><p>Blake did not exactly look pleased to see them. </p><p>Her chest began to rise and fall. Her eyes closed and then screwed tight shut. She placed her hands heavily on the table as she lurched to her feet, letting her tray sit there in front of her as she murmured, “Excuse me.” She stepped back and began to walk away with as much dignity as she could muster in the circumstances. </p><p>The tattered shreds of her dignity did not survive even to the way out of the hall. She had started running even before she made it through the doors. </p><p>“I’ll call Sun,” Rainbow said.</p><p><em>What does Sun know about being in this situation?</em> Sunset wondered as she got to her feet and began to run after Blake, pushing Flash out of the way – and over onto his ass, his tray hit the ground with a clatter beside him – as she pursued the other girl out of the hall and into the courtyard. </p><p>“Blake, wait!” Sunset called, the sound of her voice bringing Blake to a halt. She did not turn around. She stood under the shadow of the huntsman statue, her head bowed, her left hand clasping her right elbow. </p><p>“You can’t let them win,” Sunset told her when Blake did not turn around. “You can’t let them grind you down.”</p><p>Blake turned around, her ears still drooped as she fixed her golden eyes on Sunset. “Sunset… you don’t know what I’m going through.”</p><p>“I understand what it’s like to be the outcast,” Sunset replied. “I understand what it’s like to feel like the whole world is against you.”</p><p>Blake laughed bitterly. “That isn’t a new feeling for me; I’ve felt like that for half my life.”</p><p>“Then how is it that it never made you angry?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Blake was silent for a moment. “Because I’ve seen what anger does to a man; I want no part in that.”</p><p>Sunset had no need to ask who she was referring to. She could barely keep herself from shuddering at the memory of that glowing sword, as red as blood, the memory of that face. It was all she could do not to put one hand upon her face to check there was no brand upon it. </p><p>
  <em>I need to talk to Weiss about that.</em>
</p><p>“You’re not him,” she said quietly.</p><p>“No,” Blake acknowledged. “What enrages him… it merely saddens me.”</p><p>“'Merely'?”</p><p>Blake shrugged. “It’s just a word.”</p><p>“And you are someone who chooses their words with care.”</p><p>Blake shook her head. “What do you want, Sunset?”</p><p>“I… I don’t know,” Sunset admitted. “What do you need?”</p><p>“What do I need?” Blake repeated. She sighed. “Even if I knew where to begin, the things I would begin with are not in your power to grant.”</p><p>“Well, yes, I was hoping for something a bit smaller scale than ‘equal rights,’” Sunset said.</p><p>Blake chuckled. “I need… I would like… for what Ruby said to be true. I’d like to believe that there will come a time when everyone will just… not care anymore.”</p><p>“Maybe there will,” Sunset suggested. “Ruby… is young, and too good and brave for her own good, and yet… she’s sometimes smarter than we are. Maybe she’s right about this too. But until then, keep your chin up. Like you said, pride is the thing that we have left when everything else has been taken from us.”</p><p>“Thank you for reminding me that everything else has been taken from me,” Blake muttered.</p><p>“I didn’t-” Sunset stopped, rolling her eyes in exasperation. She pouted petulantly. “You’ve still got us,” she pointed out.</p><p>“Then I don’t need my pride yet, do I?”</p><p>“Well, now you’re just being contrary, aren’t you?”</p><p>The corner of Blake’s lip twitched upwards ever so slightly. “How did you do it?”</p><p>Sunset blinked. “Do what?”</p><p>“Survive a school where everyone hated you.”</p><p>“Not everyone hates you.”</p><p>“Close enough, don’t you think?” Blake asked.</p><p>Sunset knew that Blake didn’t want a discussion on how many students precisely held her in some form of fear or contempt compared with the numbers that did not, and so she conceded Blake’s point, at least for now. “You don’t want to know how I survived,” she said. <em>And I don’t want you to know what I did to make them hate me.</em></p><p>Blake stared into Sunset’s eyes. “No, I suppose I don’t,” she agreed, her tone barely audible. </p><p><em>I wish I could make them stop,</em> Sunset felt like saying. <em>I wish that I could make them stop staring at you, even if I had to scare them into it. </em>But she couldn’t, so what would be the point in saying it? Instead, she said, “You are a better person than those who stare and scowl at you.”</p><p>“None of them have broken the law,” Blake pointed out.</p><p>“And none of them are a pain in my ass like you are, but that doesn’t make them better than you.”</p><p>“The fact that I annoy you makes me better than them?”</p><p>“The fact that you believe in something makes you better than them,” Sunset explained. “You’re like Ruby; you’ve got something… something driving you. Conviction. It drives me nuts, and it scares the crap out of me sometimes, but at the same time… it’s kind of glorious.”</p><p>Blake was silent for a moment. “I… I would rather work with you than the Atlesians,” she whispered.</p><p>Sunset folded her arms. “Speak for yourself; I’m glad to be through with you.”</p><p>Blake’s lips twitched once again. “Thank you,” she said, her voice rising by a tiny amount.</p><p>“I haven’t done anything,” Sunset reminded her. </p><p>“I know, but… thank you,” she repeated.</p><p>“Blake!” Sun yelled, vaulting over the huntsman statue – and over Blake’s head – to land on his hands before rolling to a stop a few steps away. His tail wrapped around his waist like a belt. “Is everything okay?”</p><p>Blake was quiet for a moment. “No,” she admitted. “But… it’s not too bad, either.”</p><p>“Really?” Sun asked, sounding surprised to hear it. “But, Rainbow texted me and she said that-”</p><p>“I can guess what she told you,” Blake said, before he could repeat it – and force her to relive it, “but it’s-”</p><p>“Don’t say it’s okay if it’s not,” Sun said, his voice gentle as he walked towards her, holding out his arms. “You don’t have to pretend with me.”</p><p>Blake allowed his arms to close around her, her eyes closing as he rested her head against his chest. Sun held her that way, for a little while, as his tail snaked up towards her and gently began to tickle her nose.</p><p>Blake started to giggle like a much younger girl. “Sun, stop,” she cried, in mock exasperation. </p><p>“Don’t look at me,” Sun replied. “Sometimes, this guy just moves on his own.”</p><p>“Oh, really?”</p><p>“Yeah, it’s a real pain when I’m trying to hang out, you know.”</p><p>Blake covered her mouth with one hand as she chuckled. “You didn’t have to rush over here because you heard I was in trouble,” she informed him. “But I’m glad you did.”</p><p>“Maybe I didn’t have to,” Sun accepted. “But I always will.” His stomach growled, rather disturbing the scene. “So,” he continued, “did you get a chance to finish eating before… you know?”</p><p>“I kind of lost my appetite,” Blake admitted.</p><p>“We could always go to Benni’s?” Sun suggested. “My treat?”</p><p>Blake’s eyebrows rose. “<em>Your</em> treat?”</p><p>Sun shifted uncomfortably. “Neptune’s treat,” he admitted. “But he won’t mind.”</p><p>Blake was quiet for a moment. “Okay,” she murmured. “That… sounds nice.”</p><p>Sunset watched as Sun steered her away, one arm around her shoulders. Sunset’s tail twitched as she fought to control her envy. It was nice, having somebody like that, somebody you could rely on, somebody who would take your side against the world. </p><p>Blake… she hadn’t lost everything while she still had him. </p><p>
  <em>I wish I still had a blue-eyed fool to take my side, no matter how right or wrong I was.</em>
</p><p>“You didn’t get an invitation, I take it?”</p><p>Sunset glanced over her shoulder. Cinder stood a few feet behind her, hands clasped behind her back. </p><p>“You assume I want one,” Sunset replied.</p><p>“Yes, I suppose I did,” Cinder conceded. She started to walk, not towards Sunset but around her, circling her, passing close to the statue and then beyond it to come around on Sunset’s other side. “There are some who don’t believe that she used to be an Atlesian agent.”</p><p>“I’d never have guessed.”</p><p>Cinder chuckled. “It’s not true, is it?” she asked. “She really did use to be a member of the White Fang.”</p><p>“You can’t expect me to answer that.”</p><p>Cinder’s circle took her behind Sunset, forcing the latter to look over her shoulder once again. “I suppose not, although some might say that you just did.”</p><p>Sunset frowned. <em>I suppose I did walk into that a little bit.</em></p><p>“It doesn’t really matter,” Cinder continued as her circular path brought around Sunset and in front of her once more. Her glass slippers chinked lightly against the stone. “The truth is that, if she really was a member of the White Fang… I could sympathise.”</p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”</p><p>Cinder stopped, looking up at one of the Atlesian cruisers that hung suspended in the sky overhead. A flight of one of their numerous kinds of combat airships flew past, banking hard to the right as they turned over the Emerald Forest. “They’re really beautiful, aren’t they?”</p><p>Sunset studied the Atlesian man-of-war. “I… I can’t say I agree with you, I’m afraid.”</p><p>Cinder chuckled. “I admit that, from an aesthetic standpoint, they have their faults, but all the same… when you look at those ships up above, what do you see?”</p><p>Sunset considered the cruiser a little longer. “Power,” she said.</p><p>“Yes!” Cinder cried, wheeling around to face Sunset. “Atlesian power, the might of Atlas rendered in steel.” She resumed her circling. “The power that the Atlesians hold, the power that they flaunt, the power that they deny to others. The power that they especially deny to the faunus,” she added, as she came up on Sunset’s right. “If the faunus choose to try and grasp the power that is denied to them, then who am I to judge them for that?”</p><p>“The White Fang are not the faunus,” Sunset said firmly and with a touch of sharpness in her voice, “and you don’t know what it’s like to be a faunus.”</p><p>Cinder did not reply to that, not at first. She hummed tunelessly under her breath as she completed a full circumference around Sunset, ending up in front of her, roughly where Blake had been standing until not long ago. “No,” she admitted. “I don’t. But I think I was just given a first-hand demonstration of what it’s like to be a faunus and of what drives so many of them to take up arms with the White Fang.” She paused. “What happened to your friend was not right,” she added. “Nobody should be punished for trying to better themselves, for trying to become strong. After all, isn’t that why we’re all here? To learn how to become strong?”</p><p>“Speak for yourself; I’m strong enough already,” Sunset declared, folding her arms. “I’m here to learn how to become great.”</p><p>“A worthy ambition,” Cinder conceded. “And yet…” She approached Sunset, and when she resumed walking around her, she was closer this time, close enough to brush her fingers lightly against Sunset’s shoulders. “You weren’t strong enough to protect Blake, were you?”</p><p>Sunset’s ears flattened against the top of her head. “No,” she admitted through gritted teeth. “I wish that I could stop all of this, but-”</p><p>“But what if you could?” Cinder asked, coming to stand right in front of Sunset.</p><p>Her eyes were like fire. Mesmerising. Sunset couldn’t look away from them. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“What if you could stop them?” Cinder repeated. “What if you could snatch the hurtful words right out of their mouths? What if you could make them pay for their cruelty and their callousness, for thinking so much of themselves and so little of those beneath them? What if <em>we</em> could make them pay?”</p><p>“We?” Sunset said. “Why would you want anything to do with this?”</p><p>“I’m willing to help you,” Cinder replied. “In a good cause, of course.” She smirked. “So… what’s it going to be?”</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. New Rivals</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Doctor Oobleck unveils coursework; Blake continues to suffer the slings and arrows; new rivals await in the semester's first combat class.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>New Rivals</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“So… what’s it going to be?”</em>
</p><p>The words of Cinder Fall reverberated in Sunset’s mind like the tolling of a bell. They echoed over and over again. She hadn’t answered, not yet, but with Cinder sitting beside her in Legends class, she could hardly forget about them. It was as tight a squeeze in Doctor Oobleck’s lecture hall as it had been in Professor Port’s class yesterday, and Sunset could feel Cinder’s shoulder pressed against her own. </p><p>Just like she could see Blake being given a wide berth by everyone around her. Okay, not everyone – Sun was sat beside her, and Team RSPT were arrayed protectively around them both, with Rainbow Dash looking as though she would have liked to have turned her glares into laser eyes – but most people, in spite of the crowding it was causing elsewhere.</p><p>
  <em>“So… what’s it going to be?”</em>
</p><p>Sunset frowned. She could think about just how badly she wanted to help Blake later. Later, she could also give some careful thought to just why she might want to help Blake; really, what had Blake ever done for Sunset but drag her into danger? Sunset ought to just cut her loose. It wasn’t as though they were friends. Just because Sunset saw a bit of herself in Blake, and more of people worth admiring, that was no reason to put herself out on the other girl’s behalf, was it? She could think about what Cinder might propose they do to help Blake later. For now, she really ought to concentrate on class. </p><p>Doctor Oobleck was currently zipping from one end of the classroom to the other, sipping his coffee as he did so. “Now, as you have all been informed, this semester will see all of you given the opportunity to undertake field missions in and around Vale. This will, of course, see you absent from classes for significant periods of time, and although you can and will be expected to catch up on the work that you’ve missed, it would be naïve to expect there to be no repercussions from extended loss of classroom time. It is for that reason that this semester’s studies will place a greater emphasis on your own research outside the classroom. For example: students will break up into pairs and each choose a single fairy tale or myth to research and prepare a paper on, before presenting back to the class at the end of four weeks.”</p><p>Ruby raised her hand. </p><p>Doctor Oobleck stopped, gesturing at her with his stick. “Yes, Miss Rose?”</p><p>“Does it have to be one of the fairy tales we’ve studied in class?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“Not necessarily,” Doctor Oobleck replied. “If you have a childhood favourite that you believe you can present in an academic manner, that is perfectly acceptable, although your presentation should take account of the fact that not everyone in the class will be familiar with your choice. However, before you take that step, please be aware that I will not accept ambition or an unusual choice as an excuse for poor performance.”</p><p>Sunset winced. She had led Ruby into that trap once before, in Doctor Oobleck’s history class; during a study session they had prepared an unusual approach to their Modern History paper, only for Ruby and Jaune to get dinged by Doctor Oobleck because they didn’t have sufficient factual grasp of the material to justify it. </p><p>“Now, one additional detail,” Doctor Oobleck continued. “In order to promote unity between students – and because as huntsmen in the field, you may find yourself forced to work with someone who is not of you choosing – I have chosen all the pairs from outside of existing teams.”</p><p>Sunset’s eyes widened. "<em>Outside of existing teams"? But that means I’ll get stuck working with someone I don’t like!</em></p><p>
  <em>I know that’s the point, but it doesn’t make it any less unfair!</em>
</p><p>Doctor Oobleck zoomed back to his desk and picked up his scroll. “The pairings I have selected are: Jaune Arc and Dove Bronzewing,”</p><p>“Uh, okay then,” Jaune murmured.</p><p>Doctor Oobleck continued, “Arslan Altan and Nora Valkyrie; Blake Belladonna and Pyrrha Nikos…”</p><p>Blake looked over her shoulder and across the lecture theatre to where Team SAPR sat. Pyrrha gave her a gentle smile of reassurance. </p><p>Doctor Oobleck continued through the early letters of the alphabet; Sunset listened with half an ear as she did so, until he announced, “Cinder Fall and Sunset Shimmer.”</p><p>Sunset glanced at Cinder, only to find that the other girl was smiling at her. </p><p>“Lucky you,” Cinder purred.</p><p>Sunset grinned. <em>Someone I can actually work with. Lucky me indeed. </em></p><p>In fact, with Ruby being paired with Rainbow Dash, it had to be admitted that the entire team had gotten quite lucky in their partnerships. Team RSPT was less fortunate; Rainbow herself aside, Twilight was assigned to work with Neptune Vasilias, Ciel with Yang, and Penny with Cardin Winchester of all people. Sunset did not envy her one little bit. </p><p>Especially when she had such a satisfactory-seeming partner by contrast. </p><p>Doctor Oobleck spent the rest of the class explaining in more detail the parameters of the coursework, as well as talking through an example of work done by past years so that they could get an idea of what they should be aiming to produce. All very useful, but not particularly worth remarking on. </p><p>When Legends was done, it was time for Combat with Professor Goodwitch, and all of the students spilled out of the lecture theatre and out into the corridors as they moved in a great herd towards the exit and, beyond that, the amphitheatre. </p><p>Team RSPT – and Blake and Sun – got out of the classroom first but allowed the flow of students to pass by for a while so that Team SAPR could catch up. </p><p>“So, Blake,” Pyrrha said, “it looks like we’re going to be partners.”</p><p>Blake nodded. “Yes, it does. Although it feels like cheating, considering that we’re in the same dorm room. It seems that Doctor Oobleck stretched the definition of ‘on different teams’ a little far in my case.”</p><p>“Well… perhaps,” Pyrrha admitted. “But I’m glad he did.”</p><p>Blake hesitated for a moment before she nodded. “I am too.”</p><p>“Hey, Ruby,” Rainbow said, “do you like fairy tales?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Ruby said. “I like them.”</p><p>“That’s good, at least one of us does.”</p><p>“You don’t?” Ruby asked, her tone almost – but not quite – aghast.</p><p>“Eh,” Rainbow shrugged. “I don’t mind them, I just… I don’t get this class; it’s all kids’ stuff, isn’t it?”</p><p>“'When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so,'” Ciel declared. “'Now I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put aside childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.'”</p><p>Rainbow looked at her askance. “Who said that?”</p><p>“Professor Ozpin,” Ciel said. “In his essay <em>On Fairy Tales</em>; no doubt that is why he instituted this class.”</p><p>“Yeah, well…” Rainbow muttered, scratching the back of her head awkwardly. “Anyway, it’ll be nice to work with you, Ruby.”</p><p>“You too,” Ruby said, with a little less enthusiasm. </p><p>“If I may ask, Ruby,” Ciel said as they made their way towards the amphitheatre, “what is your sister like to work with?”</p><p>“I… actually don’t know,” Ruby admitted. “We’re not on the same team, and she was two years ahead of me at Signal… but she seems to get good grades!”</p><p>“I hope so,” Ciel said, in an even tone.</p><p>“Hey, Penny, if that Cardin guy gives you any trouble, just tell me, and I’ll take care of it,” Rainbow instructed her.</p><p>“What kind of trouble might he give me?”</p><p>“I don’t know… just tell me anything,” Rainbow told her. “The same for you, Twilight.”</p><p>“Hey, don’t worry about Neptune,” Sun said. “He’s a great guy.”</p><p>“I think it’s good that some of us have been assigned partners outside of our friends,” Twilight insisted. “After all, the Vytal Festival is about forging bonds across schools and kingdoms, and we all know each other pretty well already.”</p><p>“I don’t know; we haven’t had a chance to talk much, have we, Ruby?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>“No, I guess we haven’t,” Ruby acknowledged.</p><p>“Speaking for myself,” Cinder breathed into Sunset’s ear, “I’m quite glad that I wasn’t paired with a complete stranger.”</p><p>“No, you were paired with a passing acquaintance,” Sunset replied.</p><p>Cinder chuckled. “For now, perhaps, but we’re going to have a lot of fun together, you and me, I can feel it.”</p><p>After History came Etiquette, otherwise known as a free period for anyone who was neither an Atlas student nor interested in the proper way to fold napkins.</p><p>Sunset was not entirely sure why she was here. It wasn't as though she had any particular need to master the social graces; her Equestrian manners had served her well enough in Mistral, after all. But she could not deny that there was a part of her that missed the days when she had been the pony everypony should know, when she had dazzled whole rooms with her looks, talent, and closeness to the princess. In the same way, she could not deny that it might be nice to have that again, and if she achieved her ambitions and was rewarded with the great acclaim she sought, then it might be as well for her to know how humans behaved in the highest circles.</p><p>The class was held in one of the full-sized lecture theatres, and while it was by no means empty, it was, at the same time, not nearly as full as Grimm Studies or Modern History had been. All of the Atlas students were there, more than a few looking as though they were here under duress, but there were also a few more students from the other three academies than Sunset had expected. As she, Jaune, and Pyrrha – Ruby had not joined them, declaring her intent to get in some training with Yang instead – found seats near the front, Sunset looked around and saw a number of familiar faces; the presence of Weiss and Flash was not too surprising, but Sunset was a little surprised to see Dove as the sole representative of Team YRDN; he was sitting next to Lyra and Bon Bon. Sunset was a little disappointed to not see Cinder here and more than a little surprised to see Sun sitting up near the back, accompanied by Neptune with a long-suffering expression on his face. And then there was Blake, looking a little wary as she walked in with Team RSPT, as though she was afraid that this would all turn out to be a trap set for her. No sooner had she caught sight of Team SAPR – minus, of course, the R – than she headed over to them.</p><p>"Do you mind if I sit here?" she asked, anxiety clear in her tone.</p><p>"Of course not," Pyrrha said, gesturing to the empty seat beside her.</p><p>Blake smiled gratefully and took the seat on Pyrrha's left; the members of Team RSPT not named Ciel took the seats on Blake's left, sandwiching the princess of Menagerie between the two teams into whose joint custody she seemed to have fallen.</p><p>Ciel herself stood in front of the class, seeming without a trace of self-consciousness in the face of all the eyes upon her. In fact, watching her stand at east with her hands clasped behind her back, staring straight ahead, one could have been forgiven for thinking she was not aware of the presence of an audience at all.</p><p>There was no sign of their instructor as the last few students filed in.</p><p>
  <em>It would be a fine thing if the person supposed to be teaching us how to behave arrived late, wouldn't it?</em>
</p><p>At precisely the minute the class was due to begin, a tall upperclassman, his skin the same shade as that of Ciel, with red hair close-cropped to the sides of his head, strode confidently into the classroom.</p><p>"Good morning," he said, his dark eyes sweeping across the lecture hall as he came to stand beside Ciel, adopting without looking at her the exact same posture. "My name is Marcus Thackeray, and I am the leader of Team Magnolia; with the assistance of Miss Soleil," he gestured to Ciel, "I will be running these etiquette classes for first-year students during the semester here at Beacon. For those of you who are not from Atlas, you are welcome here, and I hope that you all get something out of it. Now, to begin: Miss Soleil, would you mind leaving the room and then showing the class how to come back in."</p><p>Sunset wasn't entirely sure what she had expected from an Atlesian Etiquette class, but she had not expected the class to start off with how to walk into a room. Not that it was a bad lesson – it was about politesse, yes, but it was also about confidence, and as far as Sunset was concerned, both Jaune and Pyrrha could use a little more of that in the way they moved, to say nothing of Blake – but it was unexpected nonetheless. Certainly, it was never something that Princess Celestia had felt the need to teach Sunset, but then, Princess Celestia's relationship with courtly manners and etiquette had always been… begrudging, to put it politely, even if she concealed that fact from the untutored eye.</p><p>Sunset considered that she had taught herself to move with confidence and grace pretty well, and although she was a little less than pleased to be told – by Ciel, no less – that she moved with a smidgeon too much confidence and a pinch too little grace, nevertheless, she accomplished the aim of the class more swiftly than some, which meant that she got to spend a fair amount of time watching everyone else struggle with things that she had already mastered. Something Sunset had always enjoyed, ever since she was a filly.</p><p>
  <em>Though possibly I shouldn't.</em>
</p><p>After Etiquette came combat class, and Ruby and Cinder and a great many other students who had taken advantage of the chance at a free period rejoined the throng. They made their way across the courtyard to the amphitheatre, where Teams SAPR and RSPT split off from the rest of the group and headed towards different locker rooms to the rest of the first years. </p><p>“You’re not coming?” Cinder asked.</p><p>“Nah,” Sunset said, turning around to face her. “We get our own locker rooms all to ourselves because we’re so awesome.”</p><p>“It’s because Ruby’s a little young to be getting change in front of all the other students,” Jaune pointed out.</p><p>Sunset spluttered. “Yeah, well, it’s also because we’re special.”</p><p>Cinder chuckled. “Of course it is. I’ll see you inside.”</p><p>Sunset turned back and rejoined the rest of her team heading towards the third-year locker rooms where they changed. </p><p>“You seem to be getting along well,” Pyrrha observed.</p><p>“You almost sound surprised.”</p><p>“No, I… yes, I suppose I am, a little,” Pyrrha admitted. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“It’s okay, I- oh wait!” Sunset exclaimed, because she needed to talk to Weiss, and she might not get a better chance than this to get her alone. “Weiss!” she called out, turning around to face the rest of the first-years.</p><p>Sunset noticed Flash watching her – well, might he watch her; it wasn’t as though he was going to see anything that would interest <em>him</em> – as Weiss made her way cautiously towards her, a puzzled look upon her face. </p><p>“Yes?” she asked.</p><p>“Can I have a word with you?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“Aren’t we having one right now?”</p><p>“Funny,” Sunset muttered. “It’s important.”</p><p>“Will you be alright by yourself?” Pyrrha asked.</p><p>“Sure, I’ll see you in the locker room,” Sunset assured her, and the rest of Team SAPR left her behind with Weiss, just as the other first years – with the exception of the lingering Flash, who stayed diplomatically out of earshot – had left Weiss behind on the same journey. </p><p>Weiss put one hand upon her hip. “So? What’s this about?”</p><p>“Your father’s company,” Sunset replied, “and what it does to punish people who step out of line.”</p><p>“When people step out of line, they get fired,” Weiss replied. “I don’t approve of all my father’s business practices, but I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with that.”</p><p>“I’m not talking about firing people,” Sunset growled. “I’m talking about branding their faces.”</p><p>“What?” Weiss exclaimed. “What are you talking about? That’s ridiculous!”</p><p>“I’ve seen it with my own eyes,” Sunset insisted.</p><p>“When? Who?”</p><p>“The night before last,” Sunset replied. “The White Fang commander who we fought at the docks, Adam Taurus.”</p><p>Weiss’ eyes widened. “You ran into him again.”</p><p>“Me and Blake and Rainbow Dash,” Sunset confirmed. “Rainbow knocked his mask off, and there it was: the letters 'SDC' seared into his flesh.”</p><p>Weiss stared up into Sunset’s eyes, searching for some hint of a lie in there. “This… this is a… what were you and Blake and Rainbow Dash doing fighting the White Fang again the night before last?”</p><p>“Never mind that,” Sunset snapped. “Let’s focus on what your father-”</p><p>“My father, flawed as he is, is not responsible for everything that is done by the Schnee Dust Company,” Weiss retorted. “What you’re describing is illegal.”</p><p>“But it happened,” Sunset declared.</p><p>“To one person,” Weiss replied. “To one… rather unpleasant person, you must admit.”</p><p>“I’m not making any plea for the virtue of Adam Taurus,” Sunset snapped. “I’m asking how many other people you’ve burned.”</p><p>“I haven’t burned anyone!” Weiss cried. Her tone softened as she added, “I must admit, I’m a little surprised this is bothering you.”</p><p>“Of course it bothers me. What? If I bother you too much, are you going to-?” Sunset stopped. She gritted her teeth. “That was… unworthy of me to suggest that.”</p><p>“Yes,” Weiss said icily. “Yes, it was. And if you’d said it, this conversation would be over by now.” She folded her arms. “Are you sure of what you saw?”</p><p>“Certain,” Sunset said.</p><p>Weiss scowled. “I don’t know whether to thank you for telling me or wish that you hadn’t. But I’ll look into it. I’ll speak to my sister and find out what she knows. I don’t know if that’s what you wanted, but there’s nothing else I can do.”</p><p>“That’s… fine,” Sunset said. She hadn’t been sure exactly what she wanted, except to tell Weiss, perhaps to find out if she’d know about it; she had not, unless she was a better liar than Sunset gave her credit for. She didn’t expect Weiss to solve the problem. She supposed that she’d just wanted to get it off her chest. </p><p>And, having gotten it off her chest, she felt a lot better as she rejoined her teammates in the locker room and began to change into her combat outfit. </p><p>“Combat class is going to be great this semester!” Ruby declared eagerly as she pulled on her boots. “So many new students to match ourselves against, from all the different schools. After a semester where we found out where we stood against the other Beacon first-years, now we’ll get to see how we do against our peers from across the whole of Remnant.”</p><p>“That’s great, if you’re sure that you’re going to come out of the comparison looking pretty good,” Jaune muttered.</p><p>“You’ve come such a long way already, Jaune,” Pyrrha insisted. “I think you’re a match for Lyra or Sky or-”</p><p>“The worst students in the year?”</p><p>Pyrrha pursed her lips together. “Progress is progress, Jaune,” she reminded him. “Don’t lose sight of that. Just because… just because you’re not beating me all of a sudden doesn’t mean that you’re not improving.”</p><p>“I know,” Jaune assured her as he pulled his hoodie on over his chest. “It’s just that… there’s bound to be so many other great students from Atlas, Haven, and Shade that I don’t stand a chance against, just like here.”</p><p>“But you don’t have to fight them all by yourself,” Ruby said. “Even in a tournament, you’ll have us by your side.”</p><p>Jaune sighed. “Right.”</p><p>“You knew that it would be difficult,” Pyrrha said, “but all the same, I… maybe…”</p><p>Jaune looked at her. “Pyrrha?”</p><p>“Never mind,” Pyrrha said. “It’s an idea, but nothing that you need to worry about just yet.”</p><p>“Will he ever need to worry about it?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“No!” Pyrrha cried. “'Worry' was… the wrong word. Nothing to… just put it out of your mind for now.”</p><p>Jaune managed to smile as he strapped on his cuirass. “Consider it out… let’s just think about everyone waiting for us out there.”</p><p>“I’d like a crack at some of the Shade students,” Sunset said. The Atlesians might be considered arrogant in certain ways, with their patriotism and their desire to shove Atlas this and Atlas that down your throats, but Sunset personally found some of the visitors from Shade to be far more irritating. It was one thing to have pride in where you came from; it was another thing to act like just because you came from a sandy hole in the ground, that made you better than everyone else, stronger, tougher, morally superior. From the moment they arrived in the first semester, some of the Shade students, like Team NDGO, had started walking around like they owned the place. </p><p>“Quite frankly, Sunset, you’re more likely to be challenged yourself,” Pyrrha murmured.</p><p>Sunset pulled Soteria out of her locker and shut the door with a slam. “Challenged? Why?”</p><p>“I’m afraid you were rather rude to Arslan Altan yesterday, and she’s likely to take it personally.”</p><p>“Who?” Sunset asked; she felt as though she’d heard that name before, but she couldn’t quite place it.</p><p>“The girl with the light blonde mane who asked why we had been tasked with hunting down the karkadann,” Pyrrha reminded her.</p><p>“Oh, her,” Sunset said, remembering. “I wasn’t rude.”</p><p>“You told her that she wasn’t me.”</p><p>“Well, she isn’t.”</p><p>Pyrrha sighed. “Arslan Altan has won second place in the Mistral Regional Tournament for the past four years.”</p><p>“Second to you, every time?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“Indeed,” Pyrrha said softly.</p><p>“That’s got to be rough,” Sunset muttered. “So close to what you want, but the same person just keeps standing in your way. No offence.”</p><p>“It’s quite alright; I understand completely,” Pyrrha said softly. “I think… Arslan is not a bad person, but I fear she likely has a bit of a chip on her shoulder about this. After what you said… she may seek vengeance for it.”</p><p>“'Vengeance'?” Sunset repeated incredulously. “Come on, Pyrrha, you’re overreacting.”</p><hr/><p>“I’m going to kick her ass,” declared the girl with the untidy mane of pale blonde hair that stood out so much against her dark skin. </p><p>One of her teammates, a boy with hair close-cropped on the back and sides and dyed pink on top, groaned. “Arslan, you’ve got to let this go.”</p><p>“No, Nadir, I am not going to let it go!” said the girl, Arslan presumably. “Just because I haven’t… it doesn’t give her the right to talk to me like that! ‘You’re not Pyrrha Nikos, are you?’ Who does she think she is?”</p><p>“She thinks she’s Pyrrrha’s teammate,” observed another girl, with vivid green hair and dark lines painted onto her face. “Who knows what she’s been told about you?”</p><p>“This isn’t P-money’s doing, Reese,” Arslan said firmly. “She’s a lot of things, but she wouldn’t trash-talk me behind my back.”</p><p>“How do you know?” Reese demanded.</p><p>“Because I know, okay,” Arslan said sharply. “I know Pyrrha, and the fact that her teammate has earned a beating from me doesn’t mean that I don’t know what kind of person she is.”</p><p>“Are you sure you can deliver that beating?” asked what must have been the fourth member of their team, a tall young man with a mop of dark hair. “You saw that video of her match with Pyrrha Nikos; she-”</p><p>Arslan folded her arms. “If you’re about to tell me that you don’t think I can handle this, Bolin, then I recommend you stop now. I can take on Sunset Shimmer. Even if she has got a powerful semblance, all I have to do is close the distance before she can hit me, and then I’ll have her, like that!” she slammed one fist into her open palm. “Telling me I’m not Pyrrha Nikos, indeed.”</p><p><em>You really know how to get under people’s skin, don’t you Sunset?</em> Blake thought. She had almost finished getting changed for Combat Class and thus far counted herself fortunate that nobody had sought to interact with her in the locker room. Of course, nobody had wanted to interact with her in the locker room before, but now, after what had happened at breakfast, she had been worried that some people might seek to take the dislike they had demonstrated earlier and act upon it.</p><p>Here, where there was no Team SAPR and no Team RSPT either. </p><p>Not that she needed protection, but it would have been nice to have had a friendly face around. Team YRDN sort of counted – although Dove didn’t seem particularly enamoured of her at the moment – but she knew them far less well and had enjoyed fewer interactions with them. Not that she was complaining or pretending that it wasn’t her own fault, but all the same… a part of her wished that there was someone in here that she knew would be on her side. </p><p>In the absence of any such, and with no one looking to interact with her, Blake had been given plenty of opportunity to listen to the chatter of the locker room going on around her, not just to Arslan’s grousing about Sunset, but also to the boasting and the teasing and all of the adjustment that came with a greatly enlarged body of students sharing the lockers and getting to grips with their presence together as rivals. </p><p>Blake was distracted from these fascinating anthropological observations by the slamming shut of her locker door, courtesy of a feline faunus – with a tail, instead of ears; a red tail curling up behind her head – with bright red hair and streaks of neon blue in the fringes that matched her eyes. She was dressed in a revealing blue top that exposed large parts of her bra to view, and her pink skirt was too short to conceal the shorts beneath, but what caught Blake’s eye the most was the collar she had around her neck, complete with a golden bell like… well, like a cat. </p><p>Blake found that she couldn’t take her eyes off it. She had never seen any faunus wearing anything so… so… she had never seen any faunus wearing anything quite like it before. </p><p>As a result, it exercised an almost hypnotic effect on her. </p><p>The girl bent down, bringing her head level with where her bell had been, even as she pointed to her eyes. “Uh, my face is up here, kitty.”</p><p>Blake blinked rapidly. “'Kitty'? Really?”</p><p>The girl shrugged. “You are a cat faunus, right?”</p><p>“My name is Blake,” Blake replied.</p><p>“And I’m Neon Katt. It’s nice to meet you!” she said, making a paw with one hand and holding it out.</p><p>Blake’s eyes narrowed. “Can I help you with something?”</p><p>“Probably not; I just wanted to see the White Fang terrorist,” Neon said. She giggled. “You know, it’s funny; Rainbow says that I talk like I’m part of the White Fang, but then you go and turn out to actually <em>be</em> in the White Fang; isn’t that hilarious!”</p><p>“It wouldn’t be, if I was still part of the White Fang,” Blake said, her voice hard and unyielding. “But I’m not any more.”</p><p>“Aww, that’s really disappointing,” Neon said. “I thought I might find someone who agrees with me.”</p><p>“Agrees with you about what?”</p><p>“About how much better we are than everyone else!” Neon cried. “About how with our superior abilities we should totally rule over the rest of these losers who can’t even see in the dark.”</p><p>“That’s not funny!” Blake snapped.</p><p>“Nearly everything can be funny if you’re willing to look at in the right way,” Neon retorted. She sighed. “But I can already tell that you’re going to turn out to be one of those moody loser faunus who spend all their time moping about injustice, aren’t you?”</p><p>“What do you suggest we ought to do instead?”</p><p>“Get over it!” Neon yelled. “Laugh! Get on with your lives and remember: we’re stronger than they are, faster than they are, and we can do all kinds of things they can’t even dream of, even before we get into semblances, so if anyone gives you any trouble: kick their ass.” She chuckled, but as she leaned forwards, forcing Blake to back into her locker, her expression hardened, suddenly draining of mirth. “All of which being said, if you are still a member of the White Fang and you hurt any of my friends, I will skin you alive and watch you die slowly before making a pair of super-stylish gloves out of you. Understand, girlfriend?”</p><p>Blake wasn’t given the chance to reply. Instead, the response came from another voice, from Nebula Violette of Shade Academy, who laughed as she approached Neon from behind. “Threats, from an Atlesian?” she said. “What a joke.” She scoffed. “Or perhaps Beacon students are so weak that even an Atlesian is able to scare them.”</p><p>Nebula Violette was the best example of ‘seem fair and feel foul’ that Blake had ever been so unfortunate as to come across in real life as opposed to the pages of books. She had a deceptively attractive face, with a shock of indigo hair brushed over her left side and olive-coloured eyes. </p><p>She was also perhaps the biggest advocate for the supremacy of Shade and Vacuo amongst the entire visiting student body. </p><p>Not that Neon Katt could have been aware of that as she rounded on the other girl. “You got a problem?”</p><p>Nebula shrugged. She wore a long lilac coat over a grey blouse, corset, and a literal breastplate like the one Sunset had used to wear before she traded up, with black gloves covering her hands and forearms; her coat was rolled up on one side, revealing a black cowter of some kind, while on her opposite shoulder, she wore a single shoulder pauldron. “It’s just that you’re both as weak as one another that I don’t know what you hope to accomplish. If you wanted someone to make threats, then you should have asked for the help of a warrior.”</p><p>“Oh, sure, nothing says ‘warrior’ like boob plate and a corset,” Neon replied.</p><p>“It says it more than… whatever that is you’re wearing,” Nebula retorted with a scowl.</p><p>“What this is, is confidence,” Neon proclaimed proudly. “I don’t need armour,” she added, conveniently ignoring the white vambraces and greaves on her arms and legs, “because nobody is ever going to get close enough to touch me.”</p><p>“No one in <em>Atlas</em>, maybe,” Nebula allowed, “but you’re not in Atlas any more-”</p><p>“And you’re not in Shade either,” Neon reminded her cheerily. “Atlas may have its faults, but at least there we get taught how to read a map.”</p><p>“In Vacuo, we know how to survive,” Nebula declared. “You think that the grimm here or in Solitas are bad? In Vacuo, we have faced the worst the world has to offer before ever reaching Shade Academy, and that is why we are the strongest-”</p><p>“Are you trying to intimidate me or bore me to death with all of these clichés?” Neon asked.</p><p>Nebula growled. “Watch your step, house cat,” she snapped. “And as for you,” she jabbed her finger aggressively towards Blake. “You belong in a cage, not in this school.”</p><p>“Because I’m a faunus?” Blake asked quietly. “Or because I used to be White Fang?”</p><p>“Either?” Nebula suggested. “Both.”</p><p>“Hey, come on, girls,” Yang said genially as she approached the three. “Let’s save the fighting until we’re actually in class, okay?”</p><p>Nebula regarded Yang coolly. “Fine,” she said sharply. “We’ll let our weapons do the talking.” She turned and walked away, the tread of her boots echoing upon the locker room floor. </p><p>“What’s her problem?” Neon asked.</p><p>“She’s from Vacuo,” Yang said, as though it explained everything.</p><p>“Really? Because I thought she’d been living outside the kingdoms!”</p><p>“Well, it <em>is</em> Vacuo,” Yang replied.</p><p>“You’ve been spending time with Rainbow Dash, haven’t you?” Neon asked. “Anyway: later, losers!” she skated off, leaving a rainbow trail after her. </p><p>Yang sighed. “Sometimes I wonder if the Vytal Festival is worth having to put up with all these jerks.”</p><p>Blake’s lips crinkled in a slight smile. “Unity and peace, remember.”</p><p>“I’m not seeing much of either right now,” Yang declared. She smiled softly, as she reached out and put one hand on Blake’s arm. “How are you holding up?”</p><p>Blake bowed her head. “I’m okay,” she muttered.</p><p>“Sure you are,” Yang said, in a tone that left it an open question as to whether she believed Blake or not. “But if you’re ever not okay, just remember that Sunset and Rainbow aren’t the only two people in this school who can be here for you.”</p><p>Blake looked up into Yang’s purple eyes. “Are you sure?”</p><p>“Whatever you’ve done before,” Yang said, “that’s all behind you now. We’ve all done stupid things, but we should all get a chance to learn from them.” She grinned. “Keep moving forward, right?”</p><p>“Right,” Blake concurred as she allowed Yang to steer her by the shoulder towards the amphitheatre proper.</p><hr/><p>During the first semester, there had been few enough students in the freshman class that they could all occupy the seats down on the floor of the amphitheatre, gathered around the ring waiting for their turn to be called to fight. Now, however, with so many additional students from Atlas, Haven, and Shade, those who were not actually fighting had sprawled out onto the upper observation deck, looking down upon the ring from above. It was there that Team SAPR sat, except for Ruby, who was standing in the arena itself facing an Atlesian student named Starlight Glimmer. </p><p>Starlight was a tall girl with skin of a dark hue like Ciel, with blue eyes and hair of purple streaked with aquamarine falling in curling waves down her back. She was dressed in a form-fitting black bodysuit with aquamarine highlights, and over the top of it, she wore armour that seemed to be exactly the same kind worn by the Atlesians soldiers deployed from their ships: a white-grey cuirass that only covered the upper chest but left the belly exposed, blocky shoulder pauldrons, brassart, and vambraces. The only thing she was lacking was a helmet, seeming to prefer to go bareheaded. In both hands, she tightly gripped a gilded rifle, glowing green along the sleek lines that broke up the weapon and, if Ruby was any judge at all, marked the points at which it would transform into something else. She had the weapon tucked into her shoulder, the barrel pointing down towards the ground.</p><p>Her face was expressionless. She stared flatly at Ruby but gave nothing away. </p><p>Ruby twirled Crescent Rose experimentally in her hands as she unfolded her weapon. Hers was only the second match of the class, after Yang had gotten them started by beating a Haven student named Hector. She felt an obligation to win, to continue to uphold the honour of Beacon.</p><p>Although the pressure wasn’t doing her any favours. </p><p>“Go, Starlight!” cheered the girl in the hat and cloak who had made such a dramatic entrance into the cafeteria a couple of days ago. </p><p>“You can do it, Ruby!” Penny cried.</p><p>“Traitor!” Neon shouted.</p><p>“Don’t talk to my teammate like that, Neon!” Rainbow yelled.</p><p>“Quiet, everyone!” Professor Goodwitch snapped. She paused a moment. “Begin!”</p><p>Starlight snapped up her rifle, firing off a trio of shots; three green laser pulses spat from the barrel of the weapon towards Ruby. Ruby leapt aside, letting the bolts pass harmlessly by her as she rolled to a stop, the blade of Crescent Rose digging into the arena surface as she aimed at her opponent. </p><p>Ruby fired twice, Crescent Rose booming. Starlight’s rifle transformed, smoothly shifting from a gun into a long gilded lance with a glowing green tip. The spearshaft spun in Starlight’s hands as she deflected Ruby’s shots.</p><p>Her booted feet thudded upon the floor as she charged, lance drawn back for a thrust. </p><p>Ruby rushed to meet her, Crescent Rose drawn back. She swung, her scythe blade cutting through the air. Starlight leapt to avoid it, flipping over on her back as the blade passed harmlessly beneath her. As Starlight landed, Ruby let the momentum of her swing turn her around before retreating in a burst of rose petals, putting a little distance between herself and Starlight’s counterattack.  </p><p>The counterattack didn’t come. Starlight stood where she had landed, silent, unmoving. She watched Ruby, but she made no move. She didn’t even turn her lance back into a rifle. She was thinking, probably. Maybe she was thinking anyway. </p><p>Ruby thought too, but conscious that she had to think quickly. </p><p>
  <em>I can’t deflect laser fire like I could bullets, which means I have to take the risk and get in close.</em>
</p><p>She flourished Crescent Rose before her, tracing a crimson pattern in the air, before she charged forward, trailing rose petals in her wake. She swung her scythe. Starlight blocked the stroke, using the shaft of her lance to stop her slashing blow dead in its tracks. She grinned, and her left hand glowed aquamarine as she released her spear and lashed out in a snapping punch that came too fast for Ruby to dodge. It connected with her shoulder hard enough to send Ruby flying, and as she flew, Ruby felt… it was weird, it wasn’t like getting hit normally felt, it was more than just a blow to her aura, it felt… it felt almost as if something was being taken away from her. </p><p>She hit the ground and rolled to a stop and then onto her feet again, in time to see Starlight Glimmer rushing towards her.</p><p>Rushing towards her trailing lavender petals?</p><p>
  <em>What the-?</em>
</p><p>Ruby tried to use her semblance to get away, to put some distance between her and Starlight, only… she couldn’t. Her semblance wasn’t working! Why wasn’t her semblance working?</p><p>
  <em>Is that what I felt? Did she take my semblance?</em>
</p><p><em>No time to think about that now.</em> She didn’t have her semblance any more, which meant that she would have to make do without it. She reversed Crescent Rose and fired, using the recoil to propel herself forwards, swinging her scythe. Starlight flowed around Ruby, trailing lavender petals, moving faster than Ruby could follow, lashing out with her lance to hit Ruby across the face, first with the butt and then with the point. Ruby staggered backwards, feeling her aura drain away under the impact of the blows. Starlight retreated, using Ruby’s semblance to put distance between the two of them as her lance reformed into its original rifle configuration. </p><p>Starlight fired. Ruby shot too, but she was using the recoil on Crescent Rose to substitute for her semblance, to keep herself moving while she tried to think of a new plan. Starlight was faster than she was – now, Ruby thought sourly – so trying to close in wasn’t an option. She should shoot, but then she could also be shot <em>at</em>, so how was she supposed to win this? </p><p>Starlight started shooting at her, spraying her laser bolts wide so as to give Ruby nowhere to run, nowhere to escape too. A shot caught Ruby on the shoulder, and she went down. She got up again, not wanting to look on the board to see how much aura she had left. She fired again. </p><p>
  <em>That’s it! She can’t block my shots while she’s firing.</em>
</p><p>Ruby stopped moving. Aimed and fired. </p><p>Her bullet left Crescent Rose with a roar as Starlight’s bolt left her rifle with a crackle.</p><p>Bullet and bolt flew past one another. </p><p>Both stroke home, flinging their targets onto their backs and across the surface of the arena. </p><p>A buzzer sounded, and from the weariness that she was feeling in her limbs, Ruby guessed it was for her. </p><p>“And that’s the match: Miss Rose’s aura has passed into the red, and she is unable to continue,” Professor Goodwitch said, confirming Ruby’s fears. “Miss Glimmer is victorious. Congratulations, Miss Glimmer.”</p><p>“Thank you, Professor.”</p><p>“What would you have done without your semblance?”</p><p>Starlight didn’t reply for a moment. “Tried to keep out of reach of her scythe, Professor.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Professor Goodwitch murmured. “Miss Rose… you did the best you could, faced with unforeseen circumstances.”</p><p>It didn’t feel like it to Ruby, but she still managed to say, “Thank you, Professor.”</p><p>She started to get up. A hand entered her field of vision, a hand that was glowing with an aquamarine light.</p><p>The hand of Starlight Glimmer.</p><p>“I guess you’d like your semblance back now, right?” she said, smiling.</p><p>Ruby hesitated for a moment before she reached up and took Starlight’s hand. As the other girl helped her to her feet, Ruby felt not only a little of her aura restored but more than that… she felt whole again. “Thanks,” Ruby said softly. “Neat semblance.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Starlight murmured, looking a little uncomfortable. “I got lucky with it.” She laughed nervously. “Anyway, now that you know about it, I expect you’ll give me more trouble next time.”</p><p>Ruby grinned. “Count on it!”</p><hr/><p>Sol Invictus felt heavy in Sunset’s hands as she faced Nebula Violette across the ring. </p><p>
  <em>I did say I wanted to get a crack at one of these proud Vacuan warriors. </em>
</p><p>This was the last match of the class. Whether she won or lost, this would be what people were talking about on the way into the locker rooms.</p><p>And after Ruby’s misfortune – <em>temporary </em>misfortune; Sunset had no doubt that Ruby would get her next time – against Starlight Glimmer, it was up to Sunset to uphold the honour of Team SAPR, since neither Jaune nor Pyrrha had been called, much to the disappointment of some people, Sunset was sure. </p><p>She had to win this fight, or the newcomers wouldn’t understand why Team SAPR was a force to be reckoned with and a team to watch. </p><p>She could not afford to mess this up. </p><p>Nebula held her crossbow loosely in one hand. She looked cocky, the cheeky little madam. Didn’t she know who Sunset was? Did she think that Sunset Shimmer, leader of Team SAPR, was some no mark student of little account, the sort who could be taken lightly?</p><p>
  <em>I suppose this is why Arslan wants to fight me.</em>
</p><p>Speaking of Arslan Altan, if Sunset remembered right the face of the person she had offended, then she had been stewing all class and now looked very sour at the fact that it was Nebula who had been chosen to be Sunset’s opponent and not her. </p><p><em>I should probably apologise… but I kind of like the fact that a great Mistralian tournament fighter wants to fight </em>me<em> this badly.</em></p><p>
  <em>If I haven’t arrived yet, I’m pulling into the station.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Now, back to the subject at hand, what can I do to end this quickly?</em>
</p><p>Professor Goodwitch clasped her hands together behind her back. “Begin!”</p><p>Nebula started to raise her crossbow.</p><p>But Sunset had already teleported right in front of her, Sol Invictus levelled at her chest. </p><p>BANG!</p><p>Sunset fired into Nebula’s chest, then extended the bayonet outwards, slamming into her while she was off balance and knocking her out of the arena. </p><p>“And that’s the match,” Professor Goodwitch observed calmly.</p><p>Nebula leapt to her feet. “Professor!”</p><p>“In a tournament-style duel, Miss Violette, leaving the ring for any reason is cause for elimination,” Professor Goodwitch reminded her.</p><p>Nebula scowled. “But in a real battle, there is no ring!”</p><p>“In a real battle, there is no limit on the amount of aura a contestant may have,” Professor Goodwitch replied. “I hope you are not suggesting that I should allow students to fight to the death?”</p><p>“No,” Nebula admitted, “but-”</p><p>“You were unfortunate,” Professor Goodwitch informed her, “but a greater degree of readiness might have served you well when the battle began. Miss Shimmer, you took the initiative, and it served you well.”</p><p>Sunset bowed her head. “Thank you, Professor.”</p><p>She looked out, away from the arena across the ranks of the gathered students, down below and up in the gallery. Arslan Atlan, who still looked put out that she had been denied the chance to lose quickly against Sunset; Cinder, who looked impressed; all the students come from all the schools to challenge them, to compete in – futile – struggle to be the best. </p><p>
  <em>They will be dust beneath our chariot wheels, but in the meantime… this is shaping up to be a pretty interesting semester.</em>
</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Student Teacher Conversations</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Yang, Blake, Ciel and Penny talk to their teachers.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Student-Teacher Conversations</p><p> </p><p>Yang knocked on the door to Professor Goodwitch's office, even as she poked her head around it. "You asked to see me, Professor?"</p><p>Professor Goodwitch looked up from whatever it was that she'd been working on. "Yes, come in, Miss Xiao Long."</p><p>Yang walked in, closing the door softly behind her, and strode inside the small, slightly overcrowded room. Although she had been in here more than once, it didn't stop her feeling just a little bit nervous every time she came in here, whether it was rational to feel that way or not. She stopped in front of Professor Goodwitch's desk. "Professor, if this is about what happened in the kitchen-"</p><p>"It is not, Miss Xiao Long," Professor Goodwitch said, looking up at her. "Although, don't let that stop you from explaining yourself."</p><p>"Oh, it's nothing for someone like you to concern yourself with, Professor," Yang assured her, with a touch of feigned laughter in her voice. "Nora had just a new recipe idea that got a little out of hand."</p><p>"I thought that Mister Ren was the only cook in Team Iron."</p><p>"Ren would probably be happier if he was," Yang muttered. Nora's enthusiasm for the culinary arts far outstripped her actual skill in the kitchen. As an artist with batter, she had few equals, but in terms of producing something edible… not so much.</p><p>Professor Goodwitch stared at her for a moment. Then she let out the slightest hint of a chuckle before looking down at the mass of paperwork cluttering up her desk. "Please, sit down, Miss Xiao Long," Professor Goodwitch said kindly, gesturing with one hand to the chair in front of her desk. "I won't keep you from lunch very long."</p><p>"Thanks, Professor," Yang said, taking the chair. She crossed her legs, one boot resting upon her knee. "And it's fine. Professor, can I ask you a question?"</p><p>Professor Goodwitch leaned back in her chair. "Of course, Miss Xiao Long, although I can't guarantee you an answer."</p><p>"What's going to happen to Team Bluebell, or whatever we ought to call them now?" Yang asked. "Without Blake, they're down to three people and…" she sought for a tactful way to put it, "not the most talented three people."</p><p>Professor Goodwitch made a wordless sound that Yang took to be confirmation that the Combat Instructor agreed with her about the place in the rankings occupied by Lyra, Bon Bon, and Sky. "May I ask your interest in this, Miss Xiao Long?"</p><p>"Dove's worried about them," Yang explained.</p><p>"Ah," Professor Goodwitch said. "Unfortunately, I cannot set Mister Bronzewing's mind completely at ease, since no decision has been made regarding Team Bluebell at this time, but you may inform him that I have no intention of assigning the three of them a field mission in their current state."</p><p>"I'll tell him that, Professor; thank you," Yang replied, She was somewhat of the mind that, it being the case that the three of them couldn't manage without Blake, perhaps Beacon wasn't the place for them… but that really wasn't her place to say, and so, she kept it to herself. Who was she to put a limit on the dreams of others?</p><p>She waited to hear why Professor Goodwitch had asked to see her.</p><p>"You fought very well today," Professor Goodwitch informed her.</p><p>Yang grinned. "Thanks, Professor, but that guy wasn't so tough." He hadn't been a pushover, but he hadn't really pushed her either. "I, uh, know that I probably shouldn't ask you for favours-"</p><p>Professor Goodwitch smiled. "But you aren't going to let a little thing like that stop you, Miss Xiao Long?"</p><p>Yang chuckled. "It's not like I'm asking for permission to cut class or anything, Professor. I was just wondering if you could hook me up against Rainbow Dash sometime this semester."</p><p>Professor Goodwitch's eyebrows rose. "You want to fight Miss Dash?"</p><p>"It might not exactly be the spirit of the Vytal Festival, but I wouldn't mind wiping that cocky smile off her face," Yang admitted.</p><p>A little titter of laughter escaped from Professor Goodwitch's lips. "It would certainly serve to puncture a little of General Ironwood's pomposity," she acknowledged. "Although, if you were defeated… I would rather not give the general an excuse to be even more pleased with himself than he is already."</p><p>"I can only promise to do my best, Professor," Yang said. "Do <em>you</em> think I can take her?"</p><p>Professor Goodwitch stared at her for a moment. "Just as you shouldn't ask me for favours, I shouldn't play favourites… but I'll see that you get your chance, if that's what you want."</p><p>"It is," Yang declared, because what was the point of being here if she wasn't going to test her skills against the best of the best?</p><p>"Very well," Professor Goodwitch acknowledged. "However, it may have to wait, because the reason I asked you to come and see me, Miss Xiao Long, is that I have a mission that I'd like to offer to Team Iron."</p><p>Yang's mouth opened a little. "Already?"</p><p>"You were told that they might come at any time."</p><p>"Yeah, but I didn't think that meant 'second day of the semester,'" Yang replied. "Although I suppose any time does mean any time. But…"</p><p>"'But,' Miss Xiao Long?"</p><p>"Why us, Professor, why Team Iron?" Yang asked. "To be honest… I kind of thought that you'd be giving Team Sapphire first pick of any first-year missions."</p><p>Professor Goodwitch's expression was inscrutable. "And why is that, Miss Xiao Long?"</p><p>"Well, they're…" Yang sought for a way to say 'they're better than us' that didn't sound self-pitying. "They're the ones everyone seems to be watching."</p><p>"I have been watching you, Miss Xiao Long, and not just in sparring and leadership class," Professor Goodwitch informed her. She hesitated for a moment. "There is a an old Valish proverb: anyone can spend gold, but it takes skill to spin it from straw?"</p><p>Yang frowned. "My team isn't straw, Professor."</p><p>"Indeed not, Miss Xiao Long; your team is Iron," Professor Goodwitch agreed. "But nevertheless… you are a more impressive leader than Miss Shimmer." Once more she paused. "You are correct; there are many eyes upon Team Sapphire. Wouldn't you like to show them they've been looking in the wrong place?"</p><p>Yang felt the grin spread across her face. "You bet I would, Professor. So what's the mission?"</p>
<hr/><p>Ruby gasped. "You're going on a mission already?"</p><p>"Yep," Yang agreed, as she sat down at the dining table. She looked down said table to where Ren, Nora, and Dove sat in a row beside her. "You guys don't mind that I accepted it without talking to you first, do you?"</p><p>"You're our leader," Nora said.</p><p>"Indeed, and we trust your judgement," Ren agreed.</p><p>"Besides, if Professor Goodwitch had wanted us to make the decision together, she could have asked all of us into her office," Dove said. "Clearly, she wanted you to decide on our behalf. You would have looked a little ridiculous asking her to hold on while you found us for our opinion."</p><p>"I guess so," Yang acknowledged. "I <em>did</em> feel as though I had to say yes or no right there."</p><p>"And you said yes, so get on with it and tell us what the mission is already!" Nora cried.</p><p>Yang laughed. "We are going to be spending a week on the luxurious outskirts of Vale, joining a huntsman, a platoon from the Defence Forces, and some contractors while they do some work on the Green Line."</p><p>"'Some work'?" Sunset repeated. "That's a little nebulous, isn't it?"</p><p>Yang shrugged. "I guess we don't really need to know exactly what they're doing. We're not building a wall – or fixing a wall or whatever – we're just protecting the workers while they get on with… whatever it is."</p><p>Pyrrha's brow furrowed slightly. "Some might say it is a little late to be repairing the outer defences."</p><p>"You might be right, but… better late than never, I suppose," Yang replied.</p><p>"Any obstacle that can be placed in the path of the grimm is worthwhile," Ren declared.</p><p>"So, if it's only on the outskirts of Vale, are you guys going to fly out to the site from Beacon each day?" Jaune asked.</p><p>Yang shook her head. "Nah, the contractors get to go home at night, but we have to stick around in case any grimm try to… tear down the walls, I suppose, and to make sure that we're there when the first workers arrive, probably. So we'll be camping out at the site. Pack your sleeping bags, everyone."</p><p>"This is gonna be great!" Nora cried. "Camping out under the stars, it'll be just like old times, don't you think, Ren?"</p><p>"Not quite like old times," Ren murmured. "We won't be alone, for a start."</p><p>"No, I guess not."</p><p>"I've never actually been camping," Dove admitted.</p><p>"Really?" Ruby demanded. "Never?"</p><p>"I grew up in the countryside; I never needed to go away from home to reach nature," Dove explained.</p><p>"Yeah, but Yang and I grew up out in the countryside, and Dad used to take us camping sometimes," Ruby replied. "Yang, remember that fishing trip when I was five?"</p><p>"I remember that we didn't catch anything."</p><p>"Yeah, but we had fun, right?"</p><p>Yang grinned. "Yeah, we did have a lot of fun."</p><p>"I'm not sure this trip will be fun," Dove murmured.</p><p>"Maybe not, but it is important," Ruby reminded him.</p><p>"I just can't believe that you four got offered a field mission before us," Sunset complained.</p><p>"Our turn will come," Pyrrha assured her.</p><p>"I know, but it's the principle of the thing."</p><p>"What principle?" inquired Jaune.</p><p>"It's a sign of teacher confidence, and what are you looking so insufferably smug about?" Sunset demanded.</p><p>"Oh, nothing, nothing at all," Yang said, looking away so that the smirk on her face was less visible to Sunset.</p><p>"You'd know all about insufferable smugness, I suppose," Nora said.</p><p>Sunset's eyes narrowed, and she glowered at Nora. Nora didn't seem to care. Indeed, judging by her smile, she positively relished Sunset's irritation.</p><p>"So when do you leave?" Ruby asked.</p><p>"Tomorrow," Yang replied.</p><p>"Don't leave without saying goodbye, okay?" Ruby demanded.</p><p>Yang reached across the table and ruffled Ruby's hair. "I wouldn't dream of it," she assured her sister.</p><p>Ruby squirmed under her sister's hand. "Good luck out there," she said.</p><p>"Indeed," Pyrrha agreed. "Good fortune attend you all."</p>
<hr/><p>“Winter,” Weiss said. “Thank you for coming to see me.”</p><p>“Why would I stay away?” Winter asked as she marched, hands clasped behind her back, across the courtyard. Weiss waited for her under the shadow of the huntsman statue that dominated the space. Winter stopped, back straight, and looked up at the heroic huntsman elevated above. “A rather vain thing, I’ve always thought.”</p><p>Weiss looked around and up. “The statue?”</p><p>“Indeed.”</p><p>Weiss frowned. “I don’t see anything wrong with it.”</p><p>“It makes a great many assumptions, don’t you think?” Winter asked. “How many students at this school do you believe deserve to called ‘hero’?”</p><p>“Few enough, I suppose,” Weiss conceded, “but I think it’s supposed to be an ideal to strive for, not something to inflate our egos.”</p><p>Winter snorted. “No single huntsman, however skilled, can hope to triumph alone. We are all individual pieces of an engine so much greater than ourselves; this school shouldn’t allow its students to forget that.”</p><p>“It’s just a statue,” Weiss replied. “For the rest… I think that having to be on teams with some… dubious characters reinforces that lesson very well.”</p><p>“You don’t like your teammates?”</p><p>“Flash is fine,” Weiss said quickly.</p><p>“But he’s the only one,” Winter observed.</p><p>“I didn’t drag you down here at night to talk about my teammates,” Weiss said quickly.</p><p>“No, but as I’m here – and will be in Vale for some time – I’m here to talk, if you need to,” Winter insisted. “But if not that, then what? Your message to me was rather cryptic.”</p><p>Weiss clasped her hands together in front of her, playing with her fingers. “Winter,” she said, “what do you know about the conditions in the mines or the refineries?”</p><p>“Not much, I admit,” Winter replied. “Perhaps if I’d gone to work for our father instead of attending Atlas, he would have started grooming me to take over the business by now. Or perhaps not.”</p><p>“Do you regret it?”</p><p>“Do I regret choosing to become an officer and a specialist instead of standing behind Father at interminable social functions?” Winter demanded. “Not for a moment. Weiss, what is this about?”</p><p>“Do you know… do you know if, in the mines, or anywhere else, faunus are ever punished by being branded?” Weiss asked.</p><p>“'Branded'?” Winter repeated. “You mean burned?”</p><p>“With the letters SDC, yes,” Weiss said softly.</p><p>“Weiss,” Winter murmured. “What makes you ask that?”</p><p>“One of my… fellow students,” Weiss said, “claims that she saw such a brand upon the face of a White Fang terrorist that she – and the Atlesian student, Rainbow Dash – encountered. Winter, have we been creating the monsters who prey upon us?”</p><p>“We are not responsible for the actions of the White Fang, no matter how overzealous the SDC may be in enforcing discipline,” Winter declared. She turned away from Weiss. “Thank you for telling me this. I had no idea that the company was going so far.”</p><p>“What shall we do?”</p><p>“'Do'? What do you expect to do?” Winter demanded. “Do you think that you can investigate practices in the mines from Beacon? Bring down the SDC by yourself?”</p><p>“Then what?” Weiss replied. “Should I do nothing?”</p><p>“That is all that you can do and all that you should do. For now,” Winter said. “You are not responsible for this, and you have no duty to put an end to it. Later, when Father steps down and you take over the company, <em>then </em>you will have the power to change the company, perhaps to change Remnant itself, but until then, your focus should be upon your studies and yourself.”</p><p>“But…” Weiss hesitated. What Winter was saying made sense, but it was a cold kind of sense, and being cold was unpleasant to accept. “It’s a hard thing to just ignore. Does anyone deserve to be treated like that?”</p><p>“No,” Winter agreed. “And I understand; I will even concede that it speaks well to your nature. But nevertheless, I urge you to put it out of your mind. You have told me; that is all you can do.”</p><p>“And what about you?” Weiss asked. “What will you do?” <em>Will you do anything?</em></p><p>“I’m not sure yet,” Winter admitted.</p><p>“But you will-”</p><p>“Yes,” Winter said, cutting her off. “I am not sure <em>what</em> precisely, yet; I would speak to the General but I am loath to add to his burdens at this time, but trust me, Weiss, I will not simply let this lie.”</p><p>“I do trust you, Winter,” Weiss said. “Do you think… do you think that Father knows about this?” As much as she was aware of their father’s faults, there was a part of her - a substantial part, at that - that would rather believe that it was merely the work of some rogue subordinate within the company.</p><p>“I have… no idea,” Winter admitted. “But I will find out. I promise you that.”</p>
<hr/><p>Ciel marched into General Ironwood's office aboard the <em>Valiant</em>, her boots slamming into the metal floor with an echo. "Cadet Ciel Soleil reporting as ordered, sir!"</p><p>"At ease, Soleil," General Ironwood ordered her, not rising from his seat behind his desk. When Ciel had done so, spacing her feet apart and clasping her hands behind her back, the General continued. "Any thoughts on why I asked to see you? Alone?"</p><p>"I couldn't say, sir," Ciel said. Nor did she think it was her business to speculate. General Ironwood would tell her what he wanted from her in his own good time. She had been ordered to report, and so, she had reported. Anything else was just idle speculation, made no less idle by the fact that she had engaged in it regardless.</p><p>"I want to talk to you about last semester," General Ironwood declared. "And the Belladonna incident."</p><p>"I see, sir," Ciel said quietly.</p><p>General Ironwood stared into her eyes for a moment. "Let me preface everything else by saying that you performed admirably at the docks when the battle was joined."</p><p>"Thank you, sir; credit accrues to the entire unit."</p><p>"It does," General Ironwood agreed, "but as a part of that unit, some of the credit accrues to you."</p><p>"As you say, sir," Ciel replied.</p><p>General Ironwood rose to his feet. "There are times," he declared, "when I feel as though I owe you an apology. I can't believe this is what you imagined of your first year at Atlas."</p><p>"Permission to speak freely, sir?"</p><p>General Ironwood's frown was almost imperceptible. "Granted."</p><p>"I was somewhat dreading the beginning of my first year at Atlas, sir."</p><p>"Really?"</p><p>"You can hardly be unaware, sir, that I am… not the most sociable of people," Ciel confessed. There were many reasons why she excelled in Etiquette, but amongst them was the fact that it was much easier to memorize the rules and codes of manners that governed interactions in a formal setting than it was to deal with people in all of their informal unpredictability. "The prospect of spending four years with a randomly selected trio of my peers was not altogether to my liking. This present assignment is unorthodox, to be sure, but not unwelcome."</p><p>General Ironwood chuckled. "Do you believe in destiny, Soleil?"</p><p>"No, sir."</p><p>"No?"</p><p>"The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves, sir," Ciel declared. "We make our own fortune, good or ill."</p><p>"A valid viewpoint," General Ironwood acknowledged. "And yet, when I needed people I could trust to take care of Penny, there right in front of me were you and Rainbow Dash, both proven and reliable, and both available. Some might call that fate."</p><p>"Others might call it providence, sir," Ciel said. <em>The Lady provides to the children of the North.</em></p><p>"Indeed," General Ironwood said. He paused. "How are your injuries?"</p><p>"They do not affect my performance, sir."</p><p>General Ironwood nodded. "But how do they feel?"</p><p>Ciel paused for a moment. "I… sometimes suffer some discomfort, when sitting or lying down."</p><p>"Dash hasn't mentioned it."</p><p>"A fact of which I am very proud, sir," Ciel replied. Dash thought that a team leader should know her teammates better than their mothers did, but Ciel wouldn't have let her mother know about this either.</p><p>General Ironwood said, "Have you considered medication?"</p><p>"I would rather not, sir," Ciel said. One heard so many horror stories these days, she would rather not take the risk for the sake of what was moderate discomfort at worst.</p><p>"Very well," General Ironwood said. "As you point out, it isn't affecting your performance academically or in battle. However, I do still need to talk to you about the Belladonna incident."</p><p>"Of course, sir."</p><p>General Ironwood affixed her with his gaze. "When Rainbow Dash informed you that Miss Belladonna was a White Fang agent, she ordered you to arm yourself and secure Twilight, correct?"</p><p>"Yes, sir."</p><p>"And she ordered you to shoot Miss Belladonna on sight, correct?"</p><p>"Yes, sir."</p><p>"Did you agree with those orders?"</p><p>"Yes, sir."</p><p>"Why?" General Ironwood demanded.</p><p>"Because Blake Belladonna was a White Fang agent, sir," Ciel declared. "I had already been informed by Rainbow Dash that, as she was being led into detention, Chrysalis had vowed revenge on Twilight; the possibility that Blake Belladonna would seek to accomplish that revenge could not be discounted."</p><p>"Not even after Professor Ozpin vouched for her personally?"</p><p>"After that… the credibility of the threat diminished, sir," Ciel admitted.</p><p>"And yet you went out looking for her, with the intent to engage her if you found her, perhaps even to kill her," General Ironwood said.</p><p>"Yes, sir."</p><p>"Why?"</p><p>"Because those were my team leader's orders, sir."</p><p>"And you didn't question the validity of those orders?"</p><p>"A good soldier goes where she's sent and does what she's told, sir," Ciel replied.</p><p>"Even if she has doubts about them?"</p><p>"I had my doubts about remaining in Vale and attending Beacon, sir," Ciel answered, "but I obeyed the orders of my team leader."</p><p>"And mine," General Ironwood reminded her.</p><p>"Yes, sir," Ciel said. "But, if I may again speak freely, sir, if every order is to be examined by those charged with carrying it out on ethical, legal, or practical grounds, then I fail to see how the military can continue to function. There are times when we must not think but only obey and trust that those who command us, though they may not have told us all, know what they're doing and have in mind a larger purpose."</p><p>"And if the orders you obey do turn out to be unethical or illegal?"</p><p>"Then it will be a black thing for the conscience of them who gave the order, sir, but it will not trouble my own," Ciel declared.</p><p>General Ironwood was silent for a moment. "Your sense of duty is greatly to be admired," he said, "and you would have an excellent point – if the orders had come from me or from another senior officer. But they didn't."</p><p>Ciel swallowed. "No, sir."</p><p>"Dash didn't clear her actions with me or anyone senior to herself in the chain of command. And you knew that."</p><p>"Yes, sir."</p><p>"But you obeyed her anyway?"</p><p>"I… am sorry, sir," Ciel said quietly. "Although I am not sure what I should have done instead."</p><p>"Insisted that Dash report in to me," General Ironwood told her. "You're correct that loyalty is important. It might even be the most important virtue in our military. But by being loyal to Dash, you were disloyal to me and to the principles that Atlas stands for, not to mention putting Dash herself at risk of a court martial. Do you understand that?"</p><p>"I do now, sir," Ciel murmured. "Once again, I'm sorry."</p><p>"Apology accepted," General Ironwood said. "You're a good soldier, Soleil. I just want to make sure you take the right lesson from all this."</p><p>"Yes, sir. I will, sir."</p><p>"That's all," General Ironwood said. "Dismissed."</p>
<hr/><p>Twilight walked into the General's office to find General Ironwood himself looking out of the window. It was getting dark outside, but the night sky was illuminated by the lights of the fleet, the cruisers and carriers glowing in the darkness as their lights gleamed out like beacons.</p><p>Twilight scuffed her feet upon the floor. She wasn't sure what she ought to do with her hands, so she fussed with the hem of her skirt while she waited for General Ironwood to turn around.</p><p>He didn't. Instead, he spoke while he still had his back to her. "I understand Applejack came to see you just before the start of semester?"</p><p>"Uh, yes," Twilight said, caught off guard by the subject. "All of our friends did. It was great of them, to come all the way to Vale just to pay us a visit." She paused. "If they'd told us what they were planning beforehand, I probably would have told them not to come. But I'm glad they did."</p><p>"You would have told them not to?" General Ironwood asked. "Because of the danger?"</p><p>"The grimm… they seem to be getting bolder," Twilight murmured. "The grimm… and the White Fang… normally, I'd say there were no coincidences… but how can it be anything else?"</p><p>General Ironwood sighed. She couldn't see his face, but from what Twilight could make out of his reflection in the window, he seemed melancholy. Or perhaps "worried" would be a better word. It was an uncomfortable sight. Twilight supposed that he had reason to be concerned: he was the commander of a great fleet, the lives of men and women resting upon his shoulders, not to mention the security of Vale and affairs back home in Atlas, all without getting into the danger posed by the White Fang. Yes, when she thought about it rationally, Twilight could see that General Ironwood had reason indeed to be concerned, but at the same time, to actually see it upon his face… it made her uncomfortable. It had made her concerned. It made her… a little afraid. She didn't want to know that General Ironwood felt the weight of his lofty position and his responsibilities, weighty though those responsibilities were. She wanted to know that everything was fine and that the General was full of confidence, so that she – that all of them – should be confident too.</p><p>It was selfish, but it was how she felt.</p><p>General Ironwood might as well have been able to sense her thoughts and feelings, because when he turned around to face her, all care and concern had vanished from his face, and in its place was dauntless and unyielding resolve. "You're right, of course," he said. "How can it be anything but a coincidence? Don't worry too much about the grimm, Twilight; patrols have increased on the airship routes, and those increased resources are making travel between the kingdoms as easy as ever. Your friends made it back to Atlas safe and sound, didn't they?"</p><p>"Yes, they did. Most of them."</p><p>"Ah, yes," General Ironwood said. "Applejack has gone into the wilds, hasn't she?"</p><p>"Yes, General," Twilight replied. "She's taking care of our friend Fluttershy while she studies some of the fauna native to Vale."</p><p>General Ironwood nodded. "Don't worry about them either. Applejack is a fine student; she knows how to take care of herself and others."</p><p>"I know," Twilight agreed. "And, as much as it's not without risk… this is Fluttershy's dream. I wouldn't take it away from her, even if I could, just because of a little danger."</p><p>General Ironwood did not reply to that, instead changing the subject by asking, "How have you found Beacon?"</p><p>"The facilities are… a little primitive compared to Atlas," Twilight admitted. "I don't think it's as well-funded."</p><p>"I've never sought to pry into Ozpin's financials, but it wouldn't surprise me," General Ironwood concurred. "The Kingdom of Vale is not as wealthy as Atlas, so it probably couldn't afford to endow its Academy even if it wished to do so. On the other hand, it could also be that Ozpin prefers a more traditional approach."</p><p>"That sounds like the sort of attitude I'd expect from Haven rather than Beacon," Twilight pointed out.</p><p>"Respect for tradition is not confined to Mistral, even if it is carried to excess there," General Ironwood reminded her. "But how have you found it here?"</p><p>"We've been fortunate in how welcoming so many people have been," Twilight said. "For all that it isn't Atlas, Beacon has never felt unfriendly, still less hostile."</p><p>"I'm glad to hear it. And Penny?"</p><p>"Bringing her here was the best decision we could have made," Twilight declared. "She has the chance to make her own friends, to find out for herself who she is. That… General, does it ever bother you that Penny is essentially a slave?"</p><p>"Penny is a soldier," General Ironwood corrected her.</p><p>"A soldier can quit," Twilight pointed out.</p><p>"Actually, they can't, not at whim," General Ironwood said.</p><p>"Perhaps not, but the fact is that if Rainbow Dash wanted to drop out of Atlas and become… a professional soccer player or something, then you couldn't stop her," Twilight said. "Would Penny be allowed to drop out?"</p><p>General Ironwood was silent for a moment before he said, "Does Penny want to drop out?"</p><p>"No, but that's not the point," Twilight said. "The point is that she couldn't even if she wanted to."</p><p>General Ironwood clasped his hands together behind his back. "You're right," he admitted. "Penny can't quit. She's the product of millions of lien's worth of cutting edge research and development funded by the Kingdom of Atlas, and the Kingdom of Atlas will have its money's worth. The Doctors Polendina were well aware of that when they pitched their idea."</p><p>"But Penny wasn't aware of that," Twilight said softly.</p><p>"No," Ironwood agreed. "And that is why I'm glad that she's making friends, forming bonds that will motivate her to keep fighting. It's manipulative, but I hope that she'll be driven to protect those ties so strongly that she'll never notice that she doesn't actually have a say in the matter."</p><p>"You're right, sir, that <em>is </em>manipulative," Twilight said. <em>Even if Rainbow Dash said pretty much the same thing, it sounded much better when she said it.</em></p><p>"I wish I had the luxury of always being kind, Twilight, but I don't," General Ironwood informed her. "Tell me about what happened with Belladonna last semester."</p><p><em>Ah. So we're getting to the point, now.</em> "What do you want to know, General?" she asked.</p><p>"How did you feel when you found out about Miss Belladonna's past?"</p><p>"I… I was scared," Twilight admitted. "After what happened at the Wedding, with Chrysalis… the thought that there'd been another White Fang agent right under my nose, so close to me, so close to Penny… I felt like an idiot."</p><p>"Did you agree with what Rainbow Dash decided to do about it?"</p><p>Twilight was silent for a moment. "Rainbow… did what she thought was right."</p><p>"That's not what I asked."</p><p>"No, it isn't," Twilight admitted. "But I won't betray my friend by criticising them behind their back."</p><p>"Dash’s punishment has already been meted out, and I won’t stack more upon her for the same incident," General Ironwood assured her. "You aren’t being punished at all, for that matter. I just want to understand what drove you to act the way you did."</p><p>"Oh," Twilight murmured. "Well… I wasn't out on the streets, looking for Blake. I had my drones out, but I was still at Beacon, safe, guarded by Flash Sentry of Beacon's Team Wisteria. And I suppose that being at Beacon, not being outside, not having a lot to do other than check on my drones… it gave me a chance to think about things, to talk to Weiss about things, to realise that if Blake had been our enemy, then she probably would have hidden it better or attacked when she was discovered or… or something other than she did." Twilight bowed her head. "Should I have made Rainbow see that, too?"</p><p>"You should have come to me," General Ironwood informed her. "Dash's decision to secure you was prudent in the circumstances, but once you were secure, I should have been your first call. If you'd even called me once you started to have doubts, I would have called Dash off."</p><p>"General, if you'd done that, there's a good chance Blake, and perhaps others, would have died at the docks."</p><p>"The fact that things worked out in the end doesn't justify the steps that led there," General Ironwood declared sternly. "Next time you're in a situation like this, request orders from higher up."</p><p>"I… I hope that we won't ever be in a situation like that again, General," Twilight said with a slight smile.</p><p>General Ironwood smiled too. "So do I, Twilight. So do I."</p>
<hr/><p>“Good evening, General Ironwood!” Penny cried cheerily, offering the General a wave as cheery as her voice as she strode into his office. </p><p>General Ironwood sighed. “Penny, we’re both on duty, and this isn’t a social visit.”</p><p>Penny’s eyes widened. She tried to remember what it was that she was supposed to do. Right! That was it! She slammed her foot down onto the floor so hard she made a dent. “Reporting for duty, General!” she cried. Her smile remained in place as she asked, “Did I do it right?”</p><p>“Not exactly, but close enough for now,” General Ironwood muttered. “Don’t worry; you’ll get it eventually.” He walked around his desk until he was standing right in front of her, looking down. “How’s school?”</p><p>“Excellent!” Penny yelled. “Some of the teachers here are a little strange, but Professor Port’s stories are so much fun, even though I don’t really understand what he’s trying to tell me, and Doctor Oobleck talks so fast that it’s like a game to try and keep up with him. I’m a little disappointed that Professor Goodwitch won’t let me fight Pyrrha, but Rainbow Dash says that I just have to be patient, and my turn will come. And I’ve made so many wonderful friends here like Ruby and Pyrrha and I… I love it here,” she said. Impulsively, she flung her arms around General Ironwood and embraced him as tightly as her arms allowed. “Thank you, General Ironwood, for letting me stay here.”</p><p>She felt the General’s hand upon the top of her head, at first patting it and then gently stroking her hair until he reached her bow. “That’ll do, Penny,” General Ironwood said, his voice showing no sign of the discomfort that people sometimes expressed with Penny’s demonstrations of affection. “That’ll do.”</p><p>Penny released him and took a step back. “I won’t forget this, General.”</p><p>“I didn’t allow you to remain at Beacon in hopes of earning your gratitude, Penny,” General Ironwood informed her. “I did it because I thought it was best for you, and judging from what I’ve been told, I believe that I was right.” He paused. “Your father was not so happy about it, but I believe he’ll come around by the time the year ends.”</p><p>Penny let out a little squeak of alarm. “What… what did he say?”</p><p>“He called me a great many things, ‘irresponsible’ being one of them,” General Ironwood said, and strangely, he didn’t seem very annoyed or offended by that. He almost sounded as though it amused him. “You mentioned Ruby Rose and Pyrrha Nikos, but what about your teammates?”</p><p>“They take care of me,” Penny pouted. “Whether I want them to or not.”</p><p>“You may not thank me for this, Penny, but I chose Dash and Soleil precisely <em>because</em> I thought they might be… a little overprotective. You are… valuable to Atlas. You may chafe, but I’d rather have you taken too much care of than not enough. However, I have to say that there are times when I think that Dash has not taken enough care of you.”</p><p>“You’re talking about the docks, General?”</p><p>General Ironwood paused for a moment. “You told me that you felt like a failure, for not protecting Ruby from Adam Taurus. But that must have come after the battle, when you saw that she had been wounded. During the battle itself, when you were fighting, how did you feel?”</p><p>“I… I didn’t really think about it,” Penny admitted. “There was so much going on.”</p><p>“How much do you remember about the fighting?” General Ironwood asked.</p><p>“My ocular senses recorded everything, General,” Penny declared, “but… when I play back the events that occurred, it’s as though I don’t recognise them. I… I haven’t told Twilight about that; should I ask her to examine me?”</p><p>“There’s no need,” General Ironwood said. “What you’re describing is perfectly normal. When you look back at a battle in which you fought, some moments stand out to you with perfect clarity, and others, you barely recall, let alone understand. You don’t need to worry about it, and you don’t need to tell Twilight about it unless you want to.”</p><p>“No,” Penny said, keeping her voice from trembling. “I don’t want anyone to worry. Thank you, General.”</p><p>“No thanks are needed, Penny,” General Ironwood informed her, “but what about before the battle at the docks? What about when you were pursuing Miss Belladonna, what did you think about that?”</p><p>“Rainbow Dash said that Blake was dangerous.”</p><p>General Ironwood nodded. “And did you believe her?”</p><p>Penny went quiet for a moment. “I know that people can lie, sir. I didn’t know that Blake wasn’t one of them. But I didn’t want to believe it.”</p><p>“Why not? I understand you didn’t know Miss Belladonna.”</p><p>“No, I didn’t,” Penny replied, “but I didn’t want to believe that someone had been so close to hurting my friends and I hadn’t done anything about it.”</p><p>“Is that what you want?” General Ironwood asked. “To protect your friends?”</p><p>“It’s the thing I want the most.”</p><p>“Is there anything else that you want?”</p><p>“No,” Penny lied, and hiccupped as a consequence. “Yes, General, there is.”</p><p>“Go on,” General Ironwood said.</p><p>“I’d like… I think I’d like… to be famous,” Penny admitted.</p><p>General Ironwood looked surprised to hear it. Or at least she thought that was what it meant when his eyebrows rose. “'Famous'?” he repeated.</p><p>“I’ve watched all those videos of great fighters in tournaments, and so many of them look so happy to be standing in the ring with the whole crowd cheering them on. I think I’d like that too, General; Rainbow Dash told me it was really cool.”</p><p>“Yes, that is what Dash would say,” General Ironwood stated simply. “You <em>are</em> here for the Vytal Tournament, Penny. If you work hard, keep up your training, and apply yourself to your best endeavours, then it may happen to you. Certainly, a lot of people back home would be eager to see it happen too.”</p><p>“Yes, General.”</p><p>“That will be all,” General Ironwood said.</p><p>“Okay,” Penny said, but she didn’t leave, not just yet. “General Ironwood… did I do something wrong?”</p><p>“I’ll let Rainbow Dash explain to you what she did wrong,” General Ironwood said, “and what you did wrong by following her while she did it. Goodnight, Penny; that will be all.”</p>
<hr/><p>Blake didn't know exactly why General Ironwood had asked to see her in his office aboard his flagship... although it didn't take a genius to work out that it had something to do with the deal that, presumably, General Ironwood himself had signed off on to get her out of prison. But beyond that, she didn't know what, in particular, he wanted from her, and her curiosity about it was almost as great as the feeling of uneasy wariness that came to her when she looked up into the sky and saw the Atlesian ships overhead, their great cruisers and carriers holding station while smaller, nimbler, but no less deadly airships buzzed between and beyond them.</p><p>It wasn't just residual attitudes from her White Fang days, although Blake would be lying if she pretended that wasn't part of it. It was the strangeness of the fleet being here, and being strange, it also seemed wrong in ways that Blake wasn't sure she could completely articulate. The Valish skyline wasn't meant to be taken up with such an impressive display of Atlesian military might and technological prowess. The people of Vale weren't meant to be living under the guns of an Atlesian expeditionary force.</p><p>Just like they weren't meant to be living under the threat of the White Fang, with Adam's bloodstained, blood-hurt blade hanging over the city and the kingdom both like a butcher's cleaver about to descend upon the sweet little lamb.</p><p>The world was out of joint. The much-vaunted era of peace which Professor Goodwitch had spoken once seemed less peaceful now than it had upon that airship ride to Beacon when the year began.</p><p>Yet she had spoken true when she had told them all that it was their duty to uphold this peace. The world was out of joint, but perhaps she, Blake Belladonna, had been born to set it right. </p><p>She was the daughter of Ghira Belladonna, former leader of the White Fang. And now, the organisation he had nurtured threatened to do much evil in the world. Blake felt it was not arrogance so much as a recognition of the truth to think that if she did not find a way, no one would.</p><p>This task had been appointed to her, and she took it upon herself and on her shoulders. It was... her destiny, and she chose it, embraced it as such.</p><p>But it seemed fate did not will that she should do so alone; it had appointed the Atlesians to be her companions, though they were not the ones she would have chosen.</p><p>Such thoughts preoccupied Blake as the airship carried her to General Ironwood's flagship and as a yeoman led her through the grey metallic corridors, up drab and rather dull elevators, and ushered her into the presence of the Atlesian General himself.</p><p>This was her second time in his presence, and it hadn't gotten any easier. This was General Ironwood, the enemy of the White Fang, the chief amongst their enemies. Rainbow Dash was probably right to say that he was no SDC stooge, and neither were his forces, but that didn't change the fact that they had done more damage to the White Fang than any other force or organisation in Remnant. </p><p>Her hands balled into fists by her side. </p><p>General Ironwood either didn't notice or didn't care. He sat calmly behind his desk, hands resting upon the plain metallic surface. There was, Blake noticed, very little upon the desk: a digital picture frame facing away from her, a folded up scroll. Nothing else. </p><p>General Ironwood said, "Thank you for coming, Miss Belladonna."</p><p>"Did I have a choice?" Blake asked.</p><p>"This is Vale; you always have a choice," General Ironwood replied cryptically. "But I'm glad you came. I'm glad you felt safe enough to come."</p><p>The jury was still out on that, but Blake saw no need to say so. "You wouldn't free me from prison just to lure me onto your ship so you could arrest me yourself."</p><p>"Indeed. But I am a little disappointed that I had to free you from prison in order to secure your cooperation," General Ironwood said. "You must realise that my forces can offer you far more assistance than Sunset Shimmer."</p><p>"I trust Sunset," Blake replied.</p><p>"And you can trust me," General Ironwood insisted. "We both want the same thing."</p><p>"I'm not sure what you want," Blake said softly.</p><p>General Ironwood rose to his feet, pushing his chair back as he walked to the window. The lights of his fleet burned bright above the greater multitude of beacons blazing in the city below.</p><p>"You and I both know that something is coming," General Ironwood declared. "The recent actions of the White Fang have been part of a campaign aimed at Vale. I don't know what they want or hope to accomplish, but whatever it is they're planning, Atlas will stop them." There was no doubt in his voice, no hesitation. He spoke with a certainty born of conviction. The way he spoke reminded Blake of her father, when he had been trying to convince his closest councillors to stick with him.</p><p>But her father had been lying when he spoke thus, or at least feigning the confidence he seemed to feel. Blake frowned. "Are you sure about that?"</p><p>General Ironwood turned to look at her. "The men and women I lead could accomplish anything, if properly led. I am privileged to command the finest army Remnant has ever seen. Well-armed, well-trained, and with something even more valuable than guns or training: a tradition of success. We're not accustomed to losing, Miss Belladonna, and I don't intend to start now."</p><p>"But you need my help?"</p><p>"I need your help to beat the White Fang quickly and with minimal damage or risk to Vale," General Ironwood corrected. "You know these people and how they think in ways that neither I nor anyone else under my command ever could. Of course, I realize that's why you don't trust me yet. I was your enemy until not too long ago. But I assure you that you and I are on the same side now and that I want the same things you do."</p><p>"I want to save lives," Blake said.</p><p>"So do I."</p><p>"I want to save lives on both sides," Blake declared. "I don't want to direct air strikes onto those whom I called 'comrade' until less than a year ago."</p><p>General Ironwood turned around so that he was facing her once more. "So you know where the White Fang are hiding?"</p><p>"If Adam's not stupid – and he's not – he'll have moved all his operations as soon as I left, in case I gave the locations away," Blake said.</p><p>"That would be the prudent move," General Ironwood acknowledged. "All the same, I'd like to check them out. Recon only, for now."</p><p>"'For now'?"</p><p>"If the White Fang are still there, you can't expect me to ignore it."</p><p>Blake's jaw clenched. "What are you doing here?" She demanded. "You could have just stayed in the north with your men and let Vale take care of itself. Why risk your forces so far from home?"</p><p>"Why did you leave Menagerie to join the White Fang, Miss Belladonna?" General Ironwood responded. "Why come so far from home?"</p><p>Blake looked down at the floor in embarrassment. "It was the right thing to do. The cause was too important to just do nothing."</p><p>General Ironwood nodded. "Exactly, Miss Belladonna. The preservation of the lives at stake is too important to just do nothing. Coming here was the right thing to do."</p><p>Blake looked into his eyes and found that she believed him. Or at least, she believed that he believed. "This isn't what I would have chosen," she admitted, "but now that I'm here, I'll do my best. I just hope we're not too late."</p><p>"So do I, Miss Belladonna," General Ironwood agreed, "and with your help, we won't be."</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. First Assignment</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>RSPT and Blake plan to ambush the White Fang; SAPR want it, but how?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>First Assignment</p><p> </p><p>“Thanks for letting us hold our strategy session in here,” Rainbow said as she led her team into the SAPR dorm room. “I know it’s going to be crowded, but hopefully, people will think that we’re just hanging out instead of talking about how we can take out the White Fang.”</p><p>“Stop the White Fang’s plans,” Blake corrected her.</p><p>“Yeah,” Rainbow said. “That’s what I meant to say. The point is, everyone knows we’re friends, so nobody will suspect that we’re not just here to hang out.”</p><p>“Some of us <em>are</em> here to hang out!” Penny declared enthusiastically. “Hi, Ruby! Hi, Pyrrha!”</p><p>“Good afternoon, Penny,” Pyrrha replied, rising from her seat by the window and bowing her head to her fellow redhead.</p><p>“Hey, Penny,” Ruby said, “do you want to plan another game of Remnant?” She gestured to the game board set up on the floor in front of her. </p><p>“I don’t really understand that game,” Penny said as Ciel closed the door behind Team RSPT. </p><p>“The rules are a little complicated,” Jaune agreed, from where he was crouched down beside Ruby, “but you’ll pick it up if you play more.”</p><p>“No, it’s not that,” Penny said. “I don’t understand the point of this game. Why do we have to fight each other? Why can’t we be friends? Wouldn’t it be more advantageous to combine our forces against the creatures of grimm?”</p><p>“In real life, sure, that’s why we’re all allies now and we don’t fight any more wars,” Jaune said.</p><p>“In an ideal world, at least,” Pyrrha murmured.</p><p>Jaune went on, “But this is just a game. It’s pretend, for fun.”</p><p>“I’m uncertain what is fun about a game so riddled with basic inaccuracies,” Ciel muttered.</p><p>“We do have some other games,” Jaune said. “We picked a few up in Vale last semester.” He reached under his bed and pulled out a small pile of game boxes. “We’ve got Compost King, which none of these guys will play with me-”</p><p>“Because it sounds really boring,” Sunset interrupted.</p><p>“How about Snakes and Ladders?” Ruby suggested. “That’s fun and simple to understand… until it becomes really frustrating.”</p><p>“I can be very patient,” said Penny proudly. “I can keep playing Battleship with Twilight for hours.”</p><p>“Games of Snakes and Ladders don’t usually take that long,” Twilight said, sounding a little relieved about that. “Do you guys mind if I play?”</p><p>“Of course not,” Ruby said as Jaune put the rest of the boxes away and took Snakes and Ladders out of its box. Ruby began to put Remnant: The Game away into its box in turn. “Does anyone else want to play?” she asked. “We have room for more than four players now. Pyrrha? Sunset?”</p><p>Pyrrha put down the book that she’d been reading. “Alright,” she agreed. “I’ll join you.”</p><p>“I’m a little more interested in spying on the plans of our Atlesian allies,” Sunset said, grinning at Rainbow Dash. “Since you’re hatching them in our room, after all.”</p><p>“I guess you’re trustworthy,” Rainbow agreed as she and Ciel sat down on Blake’s bed. Rainbow’s gaze flickered towards the camp bed. “Who has to sleep on that?”</p><p>“Me,” Sunset said.</p><p>Rainbow’s eyebrows rose in surprise.</p><p>“I can be selfless sometimes,” Sunset declared. As Pyrrha, Twilight, and Penny joined Jaune and Ruby on the floor around the game board, Sunset took the window seat that Pyrrha had recently vacated. Blake sat down on Jaune’s bed, facing the two Atlesians. </p><p> “So,” Sunset said, “what do we know?”</p><p>“You do nothing but listen,” Ciel informed her sharply, “while we make our plans.”</p><p>“Sunset may not technically be involved in this,” Blake said, “but I trust her.” She didn’t say that she trusted Sunset more than she trusted any of Team RSPT, but the words were there, unspoken, hovering overhead. Blake’s ears – no longer concealed beneath any bow – twitched gently atop her head. “What do you know so far?”</p><p>“Not much,” Rainbow admitted. “We know that the White Fang are stealing dust, but we don’t know why. We know that they’re working with this Torchwick guy, but-”</p><p>“But that doesn’t make any sense; why would the White Fang be working with a human criminal, and a racist one at that?” Blake demanded.</p><p>“We don’t know that either,” Rainbow reminded her.</p><p>“We do know,” Ciel said, “thanks to your friend Tukson-”</p><p>“How’s he doing, by the way?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“I’m not sure,” Blake admitted. “I haven’t had a chance to visit him.” She hesitated. “Would I be allowed to visit him?”</p><p>“I don’t see why not,” Rainbow said. “Everyone knows you’re not a threat to his life.”</p><p>“As I was saying,” Ciel declared, “thanks to Mister Tukson, we know that the White Fang is reporting to a superior – a human, reportedly, but that has not been confirmed – outside of their organisation. We can surmise that it was this superior who brokered the arrangement between the White Fang and Roman Torchwick, although we have neither proof of that nor any clue as to the identity of this individual. Unfortunately, knowing that there is a shadowy presence who stands higher than anyone whose identity we are aware of doesn’t help us to identify that person, nor to capture the high-ranking figures we <em>are</em> aware of. If this person is anxious to keep their identity a secret, and the White Fang follow standard containment protocols, it’s likely that the only the most senior members of the organisation are aware of his or her identity.”</p><p>“Which is why we need to find Torchwick,” Blake said. “He’s still our best chance at unravelling the truth.”</p><p>“He’s probably taken precautions after last time,” Sunset replied. “I doubt he’ll venture into a trap unguarded.”</p><p>“Do we have any other choice?” Blake asked.</p><p>“Maybe we do. Hey, Twi!” Rainbow called. “Have you had any luck tracing the source of that video that got spammed round the school?”</p><p>Twilight had a frown on her features as she got up from the board game they were playing on the floor. “Whoever sent it, they’re very good,” she said.</p><p>Rainbow looked surprised. She leaned back on the bed until the back of her head touched the wall with a bump. “Better than you?”</p><p>“Maybe,” Twilight replied. “There’s an encryption on this file to prevent it being tracked that is… this is military-level security. I would expect to see something this complicated on top-level communications between the general and senior field commanders, or the council maybe.”</p><p>“Can you break it?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>“Not with the processing power of a scroll or a personal computer,” Twilight said. </p><p>“How about the computers on the <em>Valiant</em>?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>The look Twilight gave her was vaguely pitying. “I’m not sure that General Ironwood would let me take all the systems on the <em>Valiant</em> offline so that I can run my tracing programme. I’m sorry, Rainbow Dash, sorry, everyone, I know that-”</p><p>“It’s okay,” Sunset said. “This tells us something all by itself.”</p><p>Twilight stared at her. “It does?”</p><p>Sunset folded her hands behind her head. “I’m guessing that not anybody can get their hands on military-grade encryption programmes. That must take… money? Skill?”</p><p>“Perhaps both,” Twilight said. “The kind of person who could write this kind of code wouldn’t come cheap.”</p><p>“The White Fang never had any interest in computers or cyberwarfare when I was part of it,” Blake said. “Adam… he always preferred more… visible means of action.”</p><p>“Something our mystery person brings to the party then,” Sunset theorized. </p><p>“Perhaps,” Ciel said. “Although the White Fang has hit enough secure facilities that you must have dealt in access cards and security codes.”</p><p>“Yes, but we bought those from black market dealers,” Blake explained. “I doubt that any of them could create something as sophisticated as you're describing, and if they could, I doubt that they would have been in our price range. Sunset’s right; this is the work of the White Fang’s new… mistress, whoever she is. Either she brought in a skilled computer expert or she brought the money to hire one. The same goes for all those Bullheads at the docks; there’s no way the White Fang <em>I </em>left behind could have afforded so much airpower, even if it had a use for it.”</p><p>“Is this starting to confuse anybody else?” Sunset demanded. “I mean, this person, Lady X or whatever you want to call them… she has money, resources, and access to highly skilled individuals. She wants to work with the White Fang, okay, I’ll buy that, if you want to get involved in terrorism, then I guess it’s easier to seek out some terrorists than to start your own organisation. But why do they need to rob inner-city dust shops via a guy like Torchwick? If they need dust, then why not just buy it?  It’s not like they care about money, because the money is never touched during the robberies.”</p><p>“If we look at the quantity of dust that has been stolen,” Ciel said, pulling out her scroll and flicking through a list, presumably of dust stolen at the various robberies. “Purchases of that size – so much greater than would be needed for any conceivable private use – would be impossible to hide completely from view. Robberies have less paperwork.”</p><p> Sunset snorted.</p><p>“We have some suppositions, based on evidence maybe, but they’re still supposition until we get confirmation,” Blake said, “and we have a lot of questions, and only Roman Torchwick can answer them for us. We need to find him.”</p><p>“No, we need to stop these robberies before even more Atlesian weapons end up in the hands of terrorists,” Rainbow said. </p><p>“'Atlesian weapons'?” Sunset asked; this was the first she’d heard of this.</p><p>“The White Fang haven’t just been robbing dust shops,” Rainbow growled. “They’ve been hitting trains coming south through the Forever Fall.”</p><p>“Interestingly, only trains carrying dust or useable military supplies have been hit,” Ciel said, scrolling to another file on her scroll. “Two dust trains, including yours,” she added with a significant look at Blake, “plus three military trains: one carrying small arms, ammunition, and spare parts for knights; one carrying heavy ordnance; and the last carrying prototypes of our new manned battlemech, the Paladin. However, another military train carrying machine parts for airships and vehicles made it through the forest unmolested, as did a mail train going the other way and various commercial trains heading in both directions carrying cargo that is not notable.”</p><p>“But the trains didn’t have ‘Atlas Military’ or even SDC written on the side; everyone contracts the same freight companies,” Rainbow said. “Which means that the only way the White Fang could possibly know which trains had dust and weapons on them and which didn’t was if somebody was tipping them off, sound okay to you?”</p><p>Blake nodded. “I don’t know exactly how we got all of our information, but I know that tips from sympathisers provided most of it.”</p><p>“But who is tipping them off?” Rainbow asked. “Have we got a mole in the military? Or the SDC?”</p><p>Blake stared at her for a moment before she let out a soft, but faintly bitter laugh.</p><p>“What?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>“You really did have a privileged upbringing, didn’t you?” Blake asked.</p><p>Rainbow’s look was only just shy of being a glare. “Okay, maybe eventually, after I met Twi, but I was born in Low Town, and I did a lot of growing up there too. Why does any of that matter, anyway?”</p><p>“The White Fang doesn’t need a mole in the Atlesian military or the SDC to tell them what’s on the trains heading out of Cold Harbour,” Blake said. “It’s a port town whose main purpose is to provide somewhere for Atlesian ships to offload onto the rail line south to Vale. Hundreds, maybe thousands of faunus work the docks <em>and</em> the railway yards, doing backbreaking work for poverty wages because it’s all the work they can get. They wouldn’t even need to be White Fang; as long as they knew somebody who was, it would only take one person to talk about what was loaded off the ship or loaded onto the train. Then the White Fang would know which trains were worth hitting and which weren’t.”</p><p>“Well, now that you say it like that, it makes sense,” Sunset said. She stood up. “Is there a new weapons shipment due to come through any time soon?”</p><p>“Yes,” Ciel said. “More of the prototype weapons that were recently stolen.”</p><p>Sunset smirked. “I think I know how we can beat these guys and maybe catch somebody with the answers we’re looking for.”</p><p>“How?” Blake asked.</p><p>Sunset leaned forwards. “What if there weren’t just weapons or Atlesian tech inside that train? What if we were there as well?”</p><p>A smile spread across Rainbow’s face. “An ambush.”</p><p>“All that we’d have to do is make sure that nobody saw us getting on the train,” Sunset said.</p><p>“How would the White Fang stage the robbery?” Ciel asked, looking at Blake. “How many fighters should we be looking at?”</p><p>“Not a large number,” Blake replied. </p><p>“Are you sure?” Rainbow said. “It seems like the White Fang has been going for quantity since you left.”</p><p>“But only used in situations where no resistance was expected,” Blake said. “Nobody thought there’d be a fight at the docks, and when it came to Tukson, Adam and Torchwick still came alone because that’s the White Fang way. Most of the White Fang’s new recruits are untrained; they’d get chewed up by Atlesian security mechs, even with their aura unlocked. A small number of elites will go in first and disable the train and the security, and only then will larger numbers come in to offload the spoils.”</p><p>“What’s a small number?” Ciel pressed.</p><p>Blake shrugged. “Sometimes it was just me and Adam. At other times… I’d say no more than eight.”</p><p>“But Adam might be there?” Sunset asked quietly.</p><p>Blake looked into Sunset’s eyes. “Yes. He might be there.”</p><p>“Don’t worry about it,” Rainbow said. “I can handle Adam, and if I can’t, then we’ve got Penny.”</p><p>“You want to risk Penny going up against Adam?” Blake asked with a touch of incredulity in her voice.</p><p>“Penny’s tougher than she looks. But… hopefully, I can take care of that guy, and we won’t have to put her to the test that way.” Rainbow fell silent for a moment. “It’s a good idea, there’s just one problem with it.”</p><p>“What?” Sunset said.</p><p>“I’m pretty sure that General Ironwood will sign off on this for Team Rosepetal,” Rainbow said, “but how are you going to get in on this?”</p><p>“More to the point, I thought that you didn’t want anything to do with this?” Blake pointed out.</p><p>“I didn’t, but judging from what happened, it seems like ‘this’ is coming to find us no matter what,” Sunset said. “I guess that I’d rather get involved early then wait for the White Fang to blow up the school or something.”</p><p>“And are you willing to risk your team on a mission of this kind?” Blake asked solemnly. “This could be dangerous.”</p><p>Sunset nodded; Blake had a point there. They both had a point, but although Rainbow’s objection might be the more insurmountable in practical terms, it was Blake’s point that bothered her more. This would be dangerous. These White Fang elites – Adam or no – wouldn’t mess around. Ruby, Pyrrha, Jaune, she’d be putting them all in danger.</p><p>Or at least, she’d be asking them to go into danger. </p><p>The image of that crimson blade, of the world turning as red as blood as he charged towards her, flashed through Sunset’s mind.</p><p>She clenched her hands upon her knees so that nobody would notice them shaking.</p><p>“We’re willing to try,” Ruby said. “We’re willing to help, just like we were willing to help at the docks.”</p><p>Sunset looked around so that she could see Ruby, Jaune, and Pyrrha all up and on their feet, looking their way. Ruby in particular had a face that was firm with resolve; not a trace of fear or hesitation showed in her face. </p><p>“Have you guys been listening?” Sunset asked. “What about the game?”</p><p>“It’s not a complicated game; we can play and keep our ears open,” Jaune replied.</p><p>“If this is about stopping the White Fang and finding out who tried to get Blake in trouble, then we want to help any way we can,” Ruby declared. “We’re supposed to be a team.”</p><p>“Don’t say that; we <em>are</em> a team,” Sunset protested.</p><p>“Then why were you sneaking out to go and do cool stuff with Blake?” Ruby said. She pouted like a six-year-old. “Fighting the White Fang, going up against Torchwick, and all without us? That’s really rude, you know.”</p><p>“Don’t rush into anything too hastily,” Blake said, “and that goes for you too, Sunset.”</p><p>“You asked for my help,” Sunset said.</p><p>“And now I have the help of Atlas, whether I want it or not,” Blake said. “You can back out now, and no one will say anything about it.”</p><p>“No one will need to say anything,” Ruby said. “We’ll know. We’ll know that when the moment came and Vale was in danger, we shrank from the call. How could we call ourselves huntsmen in training if we did that?”</p><p>Blake smiled softly. “That’s kind and generous and… exactly what I’d expect from you, but it doesn’t change the fact that this isn’t your fight-”</p><p>“Fighting to oppose evil and defend those who cannot defend themselves is what a huntress does,” Pyrrha said. “We don’t need a personal reason to get involved.”</p><p>“Although we kinda have one anyway, through you,” Jaune added.</p><p>Ruby nodded. “You’re one of us now, Blake, and we’re with you every step of the way.”</p><p>“We would be honoured to fight by your side again in a noble cause,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>Blake stared at them, eyes wide. She glanced at Sunset. “Do these three ever make your feel-?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Sunset finished, understanding the moral implications, “it’s nearly constant.”</p><p>“This is great,” Rainbow said. “Really, I’d be glad to have you along for the ride, but you’re going to have to work out how to get in on this. In the meantime, I’ll call General Ironwood.” She got out her scroll and stood up, walking towards the bathroom as her thumbs tapped the screen of her scroll. </p><p>“Rainbow Dash,” came a gruff voice, presumably General Ironwood himself.</p><p>“Reporting, sir,” Rainbow replied, “and we think we have an idea on how to get at the White Fang.”</p><p>“I’m listening,” General Ironwood said.</p><p>“Team Rosepetal and Auxiliary Belladonna will fly to Cold Harbour and hide on the next train carrying a shipment of Paladins south to Vale,” Rainbow explained. “We’ll need to make sure nobody sees us, otherwise the White Fang won’t attack. But, if we do this right and don’t board the train until after it’s been loaded, then we can ambush the White Fang when they try to rob the train and maybe take a high profile prisoner.”</p><p>“You think the secrecy element is that important, Dash?”</p><p>“We have reason to believe that civilians working in the railway yard or harbour are informing the White Fang about the contents of rail shipments, sir,” Rainbow said, with a slight glance towards Blake. “That’s Blake’s theory, anyway.”</p><p>“I see,” General Ironwood said, in an even tone. “Very well, Dash, if you want to give this a try, I’ll allow it.”</p><p>“Thank you, sir,” Rainbow said.</p><p>“When will you leave?”</p><p>“Uh,” Rainbow hesitated. “Maybe it would be best if we left early, so that it’s not obvious we arrived just in time to get on the train?”</p><p>“That sounds reasonable,” General Ironwood said, and Sunset realised that he was not so much curious as he was testing Rainbow, seeing if she could come up with the answers instead of being handed them from on high.</p><p>“Speaking of which,” Rainbow went on, “it might be good if we had some other reason to be in Cold Harbour.”</p><p>“I’ll speak to Ozpin and see if there are any training missions up that way that you can be assigned,” General Ironwood said, “and also inform him that Miss Belladonna will be absent from class for a few days.”</p><p>“Thank you, sir,” Rainbow said. “If we get the right mission, we’ll leave tomorrow.”</p><p>“Then I’ll contact Ozpin right away,” General Ironwood said. “Good luck out there, Dash. Ironwood out.”</p><p>Rainbow put her scroll away. “Okay, if your headmaster comes through, then that’s us taken care of,” she said, as she turned back to face the rest of the assembled group. “Now, how are you guys going to get involved in this?”</p><p>“We could mail ourselves to Cold Harbour,” Ruby said.</p><p>Sunset snorted. “You might fit in a box, Ruby, but I’m not sure we could afford the postage on Pyrrha.”</p><p>“We could play truant,” suggested Jaune.</p><p>“I’d rather not break any rules if we can possibly avoid it,” Pyrrha murmured.</p><p>“If need be, we may have to ask forgiveness rather than permission, but let’s keep that in our pockets as a last resort,” Sunset replied. Apart from anything else, she wasn’t sure that Yang would take it very well if she dragged Ruby off on an unsanctioned mission.</p><p>“Perhaps you could all break the law and all get assigned to work for Atlas, like Blake,” Penny said from where she remained seated on the floor.</p><p>Ciel folded her arms. “Penny,” she said sternly, “the law is not a thing to be broken lightly and for personal, selfish reasons. It is the barrier between civilisation and barbarism and thus deserving of the utmost respect.”</p><p>Penny looked at her. “You mean my idea is bad?”</p><p>“Very bad,” Ciel declared. “I begin to worry that some of you are a bad influence.”</p><p>“None of us suggested breaking the law before she did,” Sunset pointed out.</p><p>“The suggestion of breaking school rules is bad enough,” Ciel replied with a bit of a glare at Jaune.</p><p>Jaune laughed nervously. “Sorry about that.”</p><p>“Why don’t we just talk to Professor Ozpin and ask him to allow us to participate in the operation alongside Team Rosepetal?” Pyrrha inquired mildly. “It does seem the simplest thing to do, and it wouldn’t involve breaking any rules.”</p><p>“It would involve us trusting Ozpin,” Sunset muttered.</p><p>“He’s the headmaster, Sunset, not a diabolical mastermind,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>“He could be both,” Sunset said, before her scroll and that of Rainbow Dash went off at the same time. </p><p>“It’s Professor Ozpin,” Rainbow said, looking at the humming device which was already in her hand. </p><p>It took Sunset a moment longer to get out her scroll and find that she, too, was receiving a call from Professor Ozpin. </p><p>The two team leaders exchanged a silent glance before opening up their devices. </p><p>“Good afternoon, Miss Shimmer, Miss Dash,” Professor Ozpin said genially, looking up at the two of them from out of the screens of their respective scrolls, even as Rainbow’s face appeared on the other half of Sunset’s screen. “I hope I’m not disturbing you, but it seemed simpler to just give you a call than to drag you all the way up to my office.”</p><p>“Thank you for the consideration, sir,” Rainbow said, and Sunset was reminded to put her on mute by the echo from her scroll. </p><p>“What can we do for you, Professor?” Sunset asked guardedly.</p><p>“Miss Dash, I’ve just been speaking with General Ironwood,” Professor Ozpin said, ignoring Sunset for a moment, “and he mentioned that you were interested in a mission to the north, around Cold Harbour.”</p><p>“That’s right, sir.”</p><p>“As it happens, there is a training mission available in that region,” Professor Ozpin replied. “It seems that a concentration of grimm has been developing nearby, and the authorities have requested a search and destroy to deal with them. You would have to leave tomorrow, but-“</p><p>“We’ll take it, sir,” Rainbow said, “and we’ll be taking Blake with us.”</p><p>“Indeed, General Ironwood mentioned that also,” Professor Ozpin said blandly, giving no clue as to what he thought about it. “Now, Miss Shimmer, as it happens, I also have a mission for Team Sapphire which I think might afford you some valuable experience.”</p><p>Sunset glanced at her team, but mostly, it was her words from a moment earlier that stuck in Sunset’s head as she said, “We’re certainly willing to consider it, Professor. What kind of mission is it?”</p><p>“I’ll send the full details to your scroll, Miss Shimmer, but in summary: the railway line that runs through the Forever Fall forest has been damaged by recent criminal activity; since that line is the main shipment route for dust out of Atlas, it is intolerable that it should be allowed to remain out of action for long, but equally, since the Forever Fall forest is infested with the creatures of grimm, the business of repairing it is somewhat dangerous. Your assignment will be to board a train heading north with a party of engineers and all necessary equipment and protect them while they complete their repairs. Once that’s done, I’m afraid you’ll have to make your own way home, using your best judgement as to how you might or should accomplish that.”</p><p>Sunset fought to keep her face impassive, because Professor Ozpin couldn’t have offered them a more convenient mission if she’d planned it herself, and it was far too convenient to be mere coincidence, wasn’t it? She might not have been so suspicious, but after the way that he had behaved last semester… and the warning from Yang’s mom, and the team make-up, and it was all just starting to stack up. <em>What are you up to, old man?</em></p><p>
  <em>And why are you so interested in what we do?</em>
</p><p>Nevertheless, regardless of the headmaster’s exact motives, the fact was that it <em>was</em> a convenient mission. They could complete it, stay on the train the rest of the way to Cold Harbour, link up with RSPT and stow themselves on board the armaments train heading back to Vale in time to ambush the White Fang when they showed up for the robbery.</p><p>Another quick look at her teammates confirmed that they were of like mind with her.</p><p>
  <em>Just because you’re seeking to use us doesn’t mean we can’t use you at the same time.</em>
</p><p>“We’re in, Professor,” Sunset said.</p><p>“I’m delighted to hear it,” Professor Ozpin said. “I’ll send you both the mission details so you can accept them. I would warn you that the enemies you will encounter beyond this school will not care that you are only children… but then, you already knew that, didn’t you? So I’ll just wish you the best of luck and a safe return.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Northward Bound</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Blake flies north, accompanied by Team RSPT; but why is their fuel consumption higher than it ought to be?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Northward Bound</p><p> </p><p>The Atlesian Skyray carried the reinforced Team RSPT north from Beacon and from Vale proper, soaring over the Forever Fall Forest and beyond, towards the port of Cold Harbour. </p><p>Rainbow Dash was at the controls, with Twilight in the co-pilot’s seat. Ciel stood in the main passenger section, her large anti-material rifle resting against the wall, while another, more man-sized weapon was slung across her back. </p><p>Blake faced her, standing on the other side of the compartment, her hands idle. Despite the fact that Ciel was reading a magazine and Penny a book, nevertheless, Blake wasn’t sure what it would do for the Atlesian opinion of her if she were to do the same; she wasn’t ready to say for certain that they wouldn’t be hypocrites about the whole thing and take her to task for doing as they did. </p><p>Her attention was drawn to the magazine in Ciel’s hands; it was a bridal fashion magazine, with a woman in a billowing, voluminous white dress upon the cover. </p><p>“Are congratulations in order?” Blake asked.</p><p>Ciel’s gaze flickered up to take in Blake as she turned a page in her magazine. “No,” she said firmly. “Not for me, in any event, unless you wish to congratulate Bruno Hohenzollern upon his engagement to Miss Meghan Chotek. There is a feature of several pages upon their forthcoming nuptials.”</p><p>“Meghan… she’s an actress, isn’t she?” Blake ventured.</p><p>“Indeed, and he is a motorcycle racer,” Ciel confirmed, “and the heir to the claimant to the defunct throne of Mantle, but that is of little concern.”</p><p>“Is it?” Blake asked.</p><p>Ciel’s eyes flickered up to look at her again. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“I mean, is it really of little concern, or is it the only reason anyone cares that he’s getting married?” Blake explained. “Is it like Pyrrha where she’d still be famous for her skill and the royal connection is just one more thing for people to talk about, or is it more like… I suppose what I’m asking is if he’s any good as a racer.”</p><p>“Then I suggest you ask someone with more familiarity with the sport,” Ciel replied. “All I know is that he is considered notable enough that a considerable quantity of page space is devoted to him, alongside his wife, with whose work I am a little more familiar. Did you ever see <em>Frozen Harvest</em>?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“You should,” Ciel informed her. “A heartbreaking portrayal of life on the home front during the Great War; Miss Chotek played a young bride struggling to maintain her farm outside Canterlot while her husband was away at war. A stellar performance; she was robbed at the awards by some silly musical.”</p><p>Twilight looked around in her seat. “Are you talking about <em>Edelweiss</em>? Because there was nothing silly about that movie. It dealt with the tyranny of Mantle before and during the Great War-”</p><p>“Through the medium of rather mawkish songs,” Ciel retorted.</p><p>“There’s nothing wrong with sentimentality,” Twilight insisted. “Even if it is being used to sugar over some uncomfortable truths. Not to mention that nobody even realised Coloratura could act until she made that movie.”</p><p>“Her acting, such as it was, bore no comparison to the portrayal of courage and resilience under pressure given by Miss Chotek,” Ciel declared. “All the best Atlesian values were on display in that film, and the Academy snubbed them all.”</p><p>“Well, maybe,” Twilight conceded, “but they don’t give films awards just for how patriotic they are.”</p><p>“That way lies the road of Mantle and the Great War,” Blake murmured.</p><p>Ciel’s gaze sharpened noticeably. “I am proud of my kingdom,” she said. “I am proud of what it stands for, the values that it embodies; that does not mean I want to see the return of a despotic tyranny.”</p><p>“You’re right; I’m sorry,” Blake said. “I… have a little bit of an issue where I rush to judgement sometimes.” <em>I should probably work on that, with how often it keeps getting me into trouble.</em></p><p>Ciel did not reply but returned her attention to her bridal magazine. </p><p>“So,” Blake went on, hoping to end the conversation on a smoother note, “why are you reading a wedding magazine?”</p><p>“I like the dress styles,” Ciel said candidly. “Styles that are, unfortunately, rather out of fashion in most circumstances. A wedding is one of the few occasions outside of a fancy dress event when one can get away with wearing a ballgown.”</p><p>Blake’s eyebrows rose. “Would you want to wear a ballgown in other circumstances?”</p><p>“I find them… rather lovely to look upon,” Ciel admitted.</p><p>“That isn’t the same thing as wearing them,” Blake pointed out. “Aren’t they… awkward?”</p><p>“Not once one gets used to them,” Ciel replied.</p><p>“And have you?” Blake asked. “Gotten used to them, I mean.”</p><p>Ciel turned another page in her magazine. “Not as much as I might like.”</p><p><em>Huh. That’s not something I expected to find out about her.</em> Blake’s gaze descended, as well as moving sideways, to fall on Penny, who was sitting on the floor reading the assigned <em>Fairy Tales of Remnant</em> textbook for Legends class. </p><p>
  <em>Homework, I suppose.</em>
</p><p>“Hey, Blake,” Rainbow called from the cockpit. “Do you know how to fly an airship?”</p><p>Blake’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve flown Bullheads a couple of times.”</p><p>“Come up here a second and relieve Twilight,” Rainbow told her. “I want to have a word with you.”</p><p>Blake frowned, but judging by the quiet smile on Twilight’s face as the latter got up from her seat in the cockpit, she wasn’t in any trouble. Blake silently walked to the cockpit, brushing past Twilight as she did so, and sat down in the now vacated copilot’s seat. </p><p>“I didn’t mean to bait Ciel,” she said. “I just-”</p><p>“Ciel’s a big girl; she can handle it,” Rainbow assured her. “That’s not what I want to talk about.”</p><p>“Oh,” Blake said softly. “Then… what?”</p><p>Rainbow didn’t reply right away. She gripped the controls tightly with both hands as she guided the airship along. “I’ve never been to Cold Harbour, so I don’t know exactly what it will be like there,” she said after a moment. She spoke softly, and Blake would have been surprised if her voice carried very far beyond the cockpit. “But before we arrive, I’m going to tell you something that the General told me once. Not every officer we run into is going to… some officers might-”</p><p>“Be racist jerks?” Blake suggested.</p><p>Rainbow shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I was going to say they might not mind their manners,” she replied. “So we have to mind ours, okay?”</p><p>Blake’s eyes narrowed. “You’re telling me to put up with abuse from bigoted-”</p><p>“You could always put the bow back on?” Rainbow suggested.</p><p>“Passing for human isn’t much of a better alternative than bearing insults,” Blake snapped. </p><p>“What are you going to do, yell at them?” Rainbow demanded.</p><p>“Maybe,” Blake said. “It can’t be worse than just standing still and taking it like you’re proposing.” She breathed in deeply. “When I first met you, I thought that you were just like Ilia, someone who had learned to keep quiet in the face of racism from your friends and your teammates. A suggestion that you found insulting.”</p><p>“Because it was!”</p><p>“But you’re telling me to do exactly that!” Blake cried.</p><p>“Not from your friends,” Rainbow corrected. “Only from superior officers.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because they’re superior officers,” Rainbow said, as though that explained everything. “You can’t do anything about them, so you might as well… nobody is going to promote anyone, faunus or otherwise, who acts like a brat.”</p><p>“I’m not an Atlas soldier; I don’t care about my career,” Blake said.</p><p>“Not yet you don’t,” Rainbow muttered.</p><p>“What’s <em>that</em> supposed to mean?” Blake asked.</p><p>“It means… the system won’t get any better if good people give up on it,” Rainbow said. “If you walk away because things aren’t perfect, then you leave it to people who just want to make things worse.”</p><p>“And keeping quiet in the face of injustice isn’t going to make things any better,” Blake insisted. “Why do you think that so many faunus are willing to talk to the White Fang about what’s on your trains? Because their conditions are bad, and they don’t see them improving any time soon.”</p><p>“And how is killing people going to get them better wages or healthcare or anything else?!” Rainbow snapped. </p><p>“How long are they going to have to wait for people like you to climb sufficiently high that you can start to make changes?” Blake countered.</p><p>“Considering that Cold Harbour is, at the end of the day, a Valish port, then perhaps they should look to someone other than Rainbow Dash,” Ciel observed from behind them. “And yes, we can hear you.”</p><p>Rainbow winced. </p><p>“Why are you two fighting?” Penny asked.</p><p>“Because… because there are no right answers, Penny,” Blake said, softly and sadly. “Much as I wish it wasn’t so.” She looked at Rainbow Dash. “I… I know that you believe that you’re doing the right thing, and that your way is the best way. I’m just not sure I agree with you. But I shouldn’t… it doesn’t have to make us enemies.”</p><p>“Don’t worry about it,” Rainbow said. “The fact that you care… it’s one of the things I like about you. You’ve got a lot to give to a cause, if you could only find the right one.”</p><p>Blake snorted. “Like what? Atlas?”</p><p>“Is something wrong with that?” Rainbow replied.</p><p>“I don’t know; you’re the one who warned me that the officers were racist.”</p><p>“And I’m regretting it more and more ever since,” Rainbow muttered. “I don’t know who the commander at Cold Harbour is, I don’t know how they feel about faunus, I’m just saying… ah, forget it.” She looked at the instruments in front of her. “That’s weird,” she muttered.</p><p>“What?” Blake said, looking at where Rainbow was tapping the console. She wasn’t entirely familiar with the controls of a Skyray, but she thought that Rainbow was looking at the fuel gauge.</p><p>“We’re using more fuel than we ought to be,” Rainbow said.</p><p>“Is that a problem?”</p><p>“Yes, it’s a problem because I only fuelled up with the bare minimum to get us to Cold Harbour because I’m an idiot, and this is baby’s first field trip, no, it’s not a problem!” Rainbow snapped. “But it’s weird, and it might become a problem if there’s something wrong with the airship.” Her frown deepened. “I did a complete check last night. I did an external check this morning, and I didn’t spot a leak. Twilight, take the controls.”</p><p>“Is something wrong?” Twilight asked.</p><p>“I hope not,” Rainbow said softly. “I’m going to take a look in the trunk and see if I can see a problem. If not… I don’t want to land if we can avoid it; we’ll make it to Cold Harbour as we are and let the base mechanics figure it out.”</p><p>“Okay,” Twilight said as Blake got out of her seat and allowed Twilight to squeeze past her to retake the controls of the airship. “I just need to hold her steady, right?”</p><p>“Right,” Rainbow agreed. “Do you have control?”</p><p>Twilight’s grip on the controls tightened. “I have control.”</p><p>Rainbow nodded and patted Twilight on the shoulder as she got up and left the cockpit. </p><p>Blake leaned down so that her head was just about level with Twilight. “Nervous?”</p><p>“Not really,” Twilight replied. “I’m just not quite as good a flyer as Rainbow Dash. But I’m just flying straight and level, and anyone can do that, right?”</p><p>“Not anyone,” Blake said, “but you seem to be doing fine.”</p><p>Twilight looked up at her, a smile on her face, before she remembered that she should be keeping her eyes on the outside and turned away with a squeak of alarm. </p><p>Meanwhile, Rainbow had knelt down on the floor of the central passenger compartment and started to open up the maintenance hatch in the floor, which would expose some, at least, of the inner workings of the airship. </p><p>Rainbow threw open the hatch, revealing-</p><p>“Hey guys!”</p><p>“Sun!” Blake yelled, as the open hatch revealed her boyfriend stowed away inside. </p><p>Sun grinned at her. “Hi Blake. Nice to-” his words stopped, transformed into a squawk of alarm as Rainbow grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him out of the crawlspace. </p><p>“I guess now we know why the fuel consumption was higher than it should have been,” Rainbow said. “We were carrying extra weight.”</p><p>“Hey! This is all muscle.”</p><p>Rainbow rolled her eyes. “What are you doing here?”</p><p>“It seemed like-”</p><p>“Like a good idea at the time,” Blake groaned. She rested her fingertips upon her forehead, her hand covering her face as she shook her head. “Please tell me that you didn’t stow away aboard this airship because of me.”</p><p>“I could tell you that, but I would be lying,” Sun admitted.</p><p>“Oh, come on,” Rainbow snapped. “Do you honestly expect us to believe that? Do you really expect us to believe that you are that stupid that you would…” She trailed off. “Okay, you’re right, I can absolutely believe that coming from you.”</p><p>“Believe what?” Penny asked. “Hello, Sun. I didn’t know you were joining us.”</p><p>“He wasn’t supposed to,” Ciel said.</p><p>“I just thought… I just wanted to be here in case Blake needed any help,” Sun said, turning an almost pleading gaze towards Blake.</p><p>“Blake’s got us to help her out,” Rainbow said, putting Sun back down on the floor of the Skyray, “but I suppose it’s kind of sweet that you care so much.”</p><p>“That’s one way of looking at it,” Blake muttered.</p><p>“Have you considered taking out a restraining order?” Ciel asked.</p><p>Blake’s hand descended from her face so that she could get a better look at the other girl. There was no sign on her face that she was anything less than sincere. “I don’t think that’s necessary,” Blake said. “Although a stern talking-to might be in order.”</p><p>“So would a decision on what we’re going to do now,” Twilight said from the cockpit. “Hi, Sun.”</p><p>“Hey, Twilight, how’s it hanging?”</p><p>“Well, the airship is still hanging in the sky, so that’s a pretty good thing from where I’m sitting.”</p><p>“What do you mean, Twi?” Rainbow asked. “We don’t need to think about what we’re going to do now because the mission hasn’t changed. We continue on to Cold Harbour.”</p><p>“With Sun?” Twilight asked.</p><p>“You don’t want me to throw him out of the airship, do you?”</p><p>“Of course not!” Twilight cried. “But perhaps we should head back to Beacon-“</p><p>“We’ll lose too much time if we have to go all the way back to school,” Rainbow replied. “Not to mention having to explain to the General <em>why</em> we came back. I swear, if we did that and Neon found out, she wouldn’t let me live it down.”</p><p>“So we are bringing this stowaway with us for the sake of your face?” Ciel demanded, her voice dripping with disapproval.</p><p>“We’re bringing Sun with us because we don’t have time to keep doubling back,” Rainbow replied, “and besides, if we dropped him off, he’d probably climb onto the roof and cling on as we were taking off, wouldn’t you?”</p><p>“That or grab hold of the tail maybe,” Sun said lightly. His own tail snaked up behind his head and waved jauntily as he said it.</p><p>“Are you sure this behaviour should be encouraged?” Ciel asked.</p><p>“I think caring about others should totally be encouraged,” Rainbow replied. “What kind of a world would it be if we didn’t care, huh?”</p><p>Ciel didn’t reply; nor, however, did she look particularly mollified either.</p><p>“Welcome to the team, Sun,” Rainbow said, patting Sun on the back hard enough to stagger him. </p><p>“Yeah, the team,” Sun agreed. “The team that is… doing what exactly?”</p><p>“You stowed away without even knowing whither we were bound or upon what purpose?” Ciel said.</p><p>“I knew Blake was going,” Sun offered.</p><p>Ciel sighed in exasperation. “Are we certain that he isn’t a spy?”</p><p>“Do <em>you</em> seriously think he’s a spy?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>Ciel was silent for a moment. “No,” she admitted.</p><p>“Does that mean you’re going to tell me what we’re doing here?” Sun asked.</p><p>“We’re going to ambush the White Fang!” Penny announced.</p><p>“Great!” Sun cried. “I can’t wait to get back at that Adam creep.”</p><p>“Don’t joke about that,” Blake snapped. “Don’t talk like that, even if you don’t mean it. Adam… Adam’s nothing to joke about. He’s dangerous.”</p><p>“He’s run away from me twice,” Rainbow pointed out. “Admittedly, I am pretty awesome, but-”</p><p>“You got lucky,” Blake said.</p><p>“I did not get lucky; I got trained,” Rainbow insisted. “Trained to take on guys like him, no matter how tough they are.”</p><p>“In any event,” Ciel said, “the settling of accounts with Adam Taurus will have to wait. Initially, we will land at Cold Harbour; for the benefit of the uneducated,” – she shot a glance at Sun – “I will explain that Cold Harbour is a port town north of Vale and a major demarcation point for shipments by sea or air coming down out of Atlas. Once we arrive, we will carry out a Search and Destroy mission in the wilds beyond the town before rendezvousing with Team Sapphire for a return to Vale by train which will, with good fortune, come under attack by the White Fang, enabling us to ambush them.”</p><p>“Wow, you’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?” Sun said.</p><p>“Yes,” Ciel replied. “Yes, we have.”</p><p>“I should get back to the controls,” Rainbow said, patting Sun lightly on the shoulder. “Oh, but one more thing: next time you want to come along on our missions with Blake? Just ask, okay?” She winked at him, then resumed her seat up in the cockpit. </p><p>Blake rolled her eyes. <em>Really? Should a good Atlesian cadet really be encouraging this kind of behaviour?</em></p><p>Sun laughed nervously. “Hey, Blake,” he said. “I… I’m gonna be honest, I kind of wish that there was a little more privacy for this. I don’t suppose that-“</p><p>“No,” Blake said. “No, it can’t wait until we land. You need to explain yourself, now.”</p><p>“I mean… what’s there to explain?” Sun asked. “I knew that you were going on this mission with these Atlas guys, so when Rainbow Dash had finished checking the airship last night, I snuck on board and hid in the crawlspace.”</p><p>“That was dangerous,” Blake cried. “What if you’d got the wrong airship? What if we hadn’t let you out?” As a child, she had been fascinated by the urban legend of the Bride in the Oak Chest, the young girl who, playing a game of hide and seek upon her wedding day, had locked herself inside an old oak chest and slowly suffocated to death as the box muffled all her screams for help, her hiding place so well chosen that it went undiscovered for years until nought but remained but a mouldering skeleton in a wedding dress. </p><p>“You would have heard me call for help,” Sun replied. “Or I could have broken through that hatch, probably.”</p><p>“What I would like to know,” Ciel said, “is how you got into the airship once Rainbow Dash had completed her examination. The doors should have been locked.”</p><p>“They were,” Sun said. “Sunset helped me get them open.”</p><p>“Sunset!” Blake exclaimed.</p><p>“Sunset Shimmer can crack electronic locks?” Ciel asked, sounding surprised in spite of herself. </p><p>“Apparently, she can do all kinds of things,” Sun said.</p><p>“Hmm,” Ciel murmured.</p><p>“What are you doing here, Sun?” Blake asked. “What about your team?”</p><p>“They’ll be fine without me,” Sun assured her. “They probably won’t get any missions while there are only three of them.”</p><p>“There aren’t supposed to be only three of them,” Blake shouted. “If you keep running off like this, then they’re going to make someone else Team Leader.”</p><p>“So?” Sun replied. “If Scarlet wants the job so badly, he can have it. I’ve got something more important than a badge.” He reached out towards Blake, but as his fingertips touched her arms, she squirmed, and he drew back. “Or maybe I don’t.”</p><p>“What are you doing here, Sun?” Blake asked again. </p><p>Sun’s hands fell down by his sides. “I said I wasn’t going to apologise for caring about you.”</p><p>“This isn’t the same as last time,” Blake declared. “I’m not on my own any more; I’m not even just with Sunset. I have Team Rosepetal with me-“</p><p>“So you don’t need me,” Sun finished.</p><p>“That’s not really what I…” Blake trailed off, because it kind of was what she’d meant. “I just… there was no need for you to abandon your team and stow away aboard an airship to protect me. As you can see, I’m not doing anything stupid this time.”</p><p>“Which is good, because doing stupid stuff is supposed to be my job,” Sun said, flashing his teeth at her. </p><p>Blake covered her mouth as a slight chuckle escaped it. “You shouldn’t have come,” she said.</p><p>“Why not? The more the merrier, right?”</p><p>“I suppose, but…” Blake hesitated. “Are you really going to keep neglecting your own team, your own life, just to keep chasing after me?”</p><p>“Are you going to keep putting your life on hold to fight the White Fang?”</p><p>“Right now, fighting the White Fang <em>is</em> my life,” Blake said.</p><p>“Then it’s mine too,” Sun said. “Because you’re my life.”</p><p><em>“Fighting humanity </em>is <em>my life, Blake.”</em></p><p>
  <em>“Then it’s mine, too, Adam, because you’re my life, and your cause is mine.”</em>
</p><p>“Sun,” Blake murmured. “I can’t…”</p><p>“Can’t?” Sun repeated. “Can’t what?”</p><p>
  <em>I’m not Adam. I’m not Adam, and Sun isn’t me.</em>
</p><p>“Nothing,” Blake said. “What you did, coming here, was stupid and reckless and unnecessary… which I guess is why I like you so much.”</p><p>Sun took a step closer to her. “Maybe your impulsive side is rubbing off on me.”</p><p>“Now kiss!” Penny cried.</p><p>“Penny,” Ciel admonished as Sun and Blake drew back, embarrassed looks appearing on their faces. “Ladies do not blurt out such things, nor interrupt other peoples’ tender moments. That said, please do not kiss.” She reopened her magazine.</p><p>“Oh, hey, congratulations,” Sun said. “Are you getting married?”</p><p>“No,” Ciel said firmly. “Why does everyone keep assuming that?”</p><p>And the airship flew on towards Cold Harbour.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Cold Harbour</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Team RSPT, Blake and Sun arrive at their destination; where Blake meets an Atlesian CO for the first time. Blake's words hit home for Penny.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Cold Harbour</p><p> </p><p>Cold Harbour seemed a very miserable place. </p><p>The Skyray came in from the south, passing over a thin metal wall that formed the barrier between the town and the outside world, a barrier that was topped with an allure patrolled by a few Atlesian soldiers and dotted with twin gun turrets, some pointing outwards across the flat and featureless landscape surrounding the settlement, while others pointed upwards towards the sky. There didn’t seem to be any difference in the type of gun, so Blake, looking out of the cockpit window, guessed that they were dual-purpose and capable of serving a conventional or anti-air role. The land all around Cold Harbour was green but uncultivated, with no farms or orchards or estates in evidence; it had been thus, ever since they had cleared this part of the Forever Fall Forest, but upon occasion, they had caught sight of a herd of sheep or goats below, kept together by attentive hounds lest they wander off into the woods. Grimm would not harm them there, but real wolves would, without doubt, and bears too, if the grimm hadn’t killed them all in clashes over territory. Blake was reminded of Ruby’s book, <em>The Song of Olivia</em>, and how the heroine’s journey had begun when she had wandered into the woods in search of a lost lamb and found a grimm – and a wizard – instead. </p><p>It was more pleasant to think of such things than to pay attention to the town in front of her. There were gates set in the metal rampart that could be opened to allow trains to come in or out or closed if any grimm wandered too near. There were eight sets of railway tracks all coming from the same direction – there must have been times, even if it was not so now, when a great quantity of cargo travelled south from Cold Harbour to Vale – the docks, too, were large enough to suggest that this was, or had been, a prosperous port, for they were wide enough to accommodate the largest of cargo vessels, and two great ships were berthed there, being attended to by cranes which hauled containers off the decks of one ship, and reached deep into the belly of another. Yet the wealth of Cold Harbour was clearly not staying in Cold Harbour, but passing through the port and down the rails or overseas to line the pockets of men like Jacques Schnee far away; aside from a few large and spacious official-looking buildings, the ordinary houses of the workers seemed small, and cramped, and not all that well-built: rows of crumbling brick terraces sat jammed together beside the railway tracks, sitting upon streets too narrow for cars to traverse. The thoroughfares between the docks and the rail yards were wide enough to accommodate the largest of transport, but the common labourers had to walk. There were some larger houses on the other side of town, the largest of which even had their own gardens; Blake guessed that they belonged to the management and perhaps to the civilian authorities who oversaw Cold Harbour. </p><p>The sea was dark, so dark that anything could have been moving within its depths and Blake would not have seen it, yet no defences pointed out to sea and no craft patrolled it. </p><p>It was getting dark in the sky too; the sun was beginning to set beneath the mountains to the east, and the shadows were lengthening with every passing moment.</p><p>Rainbow set the Skyray down behind the Atlesian military base, one of the more impressive structures in the town, with walls that were clad in a white material with a ridged structure to it. The flags of Atlas and Vale fluttered together on the roof in the chill wind that assailed them as soon as the door upon the right-hand side of the airship opened to let them out. It was not a high wind, but it blew through Blake’s long, black hair nevertheless, and nipped at her face with the frigidness of it. A few other Skyrays and Skygraspers lay parked upon the landing ground, while soldiers patrolled, traces of blue upon their uniforms visible beneath their armour. As Blake, Sun, and the Atlesians dismounted, a couple of technicians in white uniforms headed towards the craft.</p><p>This was not Rainbow Dash’s own Skyray, but a standard model that had been assigned to her for this mission. The nature of their return to Vale meant the airship would be left here, perhaps to be flown back or possibly used for other purposes, and so, everyone grabbed all of their gear as they headed out, leaving the craft behind. </p><p>Rainbow Dash led them across the landing area, up a set of metal steps to a set of automatic doors that slid open before them, revealing a plain, white, well-lit lobby where two guards watched them carefully, and a burly rabbit faunus sergeant, his black hair rising in tufts between his lapine ears, sat behind a desk. </p><p>He looked up as the young huntsmen approached. </p><p>Rainbow stopped in front of the desk and produced her scroll. “Cadet Rainbow Dash, leader of Team Rosepetal; we’d like to speak to the commanding officer.”</p><p>The sergeant looked at the information on Rainbow’s scroll. “Right. Captain Sandleford is expecting you. Follow me.”</p><p>He got up from behind the desk – he was bigger than Blake had expected, almost as big as Woundwort – and led the six students down a long, white, sterile corridor, around one corner and then another, past what looked like a cafeteria of some kind, and finally into a moderate-sized office where a young man with hazel-brown hair, dressed in the whites of an Atlesian officer, was leaning over a table with a map of the region spread out across it. </p><p>The sergeant walked into the office and stood to attention. “Cadet Rainbow Dash and Team Rosepetal to see you, sir.”</p><p>The officer looked up. He had sharp features, high cheekbones, and eyes that matched his hair. “Ah! Capital! First class, thank you, Colour.” He walked around the table towards the students, specifically towards Rainbow Dash. “Now, judging by the look of you, I’d guess that you are Rainbow Dash.”</p><p>Rainbow stood to attention. “Yes, sir. Cadet Rainbow Dash reporting. These are my team: Cadets Ciel Soleil, Penny Polendina, and Twilight Sparkle, also Blake Belladonna and Sun Wukong.”</p><p>“Splendid. Good show; Captain Hazel Sandleford at your service, and you’ve already met Colour Sergeant Blackberry, without whom absolutely nothing would get done around here, isn’t that right, Sergeant?”</p><p>The sergeant – Colour Sergeant, which Blake guessed was better than an ordinary sergeant - kept a politic silence, except to say, “Sir,” in a tone which could have meant absolutely everything – or nothing at all. </p><p>“General Ironwood sent word that you’d be coming,” Captain Sandleford said. “I must say, when I was assigned to this post, I never imagined there would come a time when the General would be just down the railway line with half the fleet.” His eyes swept over them. “What do you think is going to happen down there in Vale?”</p><p>“Nothing, sir, if we can help it,” Rainbow said.</p><p>Captain Sandleford let out a bark of laughter. “Yes, indeed. Good show, good show. Yes, I’m aware that you have other business to attend to, but I’m told that you’re also here to take care of my little problem with the grimm. Would you like some coffee?” he asked abruptly, gesturing to a machine in a little alcove in the wall. “I’m afraid it’s only instant, but you probably had a long journey getting here.”</p><p>“Thank you, sir,” Ciel said. “I will take care of it. And one for yourself?”</p><p>“Much obliged, Cadet-”</p><p>“Soleil, sir, Ciel Soleil.”</p><p>Captain Sandleford nodded. “Thank you, Cadet Soleil.”</p><p>“Colour Sergeant?”</p><p>“No, thanks, Cadet.”</p><p>Ciel started to approach the machine. She looked over her shoulder. “Everyone?”</p><p>“Thank you,” Blake murmured.</p><p>“Me too, thanks,” Twilight agreed.</p><p>“No, thank you,” Penny said.</p><p>“I’m okay,” Sun replied.</p><p>“No thanks,” Rainbow said.</p><p>“Very well,” Ciel said, as she crossed the remaining distance to the machine. </p><p>“You said ‘your problem,’” Blake said, returning her attention to the captain. “Does that mean you’re the one who requested a Search and Destroy mission? Uh, sir.”</p><p>Captain Sandleford looked at her. “The Mayor of Cold Harbour doesn’t believe that the grimm pose any threat to the town itself and, therefore, hiring a huntsman is a waste of lien. I disagree.”</p><p>“You think that the grimm might break through the walls, sir?” Rainbow said. “How many of them are there?”</p><p>“You misunderstand me,” Captain Sandleford said, returning to his map and gesturing for them all to come closer. They did, and there, they paused for a moment as Ciel worked the white plastic coffee machine, until after a few moments, she returned with several disposable cups, which she handed to the captain and the students. Blake sipped hers. The taste was… not brilliant, but it was warm and wet, and that was enough after a flight lasting all day. She probably wasn’t the only one who thought so. </p><p>Captain Sandleford blew on his coffee before he drank it. “As I was saying,” he said, “you misunderstand. I don’t believe the grimm are going to break through the walls and destroy Cold Harbour. If I did, I wouldn’t have simply put up a job on the board; I’d be screaming to the General for reinforcements.” He smiled. “We’re not excessively well-garrisoned here; I command a company of riflemen and an artillery company to man the turrets, but those turrets should be sufficient to take anything short of a large horde that comes sniffing around here. But I don’t have the strength to project force beyond the walls, which is the issue. There are always a few grimm around, but recently…” – he drank some more coffee – “recently, a group of families left the town. Labourers, for the most part, from the docks and the railyards, and their families; a few clerks and the like.” He looked up at Blake, and then at Sun. “All faunus. I’m afraid they felt… underappreciated. I can’t say I blame them. All the support staff here on the base are paid a fair wage for their labour, but I can’t say that all the companies based here do the same. In any event, these fellows left, and they are camped a few miles to the south east, in this hollow here.” He pointed to a point on the map, what looked like a valley in some woods nearby the town. “There’s a spring there, so they have fresh water, and I suppose they must be foraging for food. I’m not sure what they intend to do next, but I’m worried the grimm will get them before they make up their minds.” He paused. “Sentries on the wall heard shooting last night. I led out a patrol in the morning and found a local shepherd and his three sons dead. I tried to persuade the faunus to come back inside the walls, but they refused. If you could deal with the grimm, then they’d be much safer, and I’d rest much easier.”</p><p>“We’ll head out first thing in the morning and take care of it, sir,” Rainbow said.</p><p>“Splendid,” Captain Sandleford said. “Colour Sergeant Blackberry will show you to your billet. Dismissed.”</p><p>Rainbow saluted. “Thank you, sir.”</p><p>“Follow me, cadets,” said Colour Blackberry before he led them to a plain and unadorned room with eight bunk beds, all made up ready for them. </p><p>“Showers are three doors to the right, the mess is just down the hall,” he explained, “and there should still be some hot meals left if you get in there quick.”</p><p>“Thank you, Colour Sergeant,” Rainbow said.</p><p>"Sergeant, uh, Colour Sergeant," Blake said. "Can I ask you something… why does Captain Sandleford care about a group of faunus who have already walked away from this town?"</p><p>Colour Sergeant Blackberry's eyes flickered up to take in Blake's feline ears. "I know what you were probably expecting, and there's some in this army who would have lived down to 'em, but the captain is an officer <em>and</em> a gentleman; he cares about fellows for more than he gets out of them."</p><p>"I… see," Blake murmured.</p><p>The Colour Sergeant nodded. "Captain Sandleford has requested a specialist be assigned to the base three times already; never gets any response. I suppose we aren't important enough, but I'm glad we've got you for a few days, at least."</p><p>"We'll take care of it, Colour," Rainbow declared. "You can count on us."</p><p>Colour Sergeant Blackberry smiled before taking his leave.</p><p>Blake's left hand went to her other arm, feeling the cold of her silver armband beneath her fingers. "I… am glad you were wrong," she said, with a glance at Rainbow Dash.</p><p>Rainbow grinned. "I'm glad I was wrong too," she replied.</p><p>"You were surprised by the character of the commanding officer?" Ciel demanded. "Both of you?"</p><p>"Not surprised, exactly," Rainbow said. "It was more like…. I was prepared for the worst."</p><p>"What do you mean?" Penny asked.</p><p>Rainbow winced. "I was afraid that… I thought it was possible that the commanding officer might be…"</p><p>"Racist," Blake said flatly.</p><p>"I was trying to put it tactfully!"</p><p>"And I was being honest," Blake replied.</p><p>Penny frowned. "I don't understand," she murmured. "Why would anyone want to be cruel to people like Rainbow Dash when they're such good people? It doesn't make any sense."</p><p>"No, it doesn't, Penny; that's why it's so…" Rainbow trailed off. "What's that word beginning with 'I'?"</p><p>"'Invidious'?" Twilight suggested.</p><p>"Probably."</p><p>"It's because we're different, Penny," Blake said, even as she wondered how Penny – how anyone – could possibly be so sheltered and naïve that they didn't understand this yet. "We're different from them, and it makes them uncomfortable, and so, they'd like to see us gone because they think it will make them feel more comfortable."</p><p>Penny bowed her head. "So… people hate things that are different from them."</p><p>"Some do," Ciel admitted, "but few in number, thankfully. Atlas, admittedly, has a reputation for… possessing such people in greater than usual numbers, perhaps even for producing them. Like much else that is said abroad of Atlas it does disservice to the many good and valiant servants of our kingdom who have nothing but goodwill for all the folk of Remnant who have been placed in our charge."</p><p>"Anyway," Rainbow said, "it's been a long day, a long flight; why don't we get something to eat while it's still warm?"</p><p>"You go," Penny said, turning away. "I'm not hungry."</p><p>"Are you sure?" Twilight asked.</p><p>"Yes," Penny said firmly, taking a step away from the others. "You go on."</p><p>"Penny, are you okay?" Rainbow asked.</p><p>"I'm fine!" Penny declared, in the petulant tone of one who is not fine but doesn't want to admit what the problem is. She covered her mouth as a hiccup escaped her.</p><p>Rainbow frowned. "Ciel, take Blake and Sun down to the mess hall. Bring us back some sandwiches when you're done."</p><p>Ciel hesitated for a moment. "Very well," she said. "Both of you, please follow me. And don't get lost."</p><hr/><p>Twilight watched as Penny slumped down upon one of the bottom bunks of the beds that filled up the room. Her hands were clasped together on her lap, and her head was bowed. </p><p>Twilight walked around the bed and sat down beside her. Penny didn’t look up or react to her presence at all. </p><p>Rainbow stood over her, one arm leaning against the grey metallic bed frame.</p><p>“Penny,” Twilight said gently. “What’s wrong?”</p><p>“Nothing,” Penny said before she hiccupped. </p><p>“Penny,” Rainbow said reproachfully.</p><p>“I don’t want to talk about it,” Penny insisted.</p><p>“Tough.”</p><p>“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight hissed.</p><p>“What?” Rainbow demanded. “Penny, we’re not leaving this room until you tell us what’s up.”</p><p>“Why?” Penny asked. “Why do you care?”</p><p>Twilight placed one hand on Penny’s shoulder. “Because we care about <em>you</em>, Penny.”</p><p>“Why?” Penny repeated.</p><p>Twilight frowned. “Why… do we care?”</p><p>Penny glanced at her, her head nodding a sharp, jerky motion. “I’m not like you,” she admitted, her voice quiet and soft and childlike. “Doesn’t that mean… do I make you uncomfortable?”</p><p>“Oh, gods, is this about what Blake said?” Rainbow cried.</p><p>“Blake said that people hate things that aren’t like them.”</p><p>“Don’t listen to Blake!” Rainbow snapped. “Blake’s an idiot!”</p><p>“That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?” Twilight asked.</p><p>“If I were to make a list of all the dumb things Blake has done, we’d be here all night,” Rainbow replied.</p><p>“I suppose… she has made a lot of unwise choices.”</p><p>“And she can’t open her mouth without sticking her boot in it,” Rainbow added. “I like that girl in spite of herself, but she’s got a lot to learn.” She knelt down on the ground so that she was beneath Penny looking up into her face. “Just like you, Penny; you’ve got to learn when to not take any notice of people.”</p><p>“But if Blake was lying, or if she was wrong, then why <em>do</em> people hate the faunus?” Penny asked.</p><p>Rainbow’s jaw twisted, her mouth lapping over her bottom teeth. “Blake… wasn’t wrong, exactly; it’s just that… if you listen to her, you’d think that things are a lot worse than they are, that a lot more people feel that way than actually do.”</p><p>“Most people across Remnant are accepting of diversity,” Twilight added. “Like me and Rainbow Dash, and the rest of our friends; we’re human, and Rainbow Dash is a faunus, but it doesn’t stop us from loving her as one of us, as the soul of all of us.” She smiled gently and placed an arm around Penny, drawing her into an embrace. “Now, why don’t you say what’s really bothering you?”</p><p>Penny placed her hands on Twilight’s arm. “Don’t you know?”</p><p>“I think so,” Twilight admitted, “but it’s important to confess our fears before we can face them, and if we confess them to our friends, then they can help us move forward.”</p><p>“Friends,” Penny murmured. “How do I know that my friends… that Ruby and Pyrrha… how do I know that they’ll accept me if they find out what I am? How do I know that they won’t… what if I make them uncomfortable?”</p><p>“You won’t,” Twilight reassured.</p><p>“But how do I know I won’t?” Penny demanded.</p><p>“You don’t,” Rainbow said bluntly. “You can’t be sure in advance, not unless your semblance is to read minds. When I first went to Canterlot, I had no idea how anyone was going to react to a faunus. The only person I knew that I could rely on was Twilight. But I had to walk in there anyway and trust that things would be okay, because if you wait until you know for sure that everything will work out, then you’d be too scared to do anything.”</p><p>“Which isn’t to say,” Twilight added pointedly, in case Rainbow scared Penny, “that everything is a complete flip of the coin or a toss of the dice. Penny, how would you describe Ruby and Pyrrha? Not in terms of how they fight or what weapons they use, but just in what kind of people they are.”</p><p>“Kind,” Penny said. “The kind of people they are is kind.”</p><p>“And because they’re kind, I think it’s likely that they’ll accept you,” Twilight said. “Ruby and Pyrrha like you for who you are, and I can’t believe that they’re the kind of people who would change their minds about that just because they found out what you are.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Rainbow said. “I mean, they manage to be friends with Sunset, and she’s not just a faunus but a-“</p><p>“Rainbow Dash!”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Not the time!” Twilight hissed.</p><p>Rainbow chuckled awkwardly. “Right. Sorry. The point is… the point is that you’re right, Penny, and so is Twilight. Ruby and Pyrrha are both good people, kind people; when I met Pyrrha a couple of years ago, at that charity thing, she didn’t say a thing about the fact that I was a faunus, and she was really cool to Scootaloo too, even though she’s a faunus. Although we haven’t known them very long, I haven’t heard either of them say anything bad about anyone because of their race, and I don’t think they’d suddenly reveal that they hate robots or anything like that. I mean who hates robots but not faunus?”</p><p>“But Rainbow is also right, you can’t be sure,” Twilight said, “but because it’s so unlikely, I think you should tell them both; I’m afraid you’ll just worry about it until you do and find out for certain that there was never anything to worry about.”</p><p>“What?” Rainbow cried in a startled, strangled voice.</p><p>Penny looked up at Twilight, her green eyes. “You think I should tell them?”</p><p>“I do,” Twilight replied. “I think they can be trusted to keep a secret just as they can be trusted to stay true to you after they learn the truth.”</p><p>“Aha, Twilight,” Rainbow said, getting to her feet. “Can I talk to you for a second? Outside, maybe?”</p><p>Twilight pursed her lips. She knew what Rainbow wanted to discuss, but at the same time, she also knew that the course she was advocating was the right one, and she would not be moved on this. “Wait here, Penny,” she said, pulling away from her teammate, even as she gave her one last pat on the shoulder. “We’ll be right back.”</p><p>“Okay,” Penny said, much of her usual good cheer returned to her voice. “And thank you, Twilight. You’ve been a big help.”</p><p>“Don’t thank her too much yet,” Rainbow muttered before she stalked out of the room and into the corridor outside. Twilight was left to follow, her steps pitter-pattering on the floor as she tried to keep up with Rainbow Dash. </p><p>Rainbow looked up and down the corridor, checking that there was no one around to overhear them, before she rounded on Twilight. “What were you thinking?”</p><p>“I’m thinking that the best way for Penny to get past this is for her to clear the air with her friends, be accepted, and understand that Blake was wrong.”</p><p>“In a perfect world, maybe, but she can’t just tell people the truth!”</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>“Because we don’t have clearance to let her!”</p><p>“That’s not our decision to make, or even General Ironwood’s,” Twilight declared. “Nobody owns Penny.”</p><p>Rainbow shifted uncomfortably. “Technically… Atlas… kinda does.”</p><p>“Rainbow Danger Dash,” Twilight declared, tilting her chin up so that she appeared to be looking down upon the other girl. “Please tell me I did not just hear you say that. If you meant that then… we talked about this! Penny’s a person, not a knight!”</p><p>“I know, but she’s also-“</p><p>“She’s a girl,” Twilight said. “She’s a little girl who has been encouraged to worry that the only friends she’s ever had in her life will turn against her once they find out her secret. Do you really want that to be bothering her for months? For longer? No, Rainbow Dash, it’s not right to keep her troubled like that, not when the solution is right in front of us.”</p><p>Rainbow sighed. “I don’t know, Twilight; they haven’t been cleared to know that yet, and…”</p><p>“Come on, Rainbow; even if this wasn’t bothering Penny… imagine having to go through your whole life hiding the truth from your friends, unsure of whether or not they’d accept you if they knew, like that poor girl from Crystal Prep. Think of what that did to her and then think of the same thing happening to Penny.” Twilight made her eyes swell up a little and trembled her lip adorably. “Please, Rainbow Dash.”</p><p>“Don’t make that face at me, Twi; it’s manipulative as anything,” Rainbow snapped.</p><p>Twilight continued making that face and clasped her hands together above her chest.</p><p>“Ugh! Okay, okay, I’ll speak to General Ironwood and persuade him to clear it,” Rainbow said. “Just… stop, okay. My heart can only take so much of how cute you are.”</p><p>“Yes!” Twilight cried. </p><p>“But you,” Rainbow added as she got out her scroll, “are going to stay right here and talk to General Ironwood with me.”</p><p>“Okay,” Twilight said without hesitation. Because she was right, and she knew that she was right about this, and General Ironwood would see that she was right as well. “I’m ready, and I’m right here.”</p><p>Rainbow opened up her scroll and selected General Ironwood from her list of contacts.</p><p>It did not take quite as long as Twilight had expected for his face to appear in the screen. “Dash, Twilight,” he greeted them in an even tone. “You made it to Cold Harbour safely?”</p><p>“Yes, sir,” Rainbow said. “I apologise for disturbing you.”</p><p>“You weren’t interrupting anything in particular,” General Ironwood replied. “The paperwork can wait for a minute. Is something wrong?”</p><p>“No, sir,” Rainbow said. “It’s just that… well…”</p><p>“Spit it out, Dash.”</p><p>“Yes, sir,” Rainbow said. She glanced at Twilight. “Twilight has something that she would like to say.”</p><p>“Dash,” General Ironwood said, his voice acquiring a touch of sternness. “My patience has limits.”</p><p>“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir,” Rainbow said hastily. “Um… we’d like permission to give Penny permission to tell her friends… about her true nature.”</p><p>General Ironwood’s face was expressionless. “Why?” he asked.</p><p>“Because our new auxiliary accidentally put into Penny’s head that people hate and distrust people who aren’t like them,” Rainbow muttered.</p><p>General Ironwood did not bother to restrain the sigh that escaped him. “I see. How bad is it?”</p><p>“We’ve calmed her down, sir, but it’s still bothering her,” Twilight said.</p><p>General Ironwood’s brow furrowed a little. “And how do you think they’ll react?”</p><p>“I think they’re good people, sir,” Rainbow said.</p><p>“I think they’ll accept Penny in spite of her differences,” Twilight added. “They accepted Blake even after they found out that she’d been lying to them about her nature; I can’t see them turning their back on Penny just because she’d been ordered to keep a secret.”</p><p>“Can’t you just tell her that?” General Ironwood asked.</p><p>“General… sir… with… it doesn’t quite work that way,” Rainbow admitted. “It’s… it’s hard to explain because you’re not… you’ve never…”</p><p>“You think that nobody ever looked at me strangely after my surgeries, Dash?” General Ironwood asked. </p><p>He had not spoken angrily or impatiently; his question was calmly phrased, if bluntly so, but nonetheless, it stunned the both of them into silence. They had known – everyone knew – that General Ironwood possessed cybernetics as extensive as any man in Atlas, and more than most, perhaps more than anyone. But Twilight had never considered, in all the time that General Ironwood had been a feature of her life, that they might have ever caused him difficulties, still less discrimination. </p><p><em>But… the General suffered severe burns rescuing cadets from a fire on the </em>Enterprise<em>. He saved thirteen lives. Who could find fault with him for that?</em></p><p>“You were a hero, sir,” Rainbow protested, clearly of like mind with Twilight.</p><p>“I became more machine than man, in the eyes of some,” General Ironwood replied dispassionately.</p><p>“That’s terrible!” Twilight cried.</p><p>“I’m not telling you this for sympathy, Twilight, just to inform you that I do have some understanding of what you’re talking about,” General Ironwood declared. “You like to think you know how people will react, but you can’t be sure.” He paused. “You realise that if Penny’s friends react badly to the truth, then the situation will be exacerbated.”</p><p>“Yes, sir,” Dash conceded, “but we’re…” – she glanced at Twilight – “fairly certain things will be okay.”</p><p>“It will be good for Penny to be able to confide in people, General,” Twilight said. “People of her choosing, people that she trusts.”</p><p>“As long as she doesn’t trust too many people,” General Ironwood reminded them. “But… as long as the information is restricted to Team Sapphire, then I suppose that shouldn’t present too much of a problem.”</p><p>For a moment, Rainbow and Twilight were silent. “Really?” Twilight asked.</p><p>“Really,” General Ironwood confirmed.</p><p>Rainbow grinned. “Thank you, sir.”</p><p>“As long as it helps Penny,” General Ironwood said. “Now, if there’s nothing else, the paperwork is calling.”</p><p>“Goodnight, sir.”</p><p>“Goodnight, Dash. Twilight.”</p><p>“Goodnight, General,” Twilight said, as he hung up. She looked at Rainbow and smiled.</p><p>Rainbow’s lips twitched. “Hey, Twilight.”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“Thanks, for pushing me to do the right thing,” Rainbow said.</p><p>“Any time,” Twilight said softly.</p><p>“<em>Every</em> time,” Rainbow corrected. “Now come on, let’s give her the good news.”</p><p>She turned on her heel and made her way back to their room, Twilight once more following behind her. Penny was sitting on the bed where they had left her, but as they returned, she looked up, expectant.</p><p>“You can tell them,” Rainbow said, “and you’ll see that Blake doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”</p><p>Penny’s eyes lit up. “Thank you, Rainbow Dash, and you, Twilight. But… are you sure that it will be alright? Are you sure that they’ll accept me?”</p><p>“If they don’t,” Rainbow said, “then they never deserved you in the first place.”</p><hr/><p>Blake, Ciel, and Sun reached the white, undecorated, nearly empty mess while there was still some hot food available, fortunately for them. Said hot meal turned out to be fish and chips, which was not bad exactly, but, well, Blake might have preferred the fish without all of the slightly greasy batter covering it up. Sun didn't seem to mind, however; he wolfed it down with aplomb, even if, in the process, he earned himself a couple of dirty looks from Ciel. </p><p>For that matter, Blake caught the other girl sending some of those her way too. </p><p>“Is there a problem?” Blake demanded, putting down her fork with a clatter.</p><p>Ciel finished chewing on a steak fry. She swallowed, waited a moment, set down her knife and fork properly by the sides of her plate and only then did she begin to speak. “You,” she said, looking at Sun, “have demonstrated a blatant disregard for rules, an absence of sensibility concerning your position and the responsibilities conferred thereon, not to mention the breathtaking arrogance required to simply insert yourself into a military operation in such a fashion.” She exhaled in a huff. </p><p>“And you,” she added, turning her attention on Blake. “You upset Penny,” she declared, somehow managing to make it sound worse than all the things she had accused Sun of.</p><p>“I… upset?” Blake murmured. It was obvious, put like that, but at the same time, she flinched from hearing herself described as the cause of Penny’s hurt feelings. “I didn’t mean to.”</p><p>“But you did,” Ciel replied sharply.</p><p>“Perhaps, and I’m sorry for that, but how?”</p><p>“Because you talk too much,” Ciel snapped. “What in Remnant possessed you to tell Penny that it is inevitable that people shall be made uncomfortable by those who are not as they are, as though it were some natural law laid down by the Lady which cannot be escaped?”</p><p>“I’m not sure who the Lady is, but broadly, that has been my experience,” Blake said.</p><p>“Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t give me that nonsense!” Ciel cried.</p><p>“'Nonsense'?” Blake repeated.</p><p>“I have no doubt that you have suffered at the hands of humans,” Ciel conceded.</p><p>“How very generous of you to allow me the suffering I have experienced,” Blake growled.</p><p>“But you have been supported by Team Sapphire to the point of being welcomed into their bedroom – into the bed of their team leader no less!” Ciel declared. She stopped abruptly. “I mean… that is to say… ahem. You take my meaning, I hope, and comprehend that I meant nothing juvenile by it.”</p><p>“More importantly, Sunset is also a faunus,” Blake reminded her.</p><p>“But the other three members of Team Sapphire are not, and this fact has not produced some feud borne out of race, any more than Rainbow Dash and I are at odds over anything more than my occasional disagreement with her leadership decisions,” Ciel said. “For that matter, you spoke on the theme of inevitable prejudice mere moments after leaving the presence of the commanding officer here who had just astonished you and Rainbow Dash with his tolerance!”</p><p>Blake’s ears drooped. “Well… when you put it like that… but I still don’t see what this has to do with Penny.”</p><p>The blue-eyed young huntress student was silent for a moment. Her expression softened, but Blake guessed that this was due to thoughts of Penny rather than to any sudden softening towards Blake on Ciel’s part. “Penny… is different,” she said, speaking slowly and softly and rather cautiously. “That fact cannot have escaped your notice.”</p><p>“No,” Blake admitted, matching the softness of Ciel’s tone. What would have been the point in denying? It would have seemed patronising and possibly made Ciel angrier. In the same way, she felt that asking Ciel to clarify what was different about Penny would only have invited a rebuke, not to mention the hypocrisy of trying to pry into Penny’s secrets when she had tried so hard to hide her own. </p><p>“Her father is one of the brightest minds in Atlas,” Ciel explained. “Of the men who might be said or have been said to be his equal, one is dead and the other wastes his talents in a clinic in Mantle. Penny’s father, meanwhile, is a titan of our science, a man of true eminence and all the prestige and privilege that accompanies such. Penny’s... condition… has made him… very protective of his daughter. As your friend Sunset Shimmer correctly surmised, Penny was assigned to a team led by General Ironwood’s prized student in order that she might be… protected, if necessary; also as your friend surmised, this was done at her father’s instigation; his influence extends that far. As a result, Penny… had no friends before arriving at Beacon.”</p><p>“What about you three?” Sun asked.</p><p>“Weren’t you listening?” Ciel demanded. “Rainbow, Twilight, and I were thrust upon Penny, not by the luck of the initiation but by General Ironwood and Doctor Polendina. Penny… I hope that she likes us, as we are fond of her, but I fear she cannot quite forget that we are an imposition on her liberty. Ruby and Pyrrha are the friends she chose. The friends whom you have made her fear will turn their backs upon her if they should learn… the truth.”</p><p>“Which is?” inquired Sun.</p><p>Ciel regarded him with magisterial disdain. “Never you mind.”</p><p>“But that’s ridiculous,” Blake protested. “As you said, it’s obvious that Penny is… a little odd, and that hasn’t stopped Ruby or Pyrrha from accepting her.” <em>For that matter, both Ruby and Pyrrha might be referred to as ‘different’ themselves.</em></p><p>“Penny’s… condition… goes beyond behaviour,” Ciel admitted. “It goes deeper than you know. Deeper than I intend to say, but suffice to say that, for all her naivety in certain ways, Penny is never unconscious of the things that set her apart from her friends. And now you have as good as told her that once those differences become more apparent, Ruby and Pyrrha will turn their backs upon her in disgust.”</p><p>“That’s absurd,” Blake objected. “Ruby and Pyrrha would never… their hearts are too open and full of kindness for that.”</p><p>“Then why did you make it sound inevitable?” Ciel demanded frostily.</p><p>“I… because… I was an idiot,” Blake admitted, her ears drooping so far they were practically flat. She bowed her head. “I’m sorry, I… I should apologise, explain myself.”</p><p>“Don’t you think you’ve said enough?” Ciel asked.</p><p>Blake flinched from the rebuke because she knew that she deserved it. “This is my fault; I have to do something to try and make it right,” she said, even as she rose from her seat and began to walk away.</p><p>She felt Ciel’s eyes upon her all the way out of the mess hall. </p><hr/><p>“You didn’t have to be so hard on her,” Sun pointed out as Blake walked away.</p><p>Ciel blinked. “Perhaps not,” she admitted. “But as I said, we are all fond of Penny.”</p><p>“I get that,” Sun replied, “but all the same, you didn’t have to be so hard on her.”</p><p>“Blake has a habit of opening her mouth and then sticking her boot into it,” Ciel declared. “Perhaps a touch of censure will encourage her to think before she speaks.”</p><p>Sun scowled. “You don’t like her, do you?”</p><p>“I am not particularly enamoured of either of you at present.”</p><p>“Sure, you said so, but it’s more than that, isn’t it?” Sun said. “It’s more than just that she upset Penny.”</p><p>Ciel was silent for a moment. “I don’t know what she’s fighting for,” she said. “I’m not sure even she knows what she’s fighting for.”</p><p>“Do you have to know what someone’s fighting for before you like them?”</p><p>“It helps,” Ciel said, “but it is not the only criteria. I know exactly what you’re fighting for, and it only increases my misgivings towards you.”</p><p>“If this is about me stowing away-”</p><p>“That is the least of it,” Ciel said, cutting him off.</p><p>Sun frowned. “Then what’s the most of it?”</p><p>Ciel breathed in deeply. “I do not always agree with Rainbow Dash, but I would put my life in her hands; I <em>do</em> put my life in her hands, as she and Penny and Twilight put their lives in mine. As we will all be putting our lives in your hands when we fight together tomorrow and after.” She paused. “But you have shown that your hands are only for one single person.”</p><p>Sun’s eyes widened. “You can’t think that I’d-”</p><p>“Your teammates have placed their lives in your hands, and you have dropped them all to come here.”</p><p>“My team is perfectly safe at Beacon!” Sun protested.</p><p>“Should I take on faith that you would not have left them in more uncertain circumstances to pursue Blake?”</p><p>“I wouldn’t put anyone in danger that way,” Sun insisted. “I’m not… sure, Blake means more to me than my team does, even Neptune; I admit that. I never asked to be made Team Leader, I even asked Professor Lionheart to give it to someone else, but…”</p><p>“But you’re still their leader,” Ciel reminded him, “and you abandoned them. A team that has no bonds tying it together will not stand in battle, at least not in a battle where the outcome is in any way doubtful. That is why we must trust one another. How am I supposed to trust you to fight by my side when you have proven that there is only one person here you actually care about?"</p><p>Sun didn't – couldn't – meet her gaze. He looked away. "Well… when you put it like that… it doesn't look so great, I guess."</p><p>"No," Ciel muttered. "It does not."</p><hr/><p>Blake walked back into the bedroom they had been assigned to see Penny sitting on one of the bottom bunks, reading the book of fairy tales that they had been assigned for class. Rainbow was on the top bunk, bouncing a ball off the wall and back into her hand, while Twilight was, like Penny, reading – a <em>Daring Do</em> novel, in her case. </p><p>Rainbow looked up as Blake came in. “Did you bring us something to eat?”</p><p>“Uh, no, I didn’t,” Blake murmured. “I’m sorry, but there might still be some fish and chips left?” She didn’t bother waiting for Rainbow to reply, but knelt down beside Penny’s bunk. “Penny… I wanted to say how sorry I am. The things I did… I didn’t mean to upset you.”</p><p>“I don’t know what you mean,” Penny said quietly, before she hiccuped.</p><p>Blake frowned. “Penny… Ciel explained to me that sometimes you feel… different from other people. Don’t worry, she didn’t say why,” she added, as Penny and Twilight both looked up from their books to stare at her, and Rainbow abruptly stopped throwing her ball off the wall. “But she said that… that I might have worried you. It wasn’t my intent.” She took a deep breath. “I was… mistaken. Ciel helped me realise exactly how mistaken I was. I was speaking… I was saying the words that I had been taught to say, taught to believe, when I was in the White Fang.”</p><p>“But you don’t believe them any more?” Penny asked. “Then why did you say them?”</p><p>“That’s a good question, Penny,” Blake said with a slight touch of self-deprecating laughter in her voice. “I could probably do with taking a second to think before I speak sometimes.” She sat down on the edge of Penny’s bunk, twisting her body around to look at the other girl who seemed so much younger than any other girl at Beacon, save perhaps for Ruby. “There are times when I still believe it,” she admitted, “but the truth is that, since I came to Beacon… yes, there are times when I’ve seen humans picking on faunus or showing fear or hatred towards them, but I’ve also seen so many instances of humans and faunus getting along, forming friendships, trusting one another with their lives. Like Sunset and Ruby, Sunset and all of her team; like Rainbow and her friends… if friendship can transcend race, then I’m sure whatever it is you feel…” Blake stopped; it probably wouldn’t be the best idea to say anything that would diminish whatever it was Penny felt set her apart from others. “And for what it’s worth, I think that of all the friends you could have made at Beacon, Ruby and Pyrrha are the two… I don’t think you could do anything short of an act of true evil that would cause them to turn away from you.” She smiled. “And even then, they’d probably forgive you if you were sorry about it.”</p><p>Penny smiled, softly and just a little sadly too. “I hope so,” she whispered. </p><p>Blake hesitated. “Penny… why do you keep reading that book? Are you struggling in class?”</p><p>“No,” Penny said, before she hiccuped again. “Well, yes, I am, but that’s not why I’m reading it. Or maybe it is.”</p><p>“What do you mean?”</p><p>Penny hesitated. “I… I love the story of the Shallow Sea so much… but I don’t know why. I like these stories, but I feel as though I don’t really understand them.”</p><p>“You can’t explain them,” Blake corrected her, “but you do understand, or else, you wouldn’t love them. These stories… they speak to our hearts before they speak to our heads. <em>The Shallow Sea</em>… I remember my mother telling me that story before I went to sleep. I must admit, it’s not my favourite,” – as a child she had liked it well enough, but as she got older, she had begun to find it more and more problematic, for all the reasons why it was falling out of favour amongst the faunus – “but I think I can see why it appeals to you.”</p><p>Penny looked at her, green eyes wide with curiosity. “Why?”</p><p>“Because it’s about being seen,” Blake explained, “for who you really are.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. A Crash Course in Atlas</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Blake gets a taste of how Atlas operates</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>As a quick note, chapters 'Truth Will Out' and 'The Sunset Strategy' from volume 1 will be getting some minor touch-ups on Monday in place of a new chapter of volume 2.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A Crash Course in Atlas</p><p> </p><p>Blake’s eyes snapped open as she heard footsteps on the floor. She didn’t need her faunus night-vision to see the crack of light that began to yawn into the room as the door swung open and then was closed again. </p><p>But it did help her to see in the renewed darkness into which the room was plunged once the door closed. </p><p>Blake rolled out of bed. Twilight, Ciel, Sun, and Penny were all asleep in their bunks – or at least, she presumed that Penny was asleep, although she seemed to have fallen asleep sitting upright in a manner that Blake had never come across before. </p><p>But at the moment, she was more interested in the fact that Rainbow Dash’s bunk was empty. </p><p>Clad in her black pyjamas, with her belladonna flower symbol branded on the shoulder and the sash bound around her waist, Blake padded barefoot out of the room and into the corridor. </p><p>She saw Rainbow Dash, also barefoot, walking away in the direction of the exit. </p><p>“Rainbow Dash?” Blake murmured as she let the door swing shut after her. </p><p>Rainbow stopped, half turning towards Blake. She was dressed in a purple tank top and knee-length blue pants, with rainbow-coloured sweat bands around her wrists. “Hey, Blake,” she said quietly. “Did I wake you? Sorry about that.”</p><p>“A little bit, but it’s okay,” Blake replied, taking a few steps towards her. “Where are you going?” The showers were in the other direction, if that was Rainbow’s intent. </p><p>“I’m going to start my wake-up routine,” Rainbow said. She paused for a moment. “You want to come?”</p><p>“I…” Blake hesitated, but she was honestly a little intrigued at this point, and she <em>was</em> already awake. “Sure,” she said. She would have gone back for boots, but the fact that Rainbow was likewise barefoot suggested that that wouldn’t be necessary. She began to walk briskly towards Rainbow, who mostly waited for her and then set off again when she was only a couple of steps away. </p><p>Blake followed her through a base that was quiet at this time in the morning; in fact, apart from the sentries at the door when they finally reached it, the two of them didn’t see anyone else upon their travels. Blake thought there must have been someone else awake – wasn’t there an officer who had to stay on watch or something like that? – but they were not in the corridors that Rainbow led Blake through, until they exited the doors and stood at the top of the steps, looking down at the docking pads where they had landed their Skyray yesterday. It was still dark – the dawn was less eager to wake up than either Rainbow or Blake – but she didn’t need the light of sun or moon to see all the Atlesian airships parked before the base, although she thought that Rainbow Dash might have more difficulty, depending on what she intended. </p><p>She thought that perhaps Rainbow meant to go for a morning run, the way that Jaune and Pyrrha started almost every morning, but although she descended the metal steps down from the entrance, Rainbow only rounded the building to another set of metal steps, this time leading all the way up onto the flat roof of the base complex. There, she padded briskly across the slightly rough, black surface until she was standing on the eastern edge of the rooftop, looking outwards beyond the walls and the barren landscape that lay around Cold Harbour. </p><p>“Can you see anything?” Blake asked as she joined Rainbow there. She was of the opinion there was not a lot worth seeing, but she was uncertain whether Rainbow Dash could see anything at all. </p><p>“Not yet,” Rainbow admitted, “but I don’t need to.”</p><p>“No?” Blake asked.</p><p>“Not yet,” Rainbow repeated.</p><p>Blake frowned. “What are we doing up here?”</p><p>“I told you, waking up Rainbow Dash style,” Rainbow said as she clasped her palms together and brought her left leg up to rest upon her right knee. </p><p>Blake’s eyebrows rose. “You’re… doing yoga?”</p><p>“You sound surprised,” Rainbow said, not even wobbling. </p><p>“We’re about to fly into battle, and you’re doing yoga?”</p><p>“I’m limbering up my body,” Rainbow replied. “Can you think of a better time to do that than before we fly into battle?”</p><p>“I… guess not,” Blake murmured.</p><p>Rainbow looked at her. “Well?” she demanded.</p><p>“'Well' what?”</p><p>“Are you going to join in or what?”</p><p>“Oh, right,” Blake said and hastily mimicked Rainbow’s actions, putting her palms together and balancing like a stork or a crane upon one leg, bracing her other leg against her knee. </p><p>Rainbow breathed in and then breathed out again. “Okay,” she said, looking away from Blake. “Let’s just take this nice and easy. Just do what I do.” She raised both hands above her head and lowered her other foot to the ground at the same time, making an X with her body for a moment before bending over, making an arch with her form as she touched the ground with her fingertips. Blake mimicked her, although since her hair was quite a bit longer than Rainbow Dash's, it flopped over rather more of her face than the Atlesian had to deal with, and she had difficulty seeing Rainbow through the wild black waves that deluged upon her. </p><p>She took one hand off the surface to brush her hair out of her eyes in time to see Rainbow shift to a sitting position, legs crossed, like her parents at tea on Menagerie. Blake adopted a similar position, hands resting upon her knees. </p><p>Rainbow breathed deeply, in and out, and Blake found herself following the other girl’s breathing patterns. </p><p>“Okay,” Rainbow declared. “Let’s start with a Downward Dog.”</p><p>What followed consisted mainly of Blake trying – rather more vainly than not – to match the impressive elasticity of Rainbow Dash as she moved her body fluidly through an array of colourfully and animalistically named postures like Cat Pose, Coiled Snake, or Trained Llama, often shifting on to the next before Blake had quite gotten the hang of the last. It was not quite the gentle exercise that she had seemed to promise, and by the time Rainbow got to Horse on a Bike – which involved lying on her belly, with her hands to the floor as though she were about to start doing push ups, but with her legs up and twisted around each other at right angles – Blake was about ready to give up. </p><p>“If posing like animals doing things is how you spend your mornings, then I can see why you spend them alone,” she muttered, climbing to her feet and trying to ignore the creaking of her joints as they protested all that stretching that she had <em>tried</em> to do.</p><p>Rainbow laughed nervously. “Sorry. I guess I got a little carried away from ‘nice and easy’ didn’t I?”</p><p>“Yes,” Blake said bluntly.</p><p>Rainbow resumed the cross-legged sitting posture, patting the ground beside her. “Stick around a little while, or you’ll miss the good part.”</p><p>“There’s a good part?”</p><p>“Just sit down,” Rainbow said with a good-natured scowl.</p><p>Blake hesitated a moment before she did so, once more mirroring Rainbow’s posture.</p><p>Rainbow was silent a moment, peering out into the darkness with eyes that could not penetrate it, before she said, “I’m sorry if Ciel gave you a hard time last night.”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Blake murmured. “I deserved it.”</p><p>“Well… you didn’t mean to worry Penny.”</p><p>“No,” Blake agreed, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I did it.”</p><p>“I gotta say,” Rainbow said, “that if I’d known then what I know now, I never would have mentioned the whole thing about the commanding officer to you.”</p><p>“I bet you wouldn’t,” Blake said, half under her breath, “but I’m glad you did. I’d rather be pleasantly surprised by a good man than shocked by a bigot.”</p><p>“The bigots get all the attention,” Rainbow sighed, “but there are a lot more good men wearing the white.”</p><p>Blake frowned. “Why are you doing this?”</p><p>“Doing what?”</p><p>“It’s like… you’re trying to convince me that Atlas is a good place, that the Atlesians are good people,” Blake said.</p><p>“Because Atlas <em>is</em> a good place, and Atlesians <em>are</em> good people,” Rainbow replied. “Good people like the General, like Twilight, like the rest of our friends-”</p><p>“Like you?”</p><p>Rainbow shrugged. “I… have my moments of awesome, I suppose.”</p><p>Blake snorted. “But what I don’t understand is why you care? I’m pretty sure Ciel doesn’t care what I think of your kingdom, and I don’t think even Twilight is concerned by it. Why does it matter to you what I think of Atlas, provided I work for you?”</p><p>Rainbow closed her eyes, breathing in and out. “When you first met me, you thought that I had to be in some kind of trouble, that I must hate Atlas and be looking for an out, right?”</p><p>“Yes,” Blake murmured. She wasn’t particularly proud of the way she’d acted then and didn’t relish being reminded of it.</p><p>“Because of your friend.”</p><p>“Because of Ilia, sure,” Blake agreed, still speaking softly.</p><p>“Well,” Rainbow said, “I had a friend once too; we grew up together in Low Town. We grew up looking up at Atlas, wondering what it was like up there. Gilda, she… didn’t get the breaks that I did. It made her… one day, I was over at her place, and I found these White Fang recruiting pamphlets in a shoebox under her bed.”</p><p>Blake’s brow furrowed. “What happened? Did she-?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Rainbow admitted. “We… had a big fight, I stormed out, and I never spoke to her again. Her parents and mine are neighbours on Menagerie; apparently, she moved to Vale and started working construction or something.”</p><p>“Have you thought about trying to track her down?”</p><p>“No,” Rainbow said. “I’m still not ready to accept her apology yet.”</p><p>“Whatever she said, it must have been quite hurtful,” Blake observed.</p><p>“It was,” Rainbow declared. “I guess… maybe I’d like to prove to you what I couldn’t prove to her: that Atlas isn’t a bad place, and it certainly isn’t full of bad people. The opposite. Atlas is full of great people doing the best they can.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Blake murmured. “I… I wouldn’t have believed that, not so long ago, but now… at least judging by the Atlesians I’ve met… it seems like it might be true.”</p><p>“It is true,” Rainbow insisted. “Oh, here comes the good part!”</p><p>"'The-'" Blake's words were snatched away from her by the coming of the dawn, her rosy fingers emerging over the far-off mountains to the east like a child's hand reaching up to grab the surface of a table too tall for them. Golden light began to bathe the world, banishing the dull gloom in which it had lain enshrouded and spreading a soft, renewing light over the landscape. It was the same world that it had been a moment before, and yet, by just a little touch of light falling from the east, it seemed transformed, less barren and more alive than it had been. That sense of life and sudden, transformed vitality was only increased as, out beyond the walls but still quite audible to Blake's four ears, a chorus of birds began to greet the dawn as it made its westward way across Cold Harbour and the sea beyond.</p><p>A slight smile broke out on Blake's face as the dawn song touched her ears. "Thank you," she said softly.</p><p>Rainbow sat, still and motionless. "I fight for a lot of reasons: for my friends, for my kingdom, for my own self-respect. Some of my reasons for fighting depend on who it is I'm fighting, but as far as fighting the grimm goes, one of my reasons is… <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3yCcXgbKrE">it's a wonderful world</a>, don't you think?"</p><p>Blake could have disputed that. In another time, another place, she probably <em>would</em> have disputed, but at this time and in this place, it would have seemed purely wilful on her part to do so.</p><p>She got up. "I'm ready to hit the shower," she announced.</p><p>"Go ahead," Rainbow replied. "I'm not quite done here yet."</p><p>"Suit yourself," Blake said, and she left Rainbow Dash there, sitting cross-legged on the roof, watching the sunrise bathe the world in gold, the light breaking upon her like a golden statue set for such a purpose. And as the rays of morning fell upon her, the many colours of Rainbow's hair seemed to glow brighter than Blake had ever seen them glow before.</p><p>For her own part, Blake descended the steps lightly and made her way back into the Atlesian base which, in spite of the morning, had yet to truly begin to stir to life; as she walked back through the corridors, she found it every bit as empty and deserted-seeming as it had been when she and Rainbow Dash had come the other way.</p><p>Nor was there any sign of stirring to life in the room where her companions were sleeping, all save Ciel whose bunk was now as empty as those of Blake or Rainbow. Either she had decided to grab an early shower, or she, too, had an esoteric morning routine just like her team leader. In any case, Blake grabbed her clothes, her shower gel, shampoo, and towel and once more headed out of the room and down towards the showers. She wasn't sure exactly how long the journey back to Beacon would take, but she was unlikely to get the chance to wash while stowed away aboard a cargo train, so best make the most of the Atlesian facilities while she had access to them.</p><p>The shower consisted of two rooms: a dry room, where Blake noticed that Ciel's clothes were neatly folded on one of the wooden benches that ran down the side of the room, and a wet room beyond, with a curtain to cover up the doorway and a lip of wall to prevent water spillage. Blake could hear running water on the other side of the curtain and see steam rising from it.</p><p>She took off her pyjamas quickly, folding them up and putting them next to her clothes, before – naked, with her shower gel in one hand and her shampoo in the other – she brushed aside the curtain and stepped into the communal shower proper.</p><p>And as the curtain fell back across the doorway behind her, Blake stopped, her eyes widening. Ciel was already in the shower as her clothes indicated. She had her back to Blake, and all the steam rising from the shower could not conceal the fact that her back was scarred, and badly so, by two lines of puncture marks, which Blake could only guess were made by fangs, one running just beneath her waistline and the other about halfway up her back. They looked like more than just bite marks, although if they were not bite marks, then Blake couldn't say exactly what they were, but it looked as though stakes had been driven through her body, deep into her flesh. Rows of keloids like mountain ranges rose across her body.</p><p>Ciel became aware of Blake's presence in the shower; she turned towards her, eyes flashing, and in the process revealed that she had similar scars across her front too; they crossed her belly and just beneath her breasts.</p><p>Blake turned away, facing the other wall.</p><p>"There is no need for that," Ciel said, and though the shower was full of steam, Blake felt the chill in her words regardless. "I am not ashamed."</p><p>Blake was not entirely sure of that, but she didn't want to offend Ciel further by questioning her sincerity; she turned back towards the other girl. "How?" she asked.</p><p>Ciel was silent for a moment. "An ice ursa, when I was seventeen."</p><p><em>'When I was'?</em> "How old are you now?"</p><p>"Eighteen," Ciel replied. She resumed washing, lathering her body in shower gel as though she hoped to cover up her scars with it. "During the summer break, after I had graduated combat school but before I was due to start at Atlas in the fall, I volunteered to help out at a camp for the younger children, twelve- and thirteen-year olds, run by my combat school."</p><p>"A sort of teaching assistant," Blake said.</p><p>"Quite," Ciel said, her voice brittle, like glass. "One day, one of the children got separated from the group on a hike. I was one of those who volunteered to go and look for him, and I found him: lost, scared, alone. All very natural, but at the same time-"</p><p>"All the things that draw the grimm," Blake murmured.</p><p>"Quite," Ciel repeated. "A pack of sabyrs cornered us at the edge of a cliff. I fought them off, with only some difficulty, but just as I thought we were safe, an ursa, perhaps a major, climbed up the cliff behind us, and… it was all I could do to put myself between the boy and the grimm. I am… an indifferent fighter at close quarters. It got me in its jaws. My aura broke. It would have bitten me clean in two if an instructor, drawn by the sound of gunfire, hadn't reached us just in time. Instead… the beast left me with a permanent reminder of our encounter. It ensured that, no matter how many grimm I slay, there is one, at least, that I will not forget." She took a deep breath, standing beneath the shower and letting the water flow down her body onto the floor. "But the boy lived; that is the important thing."</p><p>"And you lived too," Blake said. "That's equally important."</p><p>Ciel snorted. "How very kind of you to say so."</p><p>Blake turned on her own shower. The water was cold for a moment, but it began to warm up rapidly as it ran through her hair and down her body. "Does… does it hurt?"</p><p>"Upon occasion," Ciel admitted. "Less so now than at one time."</p><p>"I see," Blake murmured. "So… your injuries held you back a year?"</p><p>Ciel nodded. "I required… treatment on my back," she said, explaining while at the same time giving little away. "It was not possible for me to attend Atlas in my condition after the attack, and by the time my rehabilitation was complete, first semester had already concluded." She paused. "However, it appeared that I had come to the attention of General Ironwood regardless; he was kind enough to arrange private tuition for me while I waited to try again for Atlas the next year."</p><p>"He probably respected the fact that you were willing to sacrifice yourself to save a child," Blake said. "Not everyone would have."</p><p>"Every son and daughter of Atlas would have," Ciel replied. "We are a sacrificing nation; that is our way."</p><p>Blake was by no means convinced of that, by no means so certain that the virtues that Ciel ascribed to her fellow Atlesians were so widespread as she believed or, perhaps, would like to think. But she fell silent as she shampooed her hair, building up a lather and letting the water wash it away along with any grime. "I understand," she said after a moment.</p><p>"Do you?" Ciel asked sceptically.</p><p>"You don't think I'm ready to sacrifice?" Blake demanded. "You think that I don't understand sacrifice?"</p><p>"I think that you are willing to sacrifice your life," Ciel admitted. "I am less certain that you understand what is worth sacrificing for and what is not."</p><p>"I don't understand what you mean by that," Blake conceded.</p><p>Ciel was silent for a moment. "I was ready to give my life to save that child," she said. "I would have done the same to protect a civilian or even a comrade. But if I had been all alone, with no child or civilian or comrade to protect, I should have run from the ursa, having nothing to lose in doing so but my pride, a thing of no worth to anyone else and of little account even to myself."</p><p>"You mean to tell me Atlas has no concept of pride?"</p><p>"We are proud of what we do," Ciel corrected her, "but what we do must make sense. A fruitless victory is not worth a single life spent to attain, and a glorious defeat is worth less than that if glory and honour be the only attainments of the battle. We must risk our lives upon an object, or we risk them for nothing."</p><p>"And you think I'd risk my life for nothing," Blake said.</p><p>Ciel did not meet her gaze. "I fear that you would get yourself killed simply to prove – if only to your own satisfaction – that you were brave enough to put your life at hazard," she said. Now, she looked at Blake, as the steam rose around them. "Am I wrong?"</p><p>Blake did not reply. She felt as if there was nothing she <em>could</em> say.</p>
<hr/><p>Rainbow returned to find that Blake and Ciel were absent – presumably still in the shower – and the rest of the group was starting to wake up: Penny had turned herself back on from her stand-by cycle, Twilight's hair was perfect as ever – Rainbow could never work out how she managed that – and Sun was yawning as he rolled out of bed.</p><p>"Good, you're awake," Rainbow said. "Step outside with me for a second; I want to talk to you."</p><p>"Me?" Sun asked, pointing at himself.</p><p>"Yes, you, come on."</p><p>"Like this?" Sun gestured to himself; he was completely naked apart from a pair of boxer shorts which concealed his modesty but allowed his tail to droop down to the floor behind him.</p><p>Rainbow smirked. "It's not much worse than the way you usually dress, is it?"</p><p>Sun took that in stride. "Okay. Lead the way, I guess."</p><p>Rainbow only led the way out of the room and a few feet up the corridor before she turned to face the taller faunus. "I hear Ciel gave you a hard time last night?"</p><p>Sun shrugged. "I've had worse. And… I guess I can't say she doesn't have a point."</p><p>"Still, I don't want you to think that it was anything personal or because Ciel hates faunus or anything like that. It's just that nothing means more to Ciel – at least not right now – than the wellbeing of this team. And this team is a lot bigger than Blake."</p><p>Sun scratched the back of his head. "You too, huh?"</p><p>Rainbow leaned against the wall. "There's a voice in my head that sounds like my friend Rarity that is telling me that what you did was really romantic, that Blake should think herself lucky to have a guy willing to do dumbass stuff like that to be with her; and you know… I can see that. There's a voice in my head that sounds like Fluttershy, telling me that you didn't mean any harm and that I should go easy on you, and you… I can see that too. But then there's another part of me, the part that thinks that loyalty matters, and that part – the part that sounds most like me – is asking what you're loyal to."</p><p>"You think you can't trust me because Blake's the only one I care about," Sun said.</p><p>"<em>Is </em>Blake the only one you care about?" Rainbow asked.</p><p>Sun mimicked Rainbow in leaning against the wall. His tail fell, motionless, down to the ground, resting still upon the floor. "Is it true that Atlas flies?" he asked.</p><p>It was a weird question, but Rainbow answered it anyway. "Atlas floats," she corrected him.</p><p>"What's the difference?"</p><p>"It's in the sky, but it doesn't move anywhere," Rainbow said. "Like a balloon tied to a chair at a party. Airships fly; they go places. Atlas sticks around."</p><p>Sun nodded. "Do you ever feel like it won't?"</p><p>"Huh?"</p><p>"Come on, dude, you live on a flying rock-"</p><p>"Floating rock."</p><p>"Whatever," Sun replied. "Don't you ever worry that you'll just… blow away?"</p><p>"No."</p><p>"No?"</p><p>"No," Rainbow repeated a little incredulously. "Why would I worry about that? I said Atlas was like a balloon; I didn't say it <em>was</em> a balloon. Atlas might be a floating rock, but although the 'floating' part matters, so does the 'rock' part, as in 'rock steady'. And that goes not just for Atlas, but for me too. I always know where Atlas is, and I always know where I am." <em>Standing between Atlas and danger. Standing between my friends and danger.</em></p><p>"Lucky you, I guess," Sun muttered. "I… I'm not from Atlas; I'm from Vacuo, and even though I never lived in a flying – sorry, <em>floating</em> – city, I never lived anywhere that felt as steady as a rock. I don't remember my parents much; I just remember that we were always moving around, heading from place to place, never stopping in any one place for too long. It's been like that my whole life, and honestly, I'm fine with that. Neptune's a cool guy, like really cool, about everything, but… I always knew I'd leave him behind someday. I'd leave them all behind someday. And that… was fine. I'd miss Neptune more than Sage or Scarlet, but if you'd asked me if I could stick around for them, I would have told you 'no, that's just not the kind of guy I am.' I would have told you I was born to move around; that's why I wanted to become a huntsman in the first place, so I could travel around the kingdoms as much as I wanted and do some good at the same time instead of just being a drifter or a burden folks weren't glad to see.</p><p>"And then I met Blake."</p><p>Rainbow found herself grinning in spite of herself. "And her, you can stick around for, huh?"</p><p>"Have you ever met someone who, like, blows your mind?" Sun asked. "Have you ever met someone who changes your life completely, in a single moment?"</p><p>The smile remained on Rainbow's face; in fact, it got a little broader and more fond. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I know exactly what you mean."</p><p>"She… Blake… she is…"</p><p>"Your rock?" Rainbow suggested. "When you're with her, you know exactly where you are. 'Cause it's where you're meant to be."</p><p>Sun nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Look, I'm sorry that I can't say I'm here because I want to fight for Atlas or because I believe in what you're doing, but… so long as this is Blake's fight, then I'll fight it too; I'll fight with everything I've got. You don't have to worry about me."</p><p>"What worries me," Rainbow said, "is that you'll ignore anyone, anything, any part of the plan that isn't Blake… but I guess all that means is that I have to plan around that, since I know about it."</p><p>Sun blinked. "You mean…"</p><p>"My friend Applejack said once 'don't drop an apple and then complain when it hits the ground.' Maybe you're not the most reliable guy – and you're not, I'll be honest – but we'll make it work."</p><p>"And… that's it?"</p><p>"What do you want?" Rainbow demanded. "There's a voice in my head that sounds a little like Twilight telling me I ought to teach you a lesson about appreciating your teammates, but… I don't know how I'd even start on that, and I don't have time, and… I'm not that great at that stuff anyway. Twilight can teach you a lesson if she wants to. Right now: get showered, get dressed, let's get some food in us, and let's head out. And Sun?"</p><p>Sun peeled himself off the wall. "Yeah?"</p><p>"Blake's lucky to have you," Rainbow said.</p><p>Sun grinned. "Nah, I'm lucky to have her."</p><p>"Of course," Rainbow agreed. "That too."</p>
<hr/><p>The mess started serving breakfast early for any troops who might have early shifts or the like, and so, the expanded team was able to grab something to eat before, fed and washed, embarking upon a different Skyray than the one which had carried them to Cold Harbour the prior night. Blake knew it was different because their Skyray was still sitting where Rainbow had landed it last night, while this morning, a deck officer directed them to a different airship which was, functionally, identical to the last, inside and out.</p><p>Twilight took the pilot's seat – something which surprised Blake for a moment until she thought about it and realised that Rainbow would want to be free to join the fighting – with a sleek, slender white metallic android with a black, Y-shaped faceplate sitting in the co-pilot's seat. In shape, it was recognisably of a type with the Atlesian androids that Blake had fought against in the past, but at the same time was – if nothing else – better-looking than those grey, functional, rather ugly things.</p><p>"Is that a new model?" Blake asked, as she stepped into the cockpit.</p><p>"Yep," Twilight agreed. "Meet the Atlesian Knight 200."</p><p>"Or Otto, apparently," Blake said, noticing that someone had written the name in blue upon the android's head.</p><p>Twilight groaned. "Really? Of all the puns."</p><p>"I don't get it," Penny said from where she stood in the main compartment behind them.</p><p>Twilight looked over her shoulder. "Otto the Autopilot, Penny."</p><p>Penny blinked. "I still don't get it."</p><p>"Don't worry, Penny; you're not missing anything," Twilight assured her.</p><p>"So," Blake murmured. "They're an improvement over the 130s?"</p><p>Twilight nodded. "They're smarter, more versatile – hence they can drive trucks and fly airships on simple, predetermined routes or flight patterns – and they don't look as scary."</p><p>"I always thought you wanted your androids to scare people," Blake said sincerely.</p><p>"What? No!" Twilight cried, her head whipping around to look back. "We don't want to scare people; we want to help them feel <em>safe</em>!"</p><p>"Because you're protectors, not conquerors or oppressors," Blake murmured.</p><p>"Yes," Twilight replied. "I mean, don't expect me to be as eloquent as Ciel upon the subject, but… I understand the way that you feel about Atlas, and I understand that you come by those feelings honestly, but… for what it's worth, I've grown up with soldiers and huntsmen all my life, and I've never known any of them who weren't earnestly committed to the defence of humanity and the survival of all four kingdoms." She paused and smiled up at Blake. "So if you ever find yourself wondering if Rainbow Dash is sincere, the answer is always 'yes.'"</p><p>The corners of Blake's lips twitched upwards. "I can believe that," she said. "Just like I can believe that you believe what you're saying."</p><p>"But you don't believe me?" Twilight assumed.</p><p>"I… I must admit, the more Atlesians I meet, the more I'm surprised by the fact that I haven't met anyone particularly… disagreeable," Blake said softly. "You're all much better people than I gave you credit for. So far."</p><p>Twilight chuckled. "I hope we can keep that up," she said.</p><p>"And while I don't particularly want to see my old comrades indiscriminately slaughtered by your air power, I do respect the fact that Atlas is actually doing something about the White Fang and about the dangers lurking in Vale," Blake went on. "What does it say when Atlas is willing to do more to protect Vale than Vale itself?"</p><p>"That Atlas has the means?" Twilight suggested. "Rainbow and Ciel might be inclined to read more into it than that, but-"</p><p>"But your patriotism is of a subtler sort?" Blake suggested.</p><p>Twilight chuckled. "I'd say it's more that… chest thumping isn't exactly my style," she said apologetically.</p><p>While they had been talking, Penny had been waiting patiently in the airship while Sun had been delayed at the instigation of Ciel and Rainbow Dash. Now he appeared, climbing down the steps out of the base with a pair of bulky grey cases in his hands; he looked around, clearly puzzled as to which airship was the right one until Blake leaned out of the Skyray and waved to him. He started towards her at once. Ciel followed, also carrying a similar grey case, although only one, as she needed the other hand for her spare rifle. Rainbow Dash was the last to emerge, and as well as carrying a pair of cases in her own right, she was also speaking to Captain Sandleford, who was gesturing earnestly with one hand as he talked. Blake was too far away to hear what they were saying, but she saw Rainbow nod repeatedly in response to whatever was being said to her.</p><p>Sun reached the airship, dumping his load roughly in the back. "Hey," he said.</p><p>"Hey," Blake replied, allowing him to give her a kiss on the cheek. "What's in the boxes?"</p><p>"Weapons, I guess," Sun replied. "I mean, we went to the armoury to get them, but they'd already been packed up for us, so… I don't know."</p><p>Blake frowned. Weapons? Why would they need to bring weapons from the armoury? Everyone was armed already. Was it thought that they would need backup weapons? Was this some Atlesian way of doing things of which she was ignorant?</p><p>Ciel was the next to climb into the airship. She let out a loud 'tsk' of disapproval as she saw the way in which Sun had just laid down his burdens haphazardly and set about rearranging them, and her own, in a tidy fashion.</p><p>"What's in those?" Blake asked.</p><p>"Vital supplies," Ciel said.</p><p>Blake raised one eyebrow as Ciel turned to face her.</p><p>"Rainbow Dash wants it to be a surprise," Ciel added, slightly apologetically.</p><p>Blake frowned as Rainbow became the last to climb into the Skyray. "Okay, Twi, let's go."</p><p>"Apparently, you want to surprise me with something?" Blake said as Rainbow laid down her burdens on top of the pile Ciel had made.</p><p>"I'm hoping to surprise you with a lot today," Rainbow admitted, grinning as she patted Blake on the shoulder. "'Cause I'm going to give you a crash course in the real Atlas."</p><p>The doors shut, enclosing the group inside the Skyray as the airship rose, slowly at first but steadily, into the air. If Twilight was trying to hide her nervousness at being the only organic pilot on board, she was doing a terrible job of it – and Blake meant that with no malice at all – but nevertheless, she got them up into the air without difficulty and flew them out over the walls of Cold Harbour with no problems that Blake noticed. Rainbow was with her in the cockpit, whispering into her ear what might have been instructions or might have been simple encouragement, but either way, it was Twilight's flying that carried them southeast, inland from the port, over the uncultivated pastureland that surrounded the town until it was replaced by a verdant forest. The woods were not so thick as the Emerald or the Forever Fall Forests, nor as some of the wild woods of Mistral; the trees did not grow so close to one another that they blocked out the sky below or the sight of the ground from above. When Blake briefly headed up to the cockpit to look out the window, she could see plenty of sun-dappled ground beneath them through the gaps between the trees. What she could not see was any sign of the grimm.</p><p>"Do we have any idea what we're looking for?" Blake asked as she retreated into the main compartment.</p><p>"We're going to talk to the faunus first," Rainbow said. "See if they know anything."</p><p>"And force them back to work?" Blake asked.</p><p>"I'm going to try and persuade them to come back inside the walls," Rainbow replied.</p><p><em>And what if they won't?</em> Blake thought but did not ask, for fear of what the answer would be.</p><p>Nobody in the airship was reading now. Penny stood ramrod straight, staring straight ahead, eyes unblinking in a manner that was, honestly, a little disconcerting. Ciel's hands were clasped together, and her eyes were closed as her lips moved silently. It took Blake a moment to realise that she was praying. That wasn't something that you saw much of anymore; prayer and faith had largely fallen by the wayside in the modern world. The faunus told stories of a creator god, whether that was the god of the Shallow Sea or the Judgement of the Faunus, but no one invoked his name, not even amongst the White Fang, where you would have most expected such sentiment to survive. Religion had withered on the vine, although Blake's education, largely self-administered as it was, had not informed her as to precisely how or why. But apparently, it had survived in Ciel Soleil.</p><p>It was not what she would have expected of the model Atlesian student.</p><p>Ciel stopped praying and opened her eyes. She looked at Blake, almost challenging her to say something.</p><p>Blake did not. However Ciel found solace was her concern.</p><p>"Are you okay?" Sun asked.</p><p>"I'm fine," Blake replied. "You?"</p><p>"Yeah," Sun said quickly. "I just…"</p><p>Blake's eyes narrowed. "What?"</p><p>"After being questioned about whether these guys can trust me to fight beside them," Sun explained. "I just realised I never asked if I could trust them."</p><p>Blake chuckled. "I'm afraid you may have left it a little late."</p><p>"Such a question," harrumphed Ciel, "is wholly unnecessary."</p><p>"Don't worry, Sun," Penny declared. "We'll protect you! Defending life is my primary purpose!"</p><p>Sun grinned. "I feel safer already, Penny, even if that isn't what I was worried about."</p><p>"We're here," Twilight called from the cockpit as the airship began to descend.</p><p>Blake brushed past Sun and Penny to join Twilight and Rainbow in the cockpit. Twilight was bringing them down on the edge of a depression in the middle of the wood, a hollow of grass that the trees all around and up above had declined to venture down into. Instead, clustered around a spring in the very centre of the hollow, some crude huts of sticks and stones had been erected, and about thirty or forty people milled around, looking up at the descending airship. Some backed away from it, retreating to the other end of the hollow, but a few stood their ground as the Skyray dropped to land in their clearing.</p><p>"Blake, you're with me; everyone else, stay here," Rainbow said. She patted Twilight on the shoulder. "Nice landing, Twi; keep the engine running."</p><p>"You got it," Twilight murmured, still not without nerves in her voice, as the door on the right of the airship opened.</p><p>"Are you sure you want me with you?" Blake asked softly.</p><p>"I'm sure," Rainbow said. "That's why I said it."</p><p>"Okay," Blake murmured. <em>If you're certain.</em></p><p>Rainbow dismounted first, leaping down out of the airship and leaving Blake to follow a second behind, and then a step behind once she got on the ground alongside the Atlesian leader. The occupants of the hollow, some facing them, others cowering before them, were all faunus: some had had ram horns, some had cat or dog ears, some had horse tails, one or two even had bird wings. There were men and women and more than a few children; the younger children clung to their parents while the older ones looked braver than some of the adults.</p><p>None of their clothes had been made to stand the rigours of the outdoors. It was working wear, overalls and steel toe-capped boots, all of it filthy and some of it falling apart. Beards were very much in fashion amongst the men.</p><p>Their looks were wary, verging upon and even becoming hostile in some cases, but Rainbow seemed not to notice – or perhaps she just didn't care – as she strode towards them. "Hey there!" she said. "I hear you might have a grimm problem. Anybody want to tell me about it?"</p><p>Silence greeted her, broken only by the chirping of birds in the trees. A man stepped forward, a broad-shouldered fellow with long dark hair, an untidy beard and a donkey's tail drooping towards the ground. "Who are you?" he demanded. "What do you want?"</p><p>"My name's Rainbow Dash; this is Blake Belladonna. We're huntresses in training," Rainbow said.</p><p>"Huntresses? On an Atlesian airship?"</p><p>Rainbow shrugged. "We're Atlesian huntresses."</p><p>"Some of us," Blake murmured.</p><p>"Atlas," the man spat. "Are you here to drag us back to town?"</p><p>"No," Rainbow said, which surprised and gladdened Blake. "Although, is it really so much better living here in the middle of the woods?"</p><p>"We're not stopping here," the man replied. "This place is only temporary."</p><p>"Until what?" Rainbow asked.</p><p>"Until they're sure no one else is going to join them," Blake guessed as she took a step forward. "That's what you're doing, isn't it? You're waiting to see if anyone else will leave town to come and join you here."</p><p>The man hesitated for a moment before he nodded. "It wouldn't feel right to leave before we knew that no one else wanted to follow. Is that a problem?"</p><p>"Not for me," Blake said, glancing at Rainbow Dash.</p><p>Rainbow said, "I talked to Captain Sandleford; he thinks you'll be safer in town."</p><p>The man nodded. "He came to talk to us himself. I'll tell you what I told him: we might be in danger here, but at least we're free."</p><p>"Oh, come on!" Rainbow said. "Don't act like you were slaves at Cold Harbour-"</p><p>"Wage slaves, maybe," someone called out from amongst the crowd.</p><p>The donkey faunus nodded. "The law says that any employee who works for more than six months is granted certain protections and benefits, like healthcare. But what they do is, they take us on six month contracts, then terminate those contracts for a day or a week, and then rehire us on another six month contract so they never have to give us a thing but the pittance they call our wages. Our children get sick, and no one can afford a doctor; a man gets too old to work, and he has nothing to live on, no savings or pension or nothing."</p><p>"And they're all in on it?" Rainbow asked.</p><p>"Every place except the Atlesian base, and there's only many janitors they need there," the donkey faunus replied.</p><p>"That can't be legal,” Rainbow said.</p><p>The man laughed. "Kid, around here nobody cares about legal, especially not where faunus are concerned."</p><p>Blake frowned. "So where will you go?"</p><p>"Vale, maybe?" the donkey faunus suggested. "Or maybe we'll head east, see what's over the mountains, or maybe we'll start a commune out here and become farmers."</p><p>"Not if you get eaten by the grimm, you won't," Rainbow said. "Listen, I don't know what your lives were like back in Cold Harbour, and if you don't want to go back there, then that's fine, but there are grimm around, and anything you can tell me to help us take them out will help you too."</p><p>The man was silent for a moment before he nodded in acknowledgement of what Rainbow had said. "There's a hill to the south of here," he said. "I was out foraging when I found a cave… with claw marks on the stone. I think that's where they make their nest or den or whatever you call it. But I didn't stick around to say for sure."</p><p>"A hill?"</p><p>"The bald hill, there," the donkey faunus said, pointing to a green-brown hill erupting out of the cover of the trees some distance to the south.</p><p>Rainbow nodded. "Thanks," she said. "We'll be back to tell you the job is done and you can rest easy." Nobody looked particularly enthusiastic about that, but Rainbow once more either didn't notice or pretended she didn't notice or just didn't care as she turned back towards the airship. Blake, once more, was left to follow.</p><p>"We should do something for those people," she said as they both leapt back inside the Skyray.</p><p>"We are doing something; we're saving them from the grimm," Rainbow said. "We're huntsmen; that's our job as far as helping people goes. Twilight, take us up and head for that hill, but leave the door open this time."</p><p>"Okay," Twilight said.</p><p>"It's not enough!" Blake cried as the airship began to rise out of the hollow. "It isn't right that their choices boil down to put up with exploitation or go live in the woods!"</p><p>"No, it isn't, but what are we supposed to do about it?" Rainbow demanded. "We can't give them healthcare; we can't give them better jobs. This isn't even Atlas. These are Valish companies-"</p><p>"Working for the Atlas military and the SDC and probably other Atlesian organisations too," Blake replied. "What if Atlas refused to deal with any company that wasn't treating its employees with the dignity that they deserve?"</p><p>"That… is actually a pretty good idea," Rainbow admitted. "Hey, Twilight, why don't you suggest that to Cadance?"</p><p>"I'll bring it up next time I see her," Twilight promised, her voice calling out from the cockpit.</p><p>"There? You see?" Rainbow smiled briefly. "Listen, Blake, what's going on there isn't great, but we're just huntsmen; we can't fix the whole world's problems. Right now, all we can do is save lives."</p><p>"I know," Blake murmured, "but I want so much more than that."</p><p>"I know that too," Rainbow replied. "That's why I said 'right now.'"</p><p>Blake's eyes narrowed. "What do you-?"</p><p>"We're coming up on the hill now," Twilight called.</p><p>Rainbow pushed Blake back a couple of steps. "Ciel, get into position."</p><p>"Understood," Ciel said, stepping forward until she was standing on the edge of the airship looking out. Over her right eye, she was wearing some kind of visor with an electric blue glow and symbols of some kind flashing across it. She knelt, raising her monstrous rifle to her shoulder, looking down the scope.</p><p>The Skyray circled the hill. Blake peered down into the woods that surrounded it but saw nothing.</p><p>There was no sound but the droning of the airship's engines as they circled. The woods below seemed placid, calm and quiet, devoid even of normal woodland life, never mind the grimm.</p><p>Suddenly, Ciel's rifle jerked to the left before she fired with a roar. "Got one!" she said.</p><p>Blake looked again. There… yes, in the shadow of the trees; it was faint, but she could make it out, dark shadows moving around the base of the hill.</p><p>Ciel fired again, and the air began to fill with the howling of beowolves as they raged impotently against the Atlesian airship.</p><p>"Should we jump 'em?" Sun asked.</p><p>"Not yet," Rainbow muttered from where she stood, one hand resting upon the airship door. "Twilight, stay on them."</p><p>"I can't see them very well," Twilight said.</p><p>"Head south!" Ciel barked, just before her rifle thundered forth again.</p><p>The airship banked south. Blake couldn't blame Twilight for not being to see the grimm very well; she couldn't see them too well either. They were only shadows, darting across the gaps between the trees, vague black shapes that she could only just make out in the forest shade. It was a miracle – or a tribute to the technology in her visor – that Ciel was able to hit them so consistently. Or at least, Blake thought she was hitting them consistently; she wasn't showing the kind of irritation that would suggest she was missing.</p><p>"They're turning to the right," she said, and Twilight turned the Skyray in turn, the airship tilting slightly on its axis to keep pace with their prey, the prey Blake might not have known were there if it weren't for the howls of outrage issuing from their mouths.</p><p>"Ciel, how many of them left?" Rainbow asked.</p><p>Ciel fired again. "Thirty at an estimate, including their alpha."</p><p>"Okay," Rainbow said, looking at a map on her scroll. "There's a clearing to the south. I'm going to get out on the other side of them, and we're going to drive them that way; once they reach the clearing, Twilight, let them have it with the missiles, then Penny, Blake, Sun, get out, and we'll finish them off." She grinned at Blake as she pulled her crimson goggles down over her eyes. "You won't hunt like this outside of Atlas, I promise."</p><p>She didn't give Blake time to respond before she leapt out of the airship, her Wings of Harmony unfurling on either side of her as she soared over the treetops, Plain Awesome in one hand and Brutal Honesty in the other, both machine guns blazing with fire as she spat bullets down at the unseen grimm below.</p><p>Blake couldn't see the beowolves, but as Ciel barked out instructions for Twilight to turn this way or that, as Rainbow kept pace with the Skyray from some distance away, Blake found that she could imagine what was happening down in the forest: the grimm were the flock, and the Skyray and Rainbow Dash were the sheepdogs, herding them south. South, away from the faunus camped in the woods, and whilst not long ago, Blake would have assumed that was a happy accident, now… now, she was far less certain.</p><p>The crack of Ciel's rifle was the constant accompaniment of their flight, a counterpoint to the droning of the engine, interrupting the howling of the beowolves as they tried to flee from a foe they could not reach. The staccato rattle of Rainbow's submachine guns were farther off and dimmed by distance, but Blake hoped they were no less effective for being quieter.</p><p>She could not see the grimm, but she could see the clearing to which they were driving the grimm: an open, roughly oval shape where the trees had receded and the sunlight suffused the area. Once the grimm broke into that clearing, then Blake would be able to see them.</p><p>Then they would all be able to see them.</p><p>Ciel fired again. "Twilight, fire the missiles."</p><p>Twilight squeaked in alarm. "Uh, this is… whatever, firing starboard missiles!"</p><p>The airship's nose appeared to explode with flame as the firing ports opened and missiles streaked out, trailing flame and white vapour as they swept like thunderbolts down into the clearing, exploding across the open ground, turning trees on the edge of the wood to splinters, churning up the ground, kicking up grass and soil and consuming the meadow in fire for a brief, brilliant moment.</p><p>Blake saw Rainbow Dash drop to the ground a moment before the Skyray soared over the clearing, and she could see the surviving beowolves – perhaps a score in all – milling around their great alpha as Rainbow Dash landed on the ground and blew the head off a grimm with Unfailing Loyalty.</p><p>Blake leapt out the Skyray, throwing her hook to catch upon a tree and ease her landing at the edge of the meadow. A grimm pounced upon her but found only a shadow clone before the real Blake leapt upon it from behind and sliced it in half with her cleaver. Penny landed in the centre of the clearing, her Floating Array out in carbine mode, green laser beams striking out in all directions. Sun clubbed a beowolf over the head and then shot it twice in the chest to finish it off with Ruyi Bang and Jingu Bang.</p><p>The alpha beowolf roared, dropping to all fours so as to present to its enemies a back covered in armour plates and spines of bone, covering its vulnerable black underbelly. A shot from Ciel's rifle ricocheted off it. The alpha let out a huff that sounded almost like laughter.</p><p>Blake dashed across the eaves of the forest, cutting down another beowolf with Gambol Shroud as she did so, and threw her hook towards the alpha. With luck – and not inconsiderable skill – she buried it in a chink of black flash between two plates of bleached white armour. The alpha howled in pain as Blake hauled back upon the silken thread, pulling so hard that the alpha beowolf reared up, baring its chest to the world.</p><p>"Rainbow Dash, now!" Blake yelled.</p><p>Rainbow didn't need telling twice. She ran forward, trailing a rainbow behind her as she leapt, fist drawn back, speeding towards the alpha faster than its paw could swipe towards her.</p><p>She punched the alpha square in the chest, and as she struck, there was a booming sound like thunder as the alpha beowolf's chest exploded. Moments later, the rest of it began to follow suit, turning to ashes before their eyes.</p><p>And then it was all over, bar the mopping up.</p>
<hr/><p>By the time they returned to the camp in the hollow, Twilight setting the airship down exactly where she had before. Some of the faunus were a little less wary of the Skyray this second time, but most still seemed keen to keep their distance.</p><p>"Okay, everyone out this time," Rainbow said.</p><p>"'Everyone'?" Penny gasped eagerly.</p><p>"Everyone," Rainbow confirmed. "And help me get this stuff out," she added, gesturing to the 'vital supplies' that she, Ciel, and Sun had carried out of the armoury.</p><p>Blake picked up a case; it was heavy, but that still wasn't much help in working out what was inside as she climbed out alongside the other members of the extended team.</p><p>Once more, they were met by the donkey faunus, who seemed to be the leader of the group, officially or otherwise.</p><p>"The grimm are taken care of?" he asked.</p><p>"Yep," Rainbow declared. "You won't have to worry about them any more. At least… as long as you stay around here."</p><p>The leader of the camp nodded gravely. "Indeed. Once we move on, there will be other grimm to worry about."</p><p>"Unless you don't move on," Rainbow suggested.</p><p>The donkey faunus shook his head. "We will not go back. Now that we've walked away… we cannot crawl back and admit we were wrong. We have drunk of the waters of freedom; it is not so easy to go back to drinking tainted water after that."</p><p>"For what it's worth," Blake said, "I think that the Atlesians who advise you to return within the walls really do have your safety at heart." <em>That's not something I thought I'd ever say, but that doesn't make it any less true.</em></p><p>"I believe it too," the leader of the camp replied, "but that does not change our answer. We will not go back."</p><p>"Then at least let Captain Sandleford give you a going away present," Rainbow said as she put her case down on the ground and opened it up, revealing a pair of grey metallic long-barrelled rifles topped with scopes.</p><p>"This," Rainbow said, pulling one of the guns out of its case, "is a Designated Marksman Rifle: semi-automatic, twelve round magazine; you can use it to hunt for food or to keep grimm away. There are also a couple of shotguns and four pistols. Not a whole lot of ammunition for them, but it should be enough to get you someplace where you can trade for more or rely on someone like us to protect you."</p><p>The faunus' eyes widened. "Guns? For us?"</p><p>"Captain Sandleford was worried you had no way of protecting yourself if you wouldn't come back to town," Rainbow explained. "So here they are, with his compliments. Also some MREs in one of these cases, because the captain also wants to poison you before you get wherever you're going."</p><p>The camp leader chuckled. "Tell Captain Sandleford that we have eaten much worse than his field rations and will not grumble about them as his soldiers do." He stepped forward, holding out his hand. "Thank you."</p><p>Rainbow was still holding the DMR in one hand as she clasped the leader's hand with her other. "Good luck out there," she said, handing over the rifle. "Ciel, show these people how to use their new weapons. Penny, Sun, start distributing the rations."</p><p>"Affirmative!"</p><p>Rainbow turned to Blake, holding her arms out on either side of her. "Surprise!"</p><p>Blake folded her arms. "You… you're arming and feeding these people."</p><p>"Yep."</p><p>"Why?" Blake asked. "I thought that you'd-"</p><p>"They're not slaves; they don't have to work anywhere they don't want to," Rainbow said with a shrug. "Captain Sandleford understands that, and so do I."</p><p>"How is he going to get away with giving them guns?"</p><p>"He'll just mark them damaged beyond repair, say that they broke in a training exercise or something and get new guns shipped in from Atlas," Rainbow explained. "Stuff breaks all the time on a base like this." </p><p>Blake bit her lip. “And what… what if…?” <em>What if they turn these weapons against you?</em></p><p>“They won’t,” Rainbow said, reading her mind.</p><p>“How can you be so sure?” Blake asked. “How can you be sure that this isn’t exactly how the White Fang got some of their weapons?”</p><p>“Because the White Fang don’t take charity; they steal stuff,” Rainbow replied. “Look, I know that the White Fang end up with ex-Atlesian gear sometimes, but I also know that the stuff they end up with isn’t the stuff that we’re giving out to the needy. Besides, do you think that we issue guns to just anybody? We’re better judges of character than that.”</p><p>“But-”</p><p>“No buts; just stop worrying so much,” Rainbow said. She walked towards Blake, a smile playing across her face. "We killed some grimm, helped some people, and all's right with the world."</p><p>Blake's eyebrows rose. "'All's right with the world'?"</p><p>"Okay, maybe not the <em>whole</em> world," Rainbow acknowledged, "but this little bit of the world? I think it's doing pretty good. Today was a good day."</p><p>Blake held her gaze. <em>Whoever would have thought that I would be in this position?</em></p><p>
  <em>Whoever would have thought it wouldn't bother me that much?</em>
</p><p>"Today," she agreed, "was a good day."</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. On the Night Before Departing</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>With their first officially official mission looming over them, Team SAPR take stock and prepare for the future.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>On the Night Before Departing</p><p> </p><p>“Aww, I can’t believe my little sister is setting off on her first official mission tomorrow!” Yang cooed from out of her scroll. “And I’m not there to say goodbye.”</p><p>Ruby lay on her stomach on her bed, her scroll held up in front of her face, even as her sister’s face filled up the scroll in front of her. She beamed. “I know! It’s amazing, isn’t it? I mean, I know that we’ve fought before – even when we weren’t supposed to – and I suppose you could say that going after that karkadann in Mistral maybe counts as our first official mission, but this time it’s <em>officially</em> official, if you know what I mean.”</p><p>Yang smiled back at her. “I think I do,” she said, “but explain it anyway, so I know for sure.”</p><p>Ruby covered her mouth with one hand as she chuckled; it was a habit she found she’d picked up from Pyrrha, who did it for reasons that Ruby hadn’t bothered to ask her about. Maybe it was more ladylike than just laughing. Or maybe she didn’t want to spit on people. It didn’t really matter, she’d gotten Ruby doing it anyway. “It’s like… in Mistral, there wasn’t any other choice. There was no one else around to take care of the grimm. Except for that Arslan girl who’s really mad at Sunset right now. Anyway, there was nobody but her, and I guess Professor Lionheart didn’t know about her because he asked us to do it because there was no one else. But these are our teachers, and they know who we are, and there are plenty of other teams that they could have chosen for this mission… but they chose us.” </p><p>That was… maybe not entirely true, considering that it seemed like Professor Ozpin had given them this mission specifically so that they could go to Cold Harbour and meet up with Blake and Team RSPT, but at the same time, it was sort of true since it still showed that Professor Ozpin thought they had what it took to undertake not only this mission but also the plan  to capture Torchwick – or someone important from the White Fang – that the two teams had come up with together. </p><p>She hadn’t told Yang about that part. Her sister was really supportive about an official mission, but she might not look so favourably upon joining the Atlesians for a secret operation, no matter how cool it was.  </p><p>“So,” Yang said, “once the repairs to the railway are done, how are you going to get back to Beacon?”</p><p>“Well, the repair train is going to carry on north to <em>prove</em> that they actually fixed the line,” Ruby told her, “and we’ll go with it and catch another train back south.” <em>Wow, I can’t believe I actually lied to Yang. </em></p><p>
  <em>And that it was so easy.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It probably helped that it was all true; I just didn’t tell her that when I say we’re going to get a train, I meant that we’re going to hide in an Atlesian cargo train and hope that the White Fang try to rob it so we can catch them in the act.</em>
</p><p>“That makes sense, I guess,” Yang said. “Funny how we’ve both gotten missions that involve standing around and guarding other guys while they repair stuff.”</p><p>Ruby snorted. “Yeah, I guess we have. So how are you doing out there? What’s it like on the edge of Vale?”</p><p>“Oh, I’m fine,” Yang replied easily; her picture jogged up and down a little, Ruby guessed that she was carrying her scroll towards the rest of her team. “In fact, we’re all doing fine. Hey, guys, say hi to Ruby.”</p><p>“Hi, Ruby!” Nora’s voice drowned out the softer greetings of Ren and Dove, just as her face crowded out of that Yang as well as her two male teammates, even as Yang tried to get all four of their faces into the image. “Did I hear right that Team Sapphire just got a mission too?”</p><p>“Yep!” Ruby said. “We’re heading out with some railway workers to protect them while they fix the line through the Forever Fall.”</p><p>“Man, they weren’t kidding when they said these missions were going to come thick and fast, huh?” Nora asked.</p><p>“Indeed,” Ren murmured. “It appears that Beacon’s reputation for rigorous field training is well earned.”</p><p>“Be careful out there, Ruby,” Dove urged.</p><p>“Don’t tell her to be careful; it makes you sound like you don’t have any faith in her!” Nora cried. “Kick butt out there, Ruby! We believe in you!”</p><p>“Be careful <em>and</em> kick butt,” Yang ordered. “And come back with some awesome stories about your field trip.”</p><p>“Sure,” Ruby agreed, a little nervously when she thought about what those stories might involve. “You too.”</p><p>“Too bad we don’t have any cool stories,” Nora moaned.</p><p>“That bad, huh?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“Our mission has been a complete success,” Ren informed. “It’s just that success has also been a little boring.”</p><p>“Do you have any idea how dull it is just sitting around watching people build a wall?” Nora demanded.</p><p>“At least that means there are no grimm around and everyone’s safe,” Ruby observed, trying to look on the bright side.</p><p>“Yeah, I guess.”</p><p>“I’ve been trying to tell her that,” Ren pointed out.</p><p>“What’s it like working with a professional huntsman?” Ruby asked eagerly.</p><p>“Well, he’s no Uncle Qrow, but he’s still pretty cool, I guess,” Yang replied.</p><p>“I’m kind of jealous that we don’t have a real huntsman on our mission,” Ruby admitted.</p><p>“You don’t have a professional huntsman coming with you?” Dove demanded.</p><p>“Dove!” Nora yelled. “Confidence!”</p><p>“What kind of training mission doesn’t have a professional?” Dove demanded again.</p><p>“The kind where the team on the mission is so awesome they don’t need a babysitter,” Ruby said.</p><p>Yang guffawed. “Oho, big talk from someone on the other side of Vale, Rubes.”</p><p>“We won’t be here when you get back!” Ruby cried, sticking out her tongue.</p><p>“But you’ll have to come back eventually,” Yang reminded her.</p><p>“Yeah, well…” <em>By then, there’ll be other things to worry about.</em> “I’ll worry about that tomorrow.”</p><p>“Just worry about your mission tomorrow, and tonight,” Yang said. “But don’t worry too much! But worry enough! Maintain a healthy and constructive level of worry. And pack clean underwear!”</p><p>“Goodnight, Yang,” Ruby said firmly.</p><p>Yang laughed. “Goodnight, Ruby. And good luck out there. I love you.”</p><p>“I love you too,” Ruby said. “Stay safe. Goodnight!”</p><p>“Goodnight!”</p><p>“Goodnight, Ruby!” Nora shouted.</p><p>“Goodnight,” Dove and Ren added more quietly.</p><p>“Goodnight,” Yang said again before she hung up the call. </p><p>Ruby stared down at the blank screen for a moment. She rolled over onto her side. Jaune and Pyrrha were out training, but Sunset was still here, sitting at the other end of the room with a big, heavy, book resting upon her knees, scribbling in it.</p><p>“Sunset?” Ruby asked. </p><p>Sunset looked up. “Hey, Ruby. How’s Yang?”</p><p>“Couldn’t you hear?”</p><p>“I was trying not to,” Sunset replied. “Plus, I was a little distracted by my own thing.”</p><p>“What are you doing?”</p><p>“Oh, just writing a journal entry,” Sunset said. “Full of anticipation for our success upon the morrow.”</p><p>“So you’re excited then?”</p><p>“Yes, I’m excited, it’s our third mission.”</p><p>“I think it’s our first,” Ruby replied.</p><p>“Then what were the karkadann and the White Fang at the docks?” Sunset demanded.</p><p>“The White Fang at the docks wasn’t an official mission,” Ruby pointed out.</p><p>Sunset seemed to consider that point. “Okay, if you want to be <em>official</em> about it, but the karkadann still counts. What’s more official than the Headmaster of Haven seeking us out personally for a mission?”</p><p>“The only one he sought out personally was Pyrrha.”</p><p>“Details, details,” Sunset declared dismissively. “Do you know what the important thing about history is, Ruby?”</p><p>“It’s old?” Ruby tried.</p><p>Sunset snorted. “History is not written by the victor. History isn’t even written by the privileged. History is written by those who bother to put pen to paper, and I can’t see Pyrrha writing a memoir, can you?”</p><p>Ruby giggled. “She’d probably be horrified at the idea.”</p><p>“Exactly,” Sunset said. “I, on the other hand, have no trouble writing that Professor Lionheart sought out our entire team, on account of how well we’d done against the White Fang at the docks.”</p><p>“Is that why you keep a journal? To make up stuff to make yourself look better?”</p><p>“I’m not talking about making things up; I’m talking about… massaging the truth a little bit,” Sunset said with a  touch of asperity. “But… no, this journal… this is more for my own piece of mind.” She paused for a moment. “So how is Yang?”</p><p>“Nora’s bored,” Ruby informed her team leader, “but I think Yang’s taking it pretty well.”</p><p>“The boredom?”</p><p>Ruby nodded. “It sounds like nothing’s happened except they’ve watched some people build a wall. Which is a good thing. We shouldn’t wish for grimm attacks that might hurt people just because we like the excitement of fighting them off.”</p><p>“On the other hand, if there was no excitement at all in this job, then arguably, there wouldn’t be a need for huntsmen,” Sunset mused. “If you know what I mean.”</p><p>“I think so. You mean that the only way there’d be no excitement is if there were no grimm?”</p><p>“Pretty much, yeah.”</p><p>“That’s true, I suppose,” Ruby replied. “So you <em>are</em> excited?”</p><p>“Didn’t I just say that?” Sunset asked. “You?”</p><p>Ruby nodded. “Like I said, it’s our first official mission.”</p><p>“Why is that?” Sunset demanded. “Why doesn’t the karkadann count?”</p><p>“Because it wasn’t Professor Ozpin who gave us that mission,” Ruby explained.</p><p>“That’s not inherently a bad thing,” Sunset muttered.</p><p>“You really don’t like him, do you?”</p><p>“Why should I like him? He hasn’t done anything to earn my affection or my trust,” Sunset said. “He set us up over that White Fang business, almost got you killed, and then he had the nerve to punish us for it!”</p><p>“He did not set us up,” Ruby insisted.</p><p>“How do you know he didn’t?”</p><p>“How do you know he did?” Ruby countered.</p><p>“Because… he knew Blake was a faunus!” Sunset cried.</p><p>“So?”</p><p>“So… he must have known something like this would happen the moment he allowed Team Rosepetal to come to Beacon.”</p><p>“How could he have known that?”</p><p>“Because I’m starting to think that Blake is incredibly predictable once you know what her deal is,” Sunset muttered. “And Rainbow Dash even moreso. It was inevitable that bringing those two together would produce a conflagration.”</p><p>“Sunset, can I be honest? That sounds like a <em>real </em>reach.”</p><p>“He knows about your eyes,” Sunset said sharply. “He knows about your eyes, that is incontrovertible; we have that from your mother’s own hand, not to mention that he specifically pointed out your eyes to you <em>without mentioning what made them special</em>.”</p><p>Ruby shifted uncomfortably on the bed. “I’m sure he had a good reason for that.”</p><p>“He might think he has a good reason, but it doesn’t follow that it really <em>is</em> a good reason,” Sunset shot back. “Certainly, it doesn’t follow that it’s good for <em>us</em>.”</p><p>“My mom trusted him.”</p><p>“So far as you’ve read.”</p><p>Ruby frowned. “What is it about him that bothers you so much?”</p><p>“More than what I just said?”</p><p>Ruby’s eyes narrowed.</p><p>Sunset looked away. “I’m done being used as a tool of others,” she said. “What I do, I do for myself, of my own will.”</p><p>“What if it’s for a good cause?”</p><p>“If it is for a good cause, then I’ll decide that for myself, according to my own lights,” Sunset said. “I go my own way.”</p><p>Ruby was silent for a moment. “There’s a good reason why he told my mom more than he’s telling me.”</p><p>“What makes you so sure?”</p><p>“I’m not <em>sure</em>,” Ruby said, “but I believe it.”</p><p>“You’re too nice for your own good.”</p><p>“And you can’t be happy being so suspicious.”</p><p>Sunset frowned. She changed the subject, or at least, she changed it back to what it had been before. “Why does his opinion really mean so much to you?”</p><p>“Because he’s our headmaster,” Ruby said. “So if he thinks we’re ready to do this, then that means something. Or at least, I think it does.”</p><p>Sunset was silent for a moment. “We <em>are</em> ready to do this.”</p><p>“I know,” Ruby said. “It’s going to be great. We’ll fix the railroad, catch Torchwick, and put a wrench in all the White Fang’s plans.”</p><p>Sunset chuckled. “Yeah, we’re going to kick all kinds of ass.”</p><p>Ruby grinned but was distracted before she could say anything else by a text appearing on her scroll. </p><p>Juturna: <span class="u">Hey, Ruby.</span></p><p>“Who is it?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“It’s Juturna,” Ruby said. “Do you mind if I-?”</p><p>“Be my guest,” Sunset said. “I need to finish up here.</p><p>Ruby smiled as she turned her attention away from Sunset and focussed fully upon her scroll. Ruby: <span class="u">Hey, Juturna. How’s it going?</span></p><p>Juturna: <span class="u">Great! Bro and Camilla let me go out into the field with them! I knew that persistent and annoying begging would pay off!</span></p><p>Ruby snorted and giggled at the same time. Ruby: <span class="u">Where did you go? What kind of mission was it?</span></p><p>Juturna: <span class="u">Councillor Timur’s son has just joined the Survey Corps, and his dad wanted to make sure that his kid was safe on his trip out into the field, so he paid through the nose for Turnus to take him out on his survey personally. Turnus didn’t think there was likely to be any trouble – or at least, with him and Camilla and a load of our guys there, he wasn’t worried about trouble – so he decided that it would be a good chance for me to come too.</span></p><p>Ruby: <span class="u">How was it?</span></p><p>Juturna: <span class="u">Awesome! I got to see Camilla take down a giant nevermore, it was the most badass thing I’ve ever seen.</span></p><p>Ruby: <span class="u">How did she do it?</span></p><p>Juturna: <span class="u">First of all, she let it get close, like, so close I thought it was about to swallow her, and Turnus couldn’t help because he was dealing with some manticores at the time, but anyway, this nevermore comes right in, and then Camilla shoots it in the face with a exploding arrow, and then, as the nevermore starts to turn away, she shot it with some arrows that turned to ice and wrecked its wing so that it crashed on the ground, and then she drove her sword into its eye and did something with dust that I don’t really know what exactly, but that killed it.</span></p><p>Ruby: <span class="u">Ice dust on the wing. I’ll try and remember that. So, do you think that you’ll go out into the field again?</span></p><p>Juturna: <span class="u">I don’t know.</span></p><p>Ruby: <span class="u">Won’t they let you?</span></p><p>Juturna: <span class="u">Maybe. I’m just not sure if I want to.</span></p><p>Ruby: <span class="u">Oh. Yeah. I guess that that kind of life isn’t for everyone.</span> She could not help but feel a little disappointed, although she wasn’t going to let on about that to Juturna. It would have been nice if her long distance pal had been a huntress from another kingdom… but she supposed she already knew a lot of huntresses, or huntresses in training. Ruby: <span class="u">I’m going out into the field soon myself.</span></p><p>Juturna: <span class="u">Yeah?</span></p><p>Ruby: <span class="u">Yeah. Me and my team have gotten a mission to protect some railway workers while they fix, well, a railway.</span></p><p>Juturna: <span class="u">Railway workers. So nobody important then.</span></p><p>Ruby couldn’t help but frown. Ruby: <span class="u">Of course they’re important, they’re people.</span></p><p>Juturna: <span class="u">You say the funniest things sometimes, Ruby. Do you want to play Warring Tribes?</span></p><p>Ruby: <span class="u">Sure.</span> It was… better than asking Juturna why she thought it was funny to say that every life was precious and worth protecting. Ruby… Ruby didn’t really want to think about the answer to that. </p><p>
  <em>Juturna was just kidding, she was just trying to get a rise out of me, the way Yang says embarrassing stuff to make people squirm.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yang never implied anything quite like that, but still.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Let’s just play the game.</em>
</p><hr/><p>Sunset returned her attention to the journal in front of her. Sunset: <span class="u">Excuse me, Princess Celestia; I shouldn’t keep you waiting like this.</span></p><p>Sunset found that she could almost hear Princess Celestia’s voice, gently amused, as her words crawled across the page in an old-fashioned script. Princess Celestia: <span class="u">That’s quite alright, Sunset. I take it that something came up closer to home than I?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">You could say that. Ruby finished her call with her sister and wanted to talk.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">You might have invited her to join us. I would so like to speak to your friends.</span></p><p>Sunset found herself smiling, despite herself; but she was sufficiently in control of herself that her smile had a slightly nervous edge to it. Sunset: <span class="u">If it’s all the same to you, Princess, I’d rather keep this between us. As far as Ruby knows, this is just an ordinary diary in which I set down my thoughts.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">And you wish it to remain so.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I still haven’t told them everything about me yet. Admitting to them all that I have magic was hard enough; how am I supposed to tell them that I’m a unicorn from another world? No offence to everyone back in Equestria, but I’ll sound insane.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">I suppose I will have to take your word for that, Sunset, without taking any offence in the matter. It is, of course, your choice what to tell your friends.</span></p><p>Sunset snorted. Sunset: <span class="u">You know, if I was talking to Twilight instead of to you, she’d probably tell me that consistent honesty is the only way to maintain a friendship.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">And she would be absolutely right, but I understand that there are certain times and certain occasions when it is advisable to keep certain things hidden, even from those who are dear to us.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Like a princess’ destiny.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">Quite. So, tomorrow you go forth to fight?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Indeed. Tomorrow, we board a train into peril.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">You have chosen your path, and I wish you well in it, but nevertheless</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I can hear you sighing from all the way in another dimension, Princess Celestia.</span></p><p>She could hear her old mentor chuckling too, as the princess resumed writing. Princess Celestia: <span class="u">Please forgive me, Sunset, but please also try to understand: as my sisters and I struggled to forge Equestria out of a land of quarrelsome tribes and savage monsters, we sometimes had recourse to battle. I steeled myself for it with the hope that future generations would, as a result of our labours, be spared the need to do so. I cannot deny it grieves me that, for you at least, my hope has been in vain.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I think, if Ruby were to write in this book, she would tell you that she shares the feelings that made you steel yourself to fight. Even if Ruby has no hope of the final victory that will free those who come after from this constant war, I know that Pyrrha possesses it in her wildest dreams and fights all the harder in such a purpose. </span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">And you, Sunset?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">So long as we all come out of this in one piece, I will be content.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">You are concerned?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Something else I’m not anxious to tell Ruby. Were you nervous before a battle?</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">With so much at stake, how could I not be? The fate of so many of my little ponies seemed to depend upon it.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I’m not worried about the stakes so much as upon the fate of my friends. Ruby almost died the last time we went up against the White Fang.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">So what will you do differently this time?</span></p><p>Sunset’s brow furrowed. Sunset: <span class="u">The best strategy that I can think of is to put something between Adam and his target. Like a wall or something. Something that forces him to expend his attack. A shield, maybe; I think he would probably cut through it, but in the process, he’d expend that power that he’s built up. It’s the best I can come up with at the moment anyway. The real problem is attacking him without him building up his power again.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">There are spells that enable you to attack from other directions.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I know, but he’s so fast that it’s almost impossible to catch him off guard. For me to catch him off guard, anyway. Perhaps my plan should just be to let Rainbow Dash take care of him. She’s had the better of him both times they’ve crossed paths. Princess, can I ask you something? Not about battle, but about something else?</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">Of course, but what else?</span></p><p>Sunset hesitated, choosing her words with care. Sunset: <span class="u">You kept secrets from Twilight, didn’t you?</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">I did not tell her everything I knew, or hoped for her, no.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Did you regret it? Did you ever feel guilty about it?</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">Sunset, what is this about?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">It’s the headmaster, Professor Ozpin. I know full well that he’s keeping secrets from us – Ruby’s eyes for one; he knows what they are, and he hasn’t said a word to Ruby about it. I think that’s only the beginning of it. I think he knows so much more than he lets on, and I worry that he’s using us, although I haven’t quite figured out what he’s using us for yet. The others don’t believe it – they think I’m seeing things that aren’t there – but it is plausible, isn’t it? Isn’t that what you did to Twilight?</span></p><p>It took Princess Celestia such a long time to reply that Sunset began to fear that she had gone too far, said too much, wounded her old teacher too gravely for the conversation to continue. But, at last, words began to appear once more upon the page. Princess Celestia: <span class="u">I would be lying if I said that I did not understand how you come by these feelings, after what happened between us and after what you have learned about Twilight Sparkle. But I would remind you that, although I hid certain truths and certain hopes of mine from Twilight, I never outright lied to her, nor did I ever force any act upon her against her will. Is it the same with your Professor Ozpin?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">He hasn’t blackmailed us, if that’s what you’re getting at. But I feel as though he’s played upon our reactions to achieve his aims; is that not bad enough?</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">You make it sound so, Sunbeam, but it occurs to me that a more charitable way to phrase it might be that he trusted you and your friends to do the right thing. Quite often, that is all that is required with Twilight: nudging her in the right direction and trusting her to do the right thing.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Have you and Twilight ever talked about how it felt for her to find out that you had behaved in that way?</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">No, we have not. I suppose you could call it nervousness on my part – you could accuse me of not having broached the subject because I know it will be an uncomfortable one and am not eager to disturb the equilibrium of my relationship with Twilight – but Twilight has never sought to raise the issue either. As much as she defers to me upon occasion, I believe that she is a sufficiently brave girl to speak up if she were genuinely troubled. Of course, you can always ask her yourself.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I might do that, but not right now. Do you think that I'm making much of nothing?</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">I think you are perhaps being a little uncharitable towards your headmaster.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I do not like feeling used.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">Feeling used and being used are two very different things, Sunset; I would go further and say that being used in a good cause and for good reason is a quite different thing from being the tool of ill purposes.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Is there a good reason to keep the truth of Ruby's magic from her?</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">Perhaps, your world being so very ignorant of magic, he fears what the knowledge of it might do to Ruby. I cannot – at least I ought not – to speculate upon the thoughts of one so far removed from myself, but I urge you to consider that there may be good reasons for all that Professor Ozpin does. One might ask what reason I had to keep Twilight's destiny a secret from her, and I would be justly chided for the lie – by one who did not realise that I had been far more open with you and paid the price for it. </span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">The fault was in my character, not in your honesty. I would take the risk again, without a second's thought, ere I would meekly consent to have a blindfold put over my eyes and fumble along the road another seeks to lead me down. Professor Ozpin is not you. He does not have your wisdom or your compassion.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">Do you know him so well to say that for certain?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">How can he? He is a mere mortal, just as I am; how can he possess the experience of centuries, the kindness of ages? By what right does a mere man presume to make me the instrument of his ambitions?</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">He is your teacher.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">And because of that, I will learn his lessons. But I will not be a pawn on his chessboard.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">I sense that you are stubbornly immovable on this. Very well. I will urge you to look on him – and on all those who attend your school – with charity, but I will say no more upon it. Good luck on your journey, Sunset Shimmer, and come back safe. </span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Thank you, Princess. Goodnight.</span></p><hr/><p>Pyrrha parried so sloppily that her mother would have started foaming at the mouth to see it.</p><p>Jaune did not follow up his unexpected advantage. Instead, he stepped back, Crocea Mors falling to his side. "What's up?" he asked, his gorgeous blue eyes narrowing suspiciously.</p><p>"Um, what do you mean?" Pyrrha asked. It was the night before they would set on their first Beacon training mission, but Pyrrha had not seen any reason to let that disrupt their nightly routine too much – provided that they completed their preparations and got to bed at a reasonable hour – and so, she and Jaune were out on the grounds, training in the large open space that led towards the cliffs. The moon shone down upon them, the cracked rays of silver light bathing the world.</p><p>Jaune gave her a very knowing look. "Come on, Pyrrha; I haven't improved <em>that</em> much, and while I know you pull your punches, it's never to that extent. I nearly had you there."</p><p>For a moment, Pyrrha was tempted to tell him that he <em>was</em> getting that much better… but he would recognise that as a lie, and the last thing she wanted was for him to think that she was trying to sugar over his shortcomings. She turned away from him, feeling the hairs of her long ponytail brush against her back as it swayed gently behind her. "You're right," she murmured, her hands – still holding her weapons – falling to her side. "I am a little distracted."</p><p>Jaune sheathed his sword within his shield, though he did not yet collapse the shield itself. "What's wrong?" he asked as he took a step towards her.</p><p>"Nothing's wrong," Pyrrha insisted. "Or at least, I hope nothing's wrong." Pyrrha bit her lip. She was no good at all with this sort of thing; she'd never… in her imagination, it wasn't this difficult. "Jaune… Jaune, can we talk for a moment?"</p><p>Now, Jaune collapsed his shield back into its sheath form, the more easily to fasten it back onto his belt. "Uh, sure," he said, sounding about as nervous as Pyrrha felt. "What do you want to talk about?"</p><p>"Could we," Pyrrha glanced at him, wondering how frightened she felt. She put her weapons away; it felt ridiculous to be holding them like this as she prepared to talk about her feelings. She slung Akoúo̱ across her back and wedged Miló behind it as she said, "Could we talk about us?"</p><p>"'Us'?"</p><p>"<em>Is</em> there an us?" Pyrrha asked, her voice trembling slightly like the first shaking of the ground that presages an earthquake. Words fell out of her mouth before she could stop them. "In Mistral, when we kissed, I thought that you and I would… but then… I mean, after we came back, we… I don't know… I'm sorry, I shouldn't-"</p><p>"It's okay," Jaune said, his voice so soothing and so gentle, almost as if he were trying to calm a skittish horse. "I… I should have done something before now instead of… this, whatever you call this."</p><p><em>Should have done what?</em> It occurred to Pyrrha – it had occurred to Pyrrha, more than once – that Jaune might have discovered that there was not much to her beyond her name and her admitted good looks. She fought to resist the urge to hug herself as she turned away from him yet further. "If… if you don't… if-"</p><p>"No!" Jaune cried. "No, Pyrrha, that's not what I'm trying to say at all. I… Pyrrha, will you look at me?"</p><p>Pyrrha hesitated a moment and then turned back to face him. She looked at Jaune only to find him looking anywhere but at Pyrrha. His eyes darted from here to there like flies never settling on any surface for too long in terror of the spray or the swatter.</p><p>"I… I have seven sisters," he said. "Six of them are older than me, and three of them are married by now. Rouge and River had their husbands chosen for them by our parents. Hard-working, reliable boys who could take over the farm." He said that last with a slight but noticeable inflection in his voice, as though he were imitating someone else, perhaps his father. Pyrrha was not blind to the implication that Jaune himself was not hard-working or reliable, or at least, he had not been thought so.</p><p>
  <em>Oh, Jaune. If only they'd been able to see the you that I see.</em>
</p><p>"Saphron… left," Jaune added. "So I didn't get to see how she and Terra… the point is that I have <em>no idea</em> what I'm doing… which pretty much sums up everything about me since I got to Beacon, doesn't it?"</p><p>"Jaune-" Pyrrha began, but he cut her off before she could finish – not intentionally she thought – it was just that he had more to say and wanted to say it.</p><p>"And then," he went on. "You… you're you, Pyrrha! You're beautiful and smart and strong, and you turned your back on your mom for me! How am I supposed to… deserve that? Especially when I've got no idea where to start?"</p><p>Pyrrha was silent for a moment. Then she began to laugh. She covered her mouth, but the laughter spilled out of her mouth, flowing like water around her hand to fill the night air around them.</p><p>"Hey!" Jaune cried indignantly. "What's so funny?"</p><p>"We are!" Pyrrha exclaimed. "We've both been so worried that… a fine pair of huntsmen we'll make, afraid of our own shadows like this."</p><p>"Come on, it's not like we're scared of grimm," Jaune said. "The grimm can only eat us, after all; this might embarrass us. Or we could-"</p><p>"Let each other down?" Pyrrha asked.</p><p>A smile passed fleetingly across Jaune's face. "Something like that, yeah."</p><p>Pyrrha took a step closer to him. "Jaune, when it comes to… to what I hope this is, I don't know what I'm doing either. I've never… as a result of my position in Mistral, nobody has ever… like your parents, I think my mother would have much preferred to have arranged the engagement that she… lied about, without any reference from me."</p><p>Jaune grinned. "Before I left home, my parents were trying to set me up with Miranda Wells."</p><p>"Oh, really?" Pyrrha asked, in what she very much hoped was a playful tone. "Do you…? I mean…"</p><p>"No," Jaune replied emphatically. "She thought that… she didn't think that I was any better than any of the other guys back home. Having someone who thinks you're an unsophisticated hayseed isn't much better than someone who thinks you're completely useless." He reached out and took her hands inside his own. "You've always believed in me, Pyrrha, and you've always been there for me, and that… I don't know if I can ever show you how much you mean to me… and I guess that's why I haven't been able to do anything: because I'm terrified of it not measuring up to how I feel about you or what you deserve." He paused and took a deep breath. "But… but if we want this to go anywhere then… then maybe we need to both let go of our fears… and our expectations and just… take things as they go." He took another deep breath and squeezed both Pyrrha's hands affectionately. "Pyrrha Nikos, when we get back from this mission, would you like to go… is there somewhere that you'd like to go? With me, I mean?"</p><p>Pyrrha smiled up at him. "I would love to go anywhere with you, Jaune," she whispered.</p><p>"That," Jaune said with evident relief, "is good to hear."</p><p>And then he kissed her, and the question of where, precisely, they would go became of no import at all to Pyrrha, because where they were, right here and now, was wonderful enough.</p><p>"That," she said, gasping for breath a little once it was over and Jaune took a step back. "That was… that… is probably enough for tonight." If she hadn't been able to focus properly before, she certainly wasn't going to be able to now. "We should head back."</p><p>"Sure," Jaune agreed. Pyrrha noted – with more than a hint of restrained glee – that he only let go of one hand. He kept hold of the other as they began to walk side by side back to the dorm room.</p><p>It was all she could do not to keep looking down at their held hands to make sure it was really happening.</p><p>"So," Jaune continued. "Our mission starts tomorrow."</p><p>"Indeed," Pyrrha murmured with a slight sigh as the discussion turned to more prosaic topics. "Our second official mission. I'm glad that we've moved to sanctioned missions instead of just getting ourselves involved in situations."</p><p>"Well," Jaune replied, "how much the train job coming back is official is… kind of up for debate."</p><p>"Yes, I suppose you're right," Pyrrha admitted. "How do you feel?"</p><p>"Honestly?"</p><p>"You can always be honest with me," Pyrrha declared. "Please… I never want you to think otherwise."</p><p>Jaune was silent for a moment. "If it was just the training mission that we were given, I wouldn't be worried at all," he said. "Protecting some guys from the grimm as they repair the railroad line, that's fine. We can handle the grimm. We've proven that, in practice and in Mistral." He grinned. "Even I can take care of an ursa now."</p><p>"You certainly can," Pyrrha agreed.</p><p>"But… the other stuff," Jaune continued. "The White Fang, Torchwick… that worries me, a little bit."</p><p>"I see," Pyrrha said softly. "You're thinking about what happened to Ruby?"</p><p>"I'm thinking about what could happen to all of us," Jaune said. "What if that Adam guy shows up? What if there are others in the White Fang who are as strong as he is? What if you get hurt this time, and I don't have enough aura left to-"</p><p>"Jaune, stop," Pyrrha insisted, coming to a halt even as she bade him quiet. "I understand, I…" she hesitated, but having urged him to be honest with her, she could hardly refuse him the same respect, could she? "I'm worried too. Down at the docks was my first time fighting someone who was trying to kill me. It's part of the life of a huntress, I know that, but that doesn't mean that I enjoyed it or that I relish the prospect of a repeat." She closed her eyes for a moment. "The grimm are creatures of darkness driven by instinct – however malevolent – to snuff out the light. That makes them dangerous, but it also makes them predictable; we can understand how they behave and, with that understanding, make them our prey. But the White Fang, the criminal Torchwick, these are people like us who have chosen a path of hatred, of violence towards their fellow men, who seek to take life, knowing that it's wrong. I… I find it easier to understand the grimm. I find it safer to understand the grimm."</p><p>"I know," Jaune said. "I can't imagine how someone could ruin lives, could take lives, with a smile on their face. I'm not sure that I want to know how they do it."</p><p><em>I'm not sure that I want either of us to know either,</em> Pyrrha thought. "The thought that brings me comfort," she said, "is that the risks to us are no greater fighting the White Fang than fighting the grimm. I do not believe that they have a whole army as skilled as this Adam Taurus that hurt Ruby."</p><p>"But he still hurt Ruby-"</p><p>"And for that, he will pay, if our paths cross in battle," Pyrrha declared. He had gotten away from Rainbow Dash, but he would <em>not</em> get away from her if destiny brought the two of them together; for matter, she would <em>make </em>it her destiny to come to grips with him if he showed himself in this battle to come.</p><p>"Be careful," Jaune urged. "I… I guess I'm just thinking about our photo on the wall of Benni Havens'; I don't… I don't want our smiles to die, not yet."</p><p>"Nor do I," Pyrrha assured him. "Nor will they. I wish that the grimm were the only danger that we had to be concerned with, but the White Fang are the danger to Vale, and we cannot turn away from that. But we are strong enough to overcome this challenge."</p><p>Jaune nodded and seemed to try and make his tone more resolute. "Right," he said. "Strong enough."</p><p>"Strong enough."</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Bound for Glory</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Team SAPR set off on their mission.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Bound for Glory</p><p> </p><p>"Has everybody got everything?" Sunset asked as she slung her rifle over one shoulder and her pack over the other.</p><p>Pyrrha slung her shield across her back and sheathed Miló behind it. "I'm ready," she said.</p><p>"I think we're all ready," Jaune said. "As ready as we'll ever be, at least."</p><p>“Good to hear,” Sunset said. “Now-” she stopped abruptly, blinking in surprise. “What is that?”</p><p>Jaune frowned. “What’s what?”</p><p>“That!” Sunset said, clicking her fingers as she pointed at Jaune, her ears pricking up. “What’s that slung across your back?”</p><p>“Oh, this?” Jaune asked, one hand rising to touch the strap of the guitar slung across his back. “It’s my guitar.”</p><p>Sunset stared at him. “You’re… since when have you had a guitar?”</p><p>Jaune’s brow crinkled yet further in puzzlement. “Sunset, come on, I’ve always had this.”</p><p>“No, no you haven’t,” Sunset replied. “I have never seen that until this morning.”</p><p>“Well… no offence, Sunset, but you are kind of self-absorbed,” Jaune said.</p><p>“Self-absorbed, maybe, but not blind!” Sunset snapped. “Where have you been hiding that, eh?”</p><p>“I haven’t been hiding it,” Jaune replied. “Ruby, Pyrrha, you remember my guitar, don’t you?”</p><p>“I remember,” Ruby said.</p><p>“You’re very talented,” Pyrrha added.</p><p>Sunset’s gaze flickered from Pyrrha to Jaune to Ruby and then back again. She shook her head. “Am I being angel streeted or something? I have never seen that in all the time I’ve known you.”</p><p>“Sorry,” Jaune said, “but it’s still my guitar.”</p><p>Sunset hesitated for a moment, then threw up her hands in despair. “You know what? Never mind. But you’d better be able to play it well.”</p><p>“He really can,” Pyrrha assured her.</p><p>“You would say that, wouldn’t you?” Sunset asked fondly.</p><p>“I…” Pyrrha hesitated. She found herself struggling to restrain herself. “Well… perhaps,” she admitted. It wasn’t like Jaune’s skill as a huntsman, after all. She wouldn’t lie to him about that, wouldn’t pretend that he was doing better than he was, wouldn’t coddle him from the reality of his situation. But this was different; there would be no harm in telling her boyfriend that he was a slightly better musician than he was.</p><p>
  <em>My boyfriend. I have a boyfriend! </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I have a wonderful, kind, brave boyfriend, and he sees me for who I really am.</em>
</p><p>Words could scarcely express how happy she felt. And not just because of her relationship, although that was undoubtedly part of it, and a substantial part too. She had a boyfriend and two of the best friends she could have wished for. Pyrrha couldn't think of any group of people she felt so...so comfortable around as she did around these three. She felt no concern within her as to how they would react to her or what they wanted from her or whether they were wearing masks around her to hide themselves and be what they thought she wanted them to be. There was no trace of sycophancy from them, none at all; there was no pedestal in this room. And for that, she would never cease to be grateful.</p><p>She'd never felt this way before, certainly not since her father passed away and never with her mother that she could remember, nor with anyone else. It was, if not quite a unique experience for her, then at the very least so close as to make little difference. </p><p>She went on, “But it happens to be true, doesn’t it Ruby?”</p><p>“Jaune’s really good,” Ruby agreed.</p><p>“I wouldn’t know, because apparently all of my memories of that thing have been stolen!” Sunset snapped. “But… okay, listen up." She paused and cleared her throat with a cough into one hand. She looked momentarily self-conscious, standing in front of the rest of them after having drawn their attention, but then she recovered her usual air of unassailable confidence as she resumed speaking.</p><p>"On the day after initiation, when I became the leader of this team, it became clear to me that we would have eyes upon us," Sunset said. "Eyes on Pyrrha, waiting expectantly for her to fulfil the potential promised by her early successes."</p><p>Pyrrha's chin dipped, almost involuntarily, at the reminder.</p><p>"Eyes on Ruby, to see if she really deserved her early admission into Beacon," Sunset said. "Eyes on me, if not as many as I might have liked and not for the reasons that I would have chosen: to see if a faunus deserved to lead a team as good as this one. But now we all have eyes on us, eyes not fixed on any one of us but on all four of us. Eyes watching to see if we can get the job done. Eyes watching to see if we can bring down the White Fang. Eyes watching to see if we are so talented as our membership ought by all rights to make us. Eyes watching to see what we do next.</p><p>"This is Team Sapphire's<em>…</em>” She paused and grinned at Ruby. “This is Team Sapphire’s <em>first</em> official mission. Assigned to us by the authorities here at Beacon.”</p><p>“Told you!” Ruby declared.</p><p>Sunset didn’t acknowledge her beyond the grin of her face growing just a little broader. “<em>We</em> were chosen for this, not Iron, not Wisteria, but us: Sapphire.” Sunset paused for breath. "There's a bit of a downside to having hype around you, which I suspect that some of you know already." She glanced at Pyrrha for a moment. "You have to live up to it again and again. But this is the first time. So don't let me down, okay, because... because I promise that I don't intend to let you down."</p><p>Jaune nodded. "We won't let ourselves down either."</p><p>"Yeah!" Ruby said as she punched the air. "Let's go save the world and whoop some butt!"</p><p>Any world saving, or indeed butt-whooping, was preemptively interrupted by all four of their scrolls going off at once.</p><p>The caller turned out, upon answering, to be Yang, her face filling up one corner of Pyrrha's screen as the faces of Ruby, Jaune, and Sunset appeared in three other windows around it.</p><p>"Yang?" Ruby asked, her voice echoing as it emerged out of the three other scrolls in the room before Sunset, Jaune, and Pyrrha all put themselves on mute. Pyrrha found Jaune and herself both moving a little closer to Ruby, so that if they needed to speak, their voices would carry to Ruby's scroll.</p><p>Yang's smile was a little tight and seemed a little forced to Pyrrha; she fancied that she was a good judge of such things, having worn plenty of fake smiles over the course of her life. "Hey, Ruby," she said. "Hey, guys. Good luck on your mission today. Take care of one another."</p><p>"We will," Jaune assured her. "Are you that worried that you had to check up on us?"</p><p>"She's not checking up on us; she's worried about something," Sunset said bluntly.</p><p>"Sunset," Pyrrha murmured reproachfully.</p><p>"I'm sorry, but it's written on your face," Sunset said to Yang.</p><p><em>That doesn't mean you should draw attention to it,</em> Pyrrha thought.</p><p>"Yang?" Ruby repeated. "What's up?"</p><p>"Nothing," Yang said quickly. "Well… that is…" She hesitated. "I didn't mention this last night, and I wasn't sure if I ought to bring it up, but… Ruby, do you remember when Raven appeared in the courtyard? Just before semester started?"</p><p>Pyrrha found that her lips were pursing almost despite herself. She couldn't imagine what it must have been like for Yang to feel abandoned by her mother, to know that your mother was a deserter, that most wretched of men. Her inability to imagine it was so complete that she did not dare to speak of it, and yet, it seemed that her disapproval was making itself known upon her face regardless. She controlled herself, assuming with a practiced ease the mask that she had worn for so long, subsuming Pyrrha Nikos and her opinions beneath the visage of the Invincible Girl, a doll without thoughts or hopes of her own who merely reflected others hopes and dreams back at them.</p><p>"Sure," Ruby said cautiously. "I remember."</p><p>"She said that this is how it would start," Yang murmured, "with you getting training missions."</p><p>"<em>Extra</em> training missions," Ruby reminded Yang. "She said we'd get <em>extra</em> missions."</p><p><em>Technically, one might say that we </em>are<em> getting an extra mission,</em> Pyrrha thought, <em>if one knew about our return plans.</em></p><p>"Okay, but it's still really early in the semester; there's plenty of time for you to get 'extra' missions," Yang pointed out.</p><p>"Yeah, but you got a mission even before we did," Ruby reminded her. Her tone was playful as she said, "So maybe you're the one that Professor Ozpin is taking a special interest in."</p><p>Sunset snorted. "There's nothing special about Team Iron."</p><p>"I heard that, Sunset," Yang declared. "Listen, I… I know that it's Raven and that I probably shouldn't listen to her, but I was awake half the night thinking about this stuff, and I wouldn't feel right if I didn't remind you. I don't know what it means, but… be careful out there, okay? All of you, but especially you."</p><p>Ruby rolled her eyes. "We'll be fine, Yang. We'll protect each other."</p><p>"You do that," Yang told her. "You… I'll see you when you get back." She hung up.</p><p>"Do you… do you think we should have told her?" Ruby said, as she put away her scroll. "About, you know, the White Fang and stuff?"</p><p>"You're her sister; how do you think she would have taken it?" Sunset replied.</p><p>"Uh..."</p><p>"That's what I thought," Sunset said. "What your sister doesn't find out until after the fact won't hurt her."</p><p>"Will it hurt us when she does find out?" Jaune asked. He hesitated for a moment. "What do you think it means? What she said about her…” – he hesitated with a glance at Ruby – “about Raven and everything?"</p><p>Pyrrha wanted to tell Jaune to pay it no mind. Professor Ozpin was both formidable in accomplishment and impeccable in character; his deeds as a huntsman spoke for themselves, as did the preeminence amongst the four academies which Beacon Academy had attained under his stewardship. Meanwhile, neither vice nor scandal marred the headmaster's reputation: he did not gamble, philander, or drink to excess; in all his years as headmaster, there had never been the slightest suggestion that he was in any way abusing the students under his care. Even Pyrrha's mother respected him, and that was no small accomplishment. He was a marble man, unblemished by any merely human imperfection.</p><p>Pyrrha couldn't imagine why Professor Ozpin might bear any malicious intent towards them. Nor could she imagine why such malice – if it existed – would express itself in offering them convenient missions. She couldn't conceive of what Professor Ozpin might have to gain from manipulating them in any way. Quite apart from any of that, however... Pyrrha didn't want it to be true. She didn't want to live in a world where authority figures were unworthy of the public trust or of her own faith, where they had ulterior motives or worked towards shadowy and unseen ends.</p><p>Pyrrha looked at Sunset, who had made it abundantly clear how much she disagreed with Pyrrha upon this topic; Sunset – Pyrrha meant no offence to say or think so – seemed as a rule a little more inclined to distrust than Pyrrha herself.</p><p>But all Sunset said was, "At the moment, I'm not inclined to look too closely at it. I don't like it, and you all know that, and I'm inclined to agree with Raven as a general point, but for now... this mission is convenient for our purposes, and it is waiting for us." She started towards the door. "Destiny is driving us on. We shouldn't keep her waiting."</p><p>But before they could leave the dorm room, they were, again, interrupted; this time it was not the buzzing of a scroll but a knocking on the door which heralded this new delay. Sunset huffed and had a slight look of irritation on her face as she opened the door to reveal Cinder Fall upon the other side, wearing a fiery red dress with golden thread upon the sleeves and trimming the neckline that only added to the impression of fire.</p><p>A fire that melted Sunset's slightly testy look and burnt a smile there instead. "Cinder!" she cried. "What are you doing here?"</p><p>Cinder flashed a smile as she swept into the room. "What do you think I'm doing, Sunset? I'm here to say goodbye and <em>bon chance</em>." She managed to keep her smile in place even as she contrived to look playfully offended. "Why, you didn't think I'd let you leave without a word of farewell, did you? Or were you hoping to sneak out without seeing me?"</p><p>"You've caught me there," Sunset said, holding up her hands in mock admission. "And it almost worked; a couple of minutes later and you would have missed us."</p><p>"Lucky me," Cinder said. "Although not as lucky as you, getting entrusted with a mission earlier than practically anyone else."</p><p>Sunset didn’t bother to conceal her smugness. "Talent like ours is hard to ignore, I suppose."</p><p>Cinder chuckled. "Indeed," she agreed. "You're so greedy, Sunset, to monopolise all of the talent like this." She sighed, as she turned away from Sunset to look at the other three members of Team SAPR. "Oh, if only you had chosen Haven over Beacon, Pyrrha; what a killer combination we might have been."</p><p>Pyrrha put on the kind of smile that an astute observer of her – or a stalker – would have recognised from a hundred pre-match press conferences and publicity appearances. "I mean no offence, but I'm very happy where I am."</p><p>"Well, of course you are," Cinder said. "You've found your fairy tale ending, and you're poised to give Sunset hers as well. Meanwhile, I must battle on with my crew of ambitious mediocrities. Unfortunately, the talents of Mercury and Lightning are far exceeded by their opinions of themselves; why Mercury is even talking about fighting you, Pyrrha; please go easy on him." Her smouldering eyes flickered towards Jaune. "Although I suppose you're used to having to do that."</p><p>Pyrrha's eyes narrowed. "I'm afraid I always try my hardest in the arena," she said.</p><p>"I never meant to insult you by suggesting otherwise," Cinder assured her. She turned away from Pyrrha and back to Sunset. "Still, when you're hip deep in grimm and covering yourselves in guts and glory in equal measure, think of me, stuck in Professor Port's class."</p><p>Sunset snorted. "Sure, I'll think of you. With pity."</p><p>Cinder chuckled. "It must be nice having Professor Ozpin on your side." She glanced at Pyrrha over her shoulder. "Although, I suppose some of you must be more used to that than others."</p><p>Pyrrha pursed her lips together. Perhaps she was being oversensitive, but she couldn't help but take that as an insult. She wasn't a complete stranger to such things: amongst the crowds of fans and sycophants, there had always been a few who resented her celebrity or her perceived success and who alleged that she used both to get her own way, as though she enjoyed any of it. It was unfortunate that Cinder Fall was one of them, if only because Sunset seemed to like her, but she would survive her envy as she had survived the jealousy of all the rest.</p><p>"Everything we get," Sunset said as she took Cinder's hand, "we earn by our skill."</p><p>"Skill you have in abundance, of course," Cinder said smoothly, "but I hope you don't deny that you've enjoyed a measure of good fortune. You were very lucky in the composition of your team."</p><p>Sunset shrugged. "Fate <em>did</em> smile upon us, I suppose."</p><p>Cinder chuckled. "And I advise you to appreciate your good fortune while it lasts. You never know when it might just... run out."</p><hr/><p>The City of Vale had many train stations, from the gothic grandeur of King's Muster – the first or final stop, depending on how you looked at it, of trains making the westward journey all the way to Vacuo – to the hypermodern, glass and steel construction of Liver Bird Street from whence the rails ran east towards the mountains; travel to the north was principally served by Gateway Station, for passenger travel at least. The Cold Harbour route, however, was not a passenger route but a cargo one, and thus, the trains ran out of a rather dirty, industrial rail yard not far from the outskirts of the city. At present, it was quiet, with very little evidence of any activity as Team SAPR darted between stationary and unattended trucks, stepped over spurs of track left unattended on the concrete, or passed crates left mouldering in the eaves of warehouses while larger containers sat shrouded in shadow further in. The only sign of real activity was taking place around a single train – five cars attached to a single squat, almost bullet-shaped black engine – that sat purring softly as it faced northward. A group of labourers, most of them faunus, wearing red hi-vis jackets, were loading the rear two cars with equipment while a smaller cluster of other men, most of them human, in blue vests and orange hard hats, watched without offering any assistance.</p><p>"I guess that must be our train," Sunset said, as she led the way towards it.</p><p>One of the men watching the loading of the train spotted them coming and nudged a heavyset man in a blue hi-vis jacket before pointing out the team of huntresses. Said fellow – the heavyset one, and when he turned around, Pyrrha could see that he had stubble covering his face – yelled for the loading crew to keep working before he stomped across the concrete of the rail yard towards team SAPR.</p><p>"You the huntsmen?" he demanded.</p><p>Pyrrha, Jaune, and Ruby all stopped, leaving Sunset to close the distance to this man, who was presumably some kind of foreman or supervisor. Sunset held out her hand. "Sunset Shimmer, leader of Team Sapphire."</p><p>"'Leader'?" he said. "That some kind of affirmative action thing?"</p><p>Jaune and Ruby winced; Pyrrha struggled to keep the disdain off her face. <em>Even if you think such a thing, have the decency to keep it to yourself.</em></p><p>"No," Sunset said coldly as she withdrew her hand. "It's a quality thing. Trust me, we're the team to keep you safe on this job."</p><p>“Trust you?” the foreman said. “You’re younger than my two kids, and I wouldn’t trust them to water my plants.”</p><p>Pyrrha could only imagine the look on Sunset’s face or the struggle that her friend must be undergoing to keep her cool in this situation. <em>If there’s one aspect of leadership that Sunset is lacking, it's diplomacy; I’m not sure how long she can hold her temper in check.</em></p><p>Of course, one of the reasons for that was that Sunset knew exactly who she was and what she was worth; no matter what, she was always resolutely, gloriously herself. Pyrrha envied that about her. She envied it very much. </p><p>“Well, we’re not your kids,” Sunset said in a voice that sounded close to seething. “Look, just because we’re not old, we are perfectly-”</p><p>“Hey, ain’t you Pyrrha Nikos?” one of the other men – the ones standing around watching the loading of the train, not the ones loading it – asked her suddenly, pointing his finger in Pyrrha’s direction.</p><p>“Of course they recognise you.” Sunset looked at her. She didn’t look particularly impressed. </p><p>Pyrrha took a step forward. “Yes,” she said. “I’m Pyrrha Nikos.”</p><p>“We’ll be fine, boss,” the man who had recognised her said. “Seriously, you never heard of this chick? Last Mistral tournament, I bet my kid’s whole college fund on Arslan Altan to win the final, but she kicked her ass in, like, thirty seconds flat. I thought my wife was gonna kill me when she found out.”</p><p>“I’m sorry!” Pyrrha said automatically before she noticed Sunset giving her a look that suggested she had nothing to be sorry about. Except she had, really. It might not have been intentional, but a young man or woman’s dreams had been crushed because of her – and she wasn’t talking about Arslan either.</p><p>“Ah, so that’s why you slept on my couch for two months?” the foreman asked. He shook his head. “Still, I guess if he says you’re okay, you’re okay. You really think you can keep my boys alive in that wood?”</p><p>“I guarantee it,” Sunset said.</p><p>“You’d better,” he said. He half turned away from her and gestured at the train cars. “The engine’s up front. It’s all automatic, so no crew, but you can link up your scroll to get control over the defences. Front car is for you, the two after that are for my guys to sleep in, the last two are for our gear; don’t touch our stuff and don’t bother us when we’re working. Name’s Red, this is my crew.” He paused. “What did you say your name was again?”</p><p>“Sunset Shimmer,” Sunset repeated. “That’s Ruby Rose, Jaune Arc, and Pyrrha Nikos is the celebrity.”</p><p>Red nodded casually. “Nice to meet you. Get on board; we’re heading out as soon as these lazy asses finish loading up the train. Move it, people!”</p><p>“Do you need any help with the loading?” Pyrrha asked. She wouldn’t use her semblance to make the job as easy as she could have done – her desire to retain her trump card outweighed her desire to be helpful, as selfish as it might be – but she was willing to do what she could with the strength that aura granted her.</p><p>“No,” Sunset said firmly. “They don’t.”</p><p>“Sunset,” Pyrrha began, “if we can be of assistance-”</p><p>“We are here to protect you,” Sunset declared. “We are here to keep you alive if the grimm show up. We are <em>not</em> here on a work placement scheme; we are not here to make your jobs easier; we are not here to do extra labour for you. Do I make myself clear?”</p><p>“Hey, you don’t tell me how to do my job, I won’t tell you how to do yours,” Red said. “You get paid to fight; these guys get paid to work. So hop to it!” he shouted at them.</p><p>“Actually,” Jaune murmured, “we’re not getting paid for this.”</p><p>“Why am I not surprised? That’s probably why you got the job,” Red muttered.</p><p>“We got the job because we’re good at what we do!” Sunset snapped. She inhaled deeply, her eyes closing. When she opened them again, she seemed – and Pyrrha was quite certain that she only <em>seemed</em> that way – to have calmed down. “Anyway, the yard’s quieter than I expected,” Sunset said.</p><p>Red said, “There ain’t no trains moving until we get that rail line repaired, and until there are trains moving, there ain’t no need for the yard to move; all the other guys got sent home on no pay until we mend the railroad, so you see why this job is important, right?”</p><p>“Sure,” Sunset said. “Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Hey, gambling man!”</p><p>The man who had recognised Pyrrha looked guilty to be singled out. “Yeah?”</p><p>“They got odds up for the Vytal Festival yet?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“Uh… yeah.”</p><p>“What are the odds of Team Sapphire to win?”</p><p>“Sunset,” Pyrrha murmured.</p><p>“I just want to know,” Sunset said softly.</p><p>The man who had lost a shirt on Pyrrha’s opponent got out his scroll and began to scroll through a website of some kind. “How do you spell Sapphire?”</p><p>“S-A-P-R,” Sunset informed.</p><p>“Nine to one,” the man said incredulously. “Wow, those are seriously good odds before the tournament even starts. Must be 'cause you’ve got Nikos.”</p><p>“Put a bet on us,” Sunset said with a grin on her face, “because those odds are going to shorten fast once the matches start, I guarantee it.”</p><hr/><p>They kept watch on the roof of the train in staged shifts, so that the last half of each person's shift would overlap with the first half of another's and so on.</p><p>What this meant in practice was that at the moment, Jaune and Ruby were up on the roof of the train while Pyrrha was down below with Sunset. The train car that they were using as their, for want of a better word, living space during the trip north to the sight of the breakage was bare, without so much as an empty crate to sit on. It was also dark, with only a red light to illuminate the interior, although Jaune had brought a lamp of his own which they had set up in one corner, providing a little more light to see by. Outside, it had gotten dark, but Pyrrha could only tell that by looking upwards at the hatch leading onto the roof, because for the rest, their compartment was completely sealed with the door shut. </p><p>Beneath their feet, the train rolled onwards, rattling upon the rails as it was borne along. </p><p>Sunset had her rifle propped up in the corner, not far from Jaune’s lamp, and her black sword out as she practiced her stances. She flowed like water from one position to the other as Pyrrha watched her.</p><p>“Like this?” Sunset said, moving from a high guard to a downward slashing stroke.</p><p>“Yes, but remember to twist your foot for balance,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>“Right,” Sunset said, and she did it again.</p><p>“Better,” Pyrrha said. “Now, take a break.”</p><p>“I don’t need one.”</p><p>“Yes, you do,” Pyrrha replied. “It doesn’t have to be for very long.”</p><p>Sunset huffed impatiently, but she sheathed her sword across her back nonetheless. “I suppose you’ll be doing this with Jaune when he comes down here.”</p><p>Pyrrha’s lips twitched. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose I will.”</p><p>“Don’t,” Sunset said.</p><p>Pyrrha blinked in surprise. “Don’t what?”</p><p>“Don’t be so… so happy,” Sunset said. “Do you know how hard it is to watch you two sometimes? You’re so… <em>happy!</em>”</p><p>“Do you really think so?”</p><p>Sunset frowned. “Don’t you feel happy?”</p><p>“Yes, of course,” Pyrrha murmured. “Although… until we talked again last night, I wasn’t sure that… I mean, ever since we came back from Mistral…”</p><p>“Nothing had happened?”</p><p>“Yes,” Pyrrha admitted. “I suppose you could put it like that.”</p><p>“And what did last night yield up?”</p><p>“We’re going out!” Pyrrha cried, bouncing for joy on the balls of her feet.</p><p>“Good for you. Out where?”</p><p>Pyrrha hesitated. “We haven’t decided yet.”</p><p>Sunset rolled her eyes. “You two are impossible.”</p><p>“We’re taking things as they come,” Pyrrha explained defensively. “I think it’s rather exciting.”</p><p>“'Exciting' isn’t the word I’d use for it,” Sunset declared. “Although I suppose it is rather adorable. Like putting two kittens in the same room together.”</p><p>“As long as we are happy, does that matter?” Pyrrha asked. “Does it… does it really bother you?”</p><p>“No,” Sunset said quickly. “It just… it reminds me a little of what I had. And what I lost.”</p><p>Pyrrha’s brow furrowed. “Have you ever… have you considered that… perhaps you and Flash could-”</p><p>“No,” Sunset said quickly.</p><p>“Why not?” Pyrrha asked. “I don’t need to be the most perceptive girl in the world to know that you still care about him.”</p><p>“He couldn’t handle me back then, what makes you think he’d be able to handle me now that I’m so much more awesome?” Sunset demanded. “And besides, I’m not going to beg a racist to take me back, and even if I… even if I do… it’s not going to happen. And besides, he’s on a team with <em>Weiss Schnee</em>. How am I supposed to compete with the beautiful, talented, insanely rich heiress to the Schnee Dust Company?”</p><p>“I did,” Pyrrha reminded her.</p><p>“Oh, so the answer to ‘how do I compete?’ is to be a beautiful, talented, slightly-less insanely rich Mistralian princess who is also an international celebrity,” Sunset said. “Perhaps I should get your mother to adopt me.” She grinned. “We could be sisters.”</p><p>Pyrrha chuckled but could not quite keep the sigh out of her voice as she said, “Mother probably would adopt you, if you asked her to.” <em>You are just the kind of daughter she wanted, after all.</em></p><p>“Have you spoken to her yet?”</p><p>Pyrrha was much more open about her sighing now. “No,” she said. “And I think you knew that.”</p><p>“I don’t follow you around every minute of every day; you could have done it while I wasn’t around.”</p><p>“But I didn’t,” Pyrrha murmured.</p><p>“You should.”</p><p>“She lied, Sunset,” Pyrrha declared. “She lied to Jaune for no other reason than to deny me happiness.”</p><p>“That’s not actually why she did it,” Sunset replied. “Your mother is many things, but she is not a sadist.”</p><p>“I know that my mother made a good impression on you, but please don’t act as though you know her as well as I do,” Pyrrha whispered. “I am the one who grew up with her.”</p><p>Sunset folded her arms across her chest. “Are you honestly going to stand there and tell me that you think your mother is sadistic?”</p><p>Pyrrha could not meet Sunset’s gaze. “No,” she admitted after a moment, as she looked away at the side of the train car. “But she has never held my happiness as her greatest concern.”</p><p>“Your mother… has a different sense of what will make you happy than you do,” Sunset conceded.</p><p>Pyrrha shook her head. “How is it that you can accuse Professor Ozpin of all manner of villainy on the flimsiest of foundations and yet with equal zeal defend my mother from something that is true beyond doubt?”</p><p>“Because your mother gives me nice things,” Sunset said bluntly.</p><p>Pyrrha froze, genuinely uncertain as to whether or not Sunset was joking. “You… you’re not serious?”</p><p>“Of course I’m not serious,” Sunset snapped. “Were you unsure about that?”</p><p>“No, of course not,” Pyrrha lied and hoped it was convincing.</p><p>“The motives of Professor Ozpin are yet opaque to me,” Sunset declared. “I don’t know what he wants or what he’s up to, and that bothers me. I will allow him to make use of us while it serves our needs and wants and purposes, but that doesn’t mean that it stops concerning me. I know exactly what your mother wants: she wants what’s best for you.”</p><p>“What she believes is best for me,” Pyrrha corrected. “As you pointed out, her opinions differ from mine quite a bit on some subjects.”</p><p>“I’m not telling you to let her control your life,” Sunset said. “She’s on the other side of the world from us now; she can’t make you break up with Jaune. She hasn’t even cut you off. What harm is there in letting her hear your voice?”</p><p>“What would we say to one another if I did?” Pyrrha asked.</p><p>Sunset’s mouth opened, but no words emerged. “I… I told your mother that you would forgive her, such was the generosity in your heart,” she said, after a moment. “I would rather not be proved a fool.”</p><p>“I… may, in time,” Pyrrha allowed. “But… at the moment, we should probably get back to training.”</p><p>“Sure,” Sunset agreed, and she raised her sword once more to resume the lesson.</p><p>And the train rumbled on.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. What Matters</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Team SAPR keep watch over the repairs to the railway line.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>What Matters</p><p> </p><p>They had arrived at the site of the break in the railway line, and now, the railwaymen were doing a whole load of stuff that Ruby wouldn't even pretend to understand in order to get it fixed again.</p><p>Of course, Ruby didn't actually need to understand any of what was going on here: getting the railway back up and running was their job; all that she needed to do was take care of any grimm that might happen to show up.</p><p>At least that was her only job since Sunset had made it clear to Red that Team SAPR was not going to be helping out with any of the manual labour. Sunset's reasons for the young huntsmen standing aloof from the work made sense, but Ruby couldn't help but wonder if she would have been nicer about it if Red hadn't mentioned affirmative action when they first met.</p><p>Sunset really knew how to hold onto a grievance.</p><p>Ruby glanced at her team leader. Together, they stood on the roof of the railway carriage, from where they could see out on either side of them without having their view obstructed by anything but the trees with their scarlet leaves. Although the forest had been cleared on either side of the railway, it hadn't been cleared <em>very far </em>on either side of the railway, and the trees pressed so thickly together that Ruby couldn't see any great distance into them. That was why Pyrrha had taken Jaune on patrol through the outskirts of the forest, so that if there were any grimm around, they'd see them before they came out of the trees, in which case they'd be really close. Too close for the comfort of the railwaymen, probably.</p><p>Ruby thought of Pyrrha alone with Jaune, and she… she felt sad. </p><p>She wasn’t jealous. Pyrrha was the kindest, sweetest person she knew, and Ruby had a sneaking suspicion that if she told the taller redhead how she felt about Jaune, then Pyrrha would step aside for her with profuse apologies because she would rather suffer sadness on her own account than make Ruby sad. </p><p>Which, of course, was precisely the reason why Ruby wouldn’t say anything to Pyrrha about it, because Pyrrha deserved the chance to be happy. Jaune had chosen her, and no amount of Pyrrha attempting to take a step back would change his mind and make him suddenly see Ruby in a different light. </p><p>But all the same, it made her a little… disappointed. </p><p>"Hey, Sunset?"</p><p>"Hmm?" Sunset murmured as her eyes swept the eaves of the forest to their right.</p><p>"How do you…?” Ruby trailed off. She wasn’t entirely sure what she had meant to ask Sunset. <em>How do I get over someone?</em> How was she supposed to ask that when Sunset, well, no offence to Sunset, but it was pretty clear even to Ruby that Sunset wasn’t over Flash yet. <em>How do I stop feeling this way? Is it okay for me to feel this way? Just what was I planning to ask anyway?</em> “Nothing,” she said softly.</p><p>"'Nothing,' huh? You hide it very well," Sunset observed.</p><p>"Huh?"</p><p>"Your feelings," Sunset explained. "You hide them very well: Jaune probably has no idea that it still bothers you; Pyrrha has no idea at all that you ever felt… even I can rarely tell that you're still not over him."</p><p>Ruby considered denying it, but what would have been the point? Sunset already knew the truth, and it wasn't as though Jaune or Pyrrha were in a position to overhear her. "Does it make me a terrible person?" she asked quietly.</p><p>Sunset snorted. "Do you really think it's possible for you to be a terrible person?"</p><p>"It's not right, is it?" Ruby asked. "For me to still… you know."</p><p>"It might not be right," Sunset allowed, "but it is normal. She has something that you want, and you resent the fact."</p><p>“'Resent the…'? What is it that you think I’m feeling right now?” Ruby demanded, her eyes narrowing.</p><p>“Jealousy, of Pyrrha,” Sunset said, looking at Ruby as though the answer to that should have been obvious.</p><p>“Jealous?” Ruby repeated. “I’m not jealous? Why would you think I was jealous?”</p><p>“Because you said-”</p><p>“I was talking about the fact that I still like Jaune!” Ruby cried. “I’m not jealous of Pyrrha; she’s my friend.”</p><p>“So?”</p><p>“Well, how could I be Pyrrha’s friend if I was jealous of her?”</p><p>“I sincerely hope that it's possible to be Pyrrha's friend and to be jealous of her,” Sunset replied.</p><p>"Why?" Ruby asked.</p><p>Sunset turned away from the forest long enough to look down at Ruby. Her ears were perked up, her tail swishing from side to side as she regarded Ruby with an expression that suggested the answer to that ought to have been obvious.</p><p>Ruby's silver eyes widened. "Still?"</p><p>Sunset nodded.</p><p>"But I thought you got over that months ago!" Ruby exclaimed.</p><p>"No, I came to see a different side of Pyrrha months ago," Sunset corrected, "but nevertheless, she continues to be… to put it bluntly, she continues to be all of the things that I envied and detested in equal measure in the first place, and although my detestation had subsided… it was <em>her </em>victory that was spoken of in Mistral, though we were all there; we were all there, but all the credit accrued solely to Pyrrha Nikos, whose triumph heralded the Miracle of Mistral. And it was the same story at the docks! I would need a heart of marble not to be moved to envy by such things." She paused. "I didn't stop feeling all envy; I just exercise such self-control over it that Pyrrha doesn't realise. She is what she is, and what she is is…wonderful. Anything ugly that I can't help but feel about that… she doesn't need to see it, and the world doesn't need to know it's there. I am the mistress of my base emotions, not the other way around." She turned around so that she was facing the other direction, looking into the other side of the wood. "For much the same reason," she added, "I can't really give you advice on how to get over a guy, either."</p><p>"Is that because it can't be done?" Ruby asked. "Or because you don't want to?"</p><p>Sunset's tail stopped moving. Her ears flattened on top of her head. Her body, back turned to Ruby, became very still. "If any other little twerp asked me that, I'd throw them off something very high," she declared.</p><p>Ruby couldn't help but chuckle. "It's a good thing I'm not anybody else, then, isn't it?" she asked. "I trust you, Sunset."</p><p>"I'm starting to wish you didn't, if you're going to abuse my affection to ask stupid questions like that," Sunset growled.</p><p>"Sorry," Ruby murmured with a wince. "It's just that… I want to know if this is going to go away or if I’m going to become… become…"</p><p>"Say it," Sunset demanded. "You've come this far, you might as well complete your sentence."</p><p>"Become… like you," Ruby finished.</p><p>"Bitter?"</p><p>"Sad all the time," Ruby corrected her gently. "It hurts you to see him with Weiss, doesn't it?"</p><p>"He's not <em>with</em> Weiss yet, thank goodness," Sunset replied. "They are, as Nora would say, not together-together. Although the fact that I think he'd like to be is bad enough. What's worse is that I can't see any reason why she wouldn't want to be with him, short of the… preferential. After all, he's so… what girl wouldn't want him?"</p><p>Ruby frowned. "You love him, don't you?"</p><p>"I don't know," Sunset replied wistfully. "Maybe it's just the fact that… for most of my life, I didn't have time for st- for boys or dating, and I never even thought about romance. I had other things on my mind."</p><p>"Like what?"</p><p>"My studies," Sunset said. "Relationships, friends, these were all things that didn't seem to offer me any benefit. Quite the reverse, in fact; they were only going to take me away from what really mattered: mastering my powers, learning new things, unlocking my potential. Chasing my destiny. My ambitions mattered to me more than anything else, more than any potential relationships I might have had with other people. More than the relationship I actually had with my…my teacher. I just…I wasn't interested."</p><p>"Okay," Ruby said, wondering at why she felt the need to be so specific. "But then… how did you end up dating Flash Sentry?"</p><p>Sunset still didn't look back at Ruby. "I… I arrived in Canterlot with nothing. I had the clothes on my back, and… and that was pretty much it. I had nothing, I didn't know anybody, I had nowhere to go. And that wouldn't have been a good place to be at the best of times, but the fact that I was a faunus made it so much worse. I…you don't know what that's like, and I don't want to tell you." Sunset paused, and <em>now</em> she looked back at Ruby, just as a look of sadness washed across her face like a wave lapping against the shore. "I really don't want to talk about it. Let's just say that Flash and I ended up in a relationship and leave it at that. I doubt that my example could teach you anything useful."</p><p>"So… that's it?" Ruby asked. "Do you think you'll ever get over it?"</p><p>"I think that you'll get over it," Sunset replied, turning her attention to the woods once more.</p><p>"What makes you so sure?"</p><p>"Because you don't love him," Sunset said confidently. "It's just a crush; it'll pass."</p><p>"What makes you think I don't love him?" Ruby demanded.</p><p>"<em>Do </em>you love him?" Sunset asked.</p><p>"Well… no," Ruby admitted. "But you couldn't have known that."</p><p>"I could, and I did."</p><p>"How?"</p><p>"Because if you loved him, you wouldn't have found it so easy to put it in a box where no one could tell it was even there," Sunset said.</p><p>"Oh," Ruby sighed, deflatedly and disconsolately. This hadn't been much – any – help at all. Certainly, it hadn't gone the way that she'd expected. She'd hoped for a couple of hints at least. "I guess that- Sunset!" Crescent Rose snapped into life, extending and unfurling in a series of hydraulic snaps and hisses. "There, in the trees!" Ruby hissed as she raised the scope to her eye. With the additional magnification, the dark shape that she had seen on the edge of the forest resolved itself into a beowolf. For a moment, it seemed to look right at her, red eyes fixed on Ruby.</p><p>Her finger touched the cold metal of the trigger, but before she could fire, the grimm had turned away and fled back into the cover of the Forever Fall forest.</p><p>"Did you see that?" Ruby asked.</p><p>Sunset had her Sol Invictus to her shoulder, though she lowered it now that the beowolf had fled. "Yeah, I saw it. And if he hasn't gone back to get the rest of his pack, I'll chew on the sleeve of my jacket. Hey, Red!"</p><p>"Yeah?" the foreman drawled as she looked up at her.</p><p>"Get everyone back on the train and lock the doors!" Sunset yelled.</p><p>A single solitary howl rose up into the sky from out of the forest. It did not remain alone for long; soon, it was joined by another voice, then another, then another, and then there were ten or twelve or twenty beowolves or maybe more howling up into the sky from somewhere just out of sight.</p><p>"Now!" Sunset snapped. The railwaymen didn't need to be told twice; they dropped their equipment and supplies on the ground and left them there as they scrambled for the train, hauling themselves up into the two train cars and slamming the doors closed after them.</p><p>Sunset pulled out her scroll, and her fingers flew across the touchscreen as she activated the train's defences. A pair of gun turrets, one mounted on the engine and the other on the rear car whirred to life, turrets rising and gun barrels extending.</p><p>Sunset continued to tap on her scroll. "Let's hope we can get a signal out here," she muttered to herself. "Yes!"</p><p>Pyrrha's voice emerged from the scroll. "Sunset? Is that you?"</p><p>"We need you back here; we're about to be hit," Sunset said bluntly.</p><p>"We're on our way," Pyrrha said before disconnecting the call with equal directness.</p><p>Sunset put her scroll away and raised Sol Invictus to her shoulder once again. She swept the barrel from right to left across the forest. "We can't let them get inside the carriages, and we can't let this drag on, or the fear of all those guys in there will attract even more grimm," she said. "We'll shoot down as many as we can; if any of them get too close, I'll get down and block the way; you keep me covered from up here."</p><p>Ruby frowned. Sunset seemed to think that just because she preferred to fight in constant motion, using her superior speed to devastating effect, that meant that she couldn't fight standing still, which wasn't true.</p><p>It was mostly not true, anyway.</p><p>But there was no point arguing about it now, not with the grimm about to-</p><p>The howling and the snarling rose to a frenetic new pitch as the beowolves boiled out of the eaves of the forest like bees whose nest had just been poked with a stick. There were two dozen of them, maybe more, all swarming out of the forest, growling and snarling.</p><p>Ruby fired first, the sharp crack of Crescent Rose splitting the air. Sunset was only a second behind her, and then the automatic turrets were firing too, making heavy thudding sounds as fire burst from the barrels of the guns.</p><p>And the air was thick with shooting.</p><hr/><p>Jaune and Pyrrha ran towards the sounds of the shooting, their pace increasing as they heard Crescent Rose and Sol Invictus start splitting the air with the sounds of their reports, mingling the sound of gunfire with the howling of the beowolves.</p><p>It would probably be fine – they were only beowolves after all, and Ruby and Sunset were pretty amazing – but nevertheless, Jaune didn't slack off, and Pyrrha didn't show any signs of doing so either. How would they feel if it wasn't okay and they hadn't been there to help out because they hadn't run as fast as they could, come as quick as they got, done everything that they could to get there in time?</p><p>Still, though he ran through the forest, with Pyrrha loping swiftly ahead of him, Jaune wasn't too worried. This was Ruby and Sunset; they were both heroes, real heroes, unlike… there was no way that they were going to get taken out by a pack of beowolves.</p><p>But then, as they cleared the forest and saw the train in front of them, Jaune heard Ruby cry out in pain before the train was rocked by something hitting it on the other side.</p><p>"Ruby," Pyrrha gasped, and she somehow managed to find the energy to run even faster before she leapt up onto the roof of the train car.</p><p>She'd fired off two shots with her Miló before Jaune, who hadn't gotten the hang of jumping like that even with aura, was able to climb up onto the roof using the metal ladder running up the side.</p><p>He saw that there was only one beowolf left.</p><p>Unfortunately, it was the biggest beowolf he'd ever seen, or – more to the point, since he hadn't seen that many beowolves, in all honesty – it was bigger than any that he'd read about even when he started bothering to read his textbooks.</p><p>He knew that grimm got bigger as they aged, but what the hell? This- this was so big, he was amazed it had been able to move through the forest at all, let alone hide there. He guessed it must spend a lot of time on all fours, but even then, it had only just failed to clear the tops of the trees, and it had crushed more than a few of them getting out after the rest of its pack. It had only one eye, with a vicious scar down the left side of its bone mask where the other should have been, but that hardly mattered, because it was about as broad-shouldered as two train carriages and as big as a hill, and it had so many bone spurs jutting out from every conceivable part of its body that it was practically armoured in them. Jaune could barely see any black fur at all because so much of the beowolf was protected by protruding bone.</p><p>The alpha beowolf rose onto its hind legs – it was much taller than the trees when it did that – and roared defiantly.</p><p>Ruby had been flung back by the beowolf into the train. Her aura was still up, but she groaned a little bit as she picked herself up.</p><p>"It has too much bone," she complained. "I can't get a clean hit on it; it's too well protected."</p><p>"It does have considerable armour," Pyrrha agreed as one of her shots ricocheted harmlessly off a bone spur.</p><p>Sunset stood in front of the train, her jacket burning as though she was on fire. She swept her hands over her sleeves, and fireballs of burning dust flew from her arms to strike at the beowolf, but they had about as much effect as Pyrrha's bullet or Ruby's implied strike with Crescent Rose. None of them were doing anything because the beowolf was so well-armoured, it was unbelievable.</p><p>Jaune had dreamed of moments like this. Not real dreams, but kind of daydreams: the day when Ruby and Sunset and even Pyrrha would be helpless in front of a monster that they couldn't stop, couldn't even slow down, when everyone would cry out for a saviour, and he, Jaune Arc, would step forward and say 'Everything will be alright, because I am here!' and he would slash with his shining sword and strike down the monster and save the day.</p><p>But that was a daydream, and this was reality, and the reality was that there was no way he was going to stand a chance against a grimm like this where his three infinitely more talented teammates couldn't do anything about it. They were the real heroes, the ones that mattered.</p><p>All he could do was help them along the way as best he could.</p><p>And surprisingly – surprising even to himself – Jaune was okay with that. So long as he could help them, like with the boost that his semblance could provide, so long as he could contribute something and not just be a useless idiot in the back, then he could live with it. Because this wasn't a dream; this was real life with real lives at stake, and he didn't have the luxury of sulking because he couldn't be the shining hero up front. Pyrrha, Ruby, they were real heroes, they were the ones who would save the world if anybody could, and so long as he could help them do it, then that was fine by him.</p><p>Not that that helped in the immediate situation against this enormous beowolf.</p><p>Sunset held onto her gun with one hand, but with the other, she reached into the pocket of her jeans. "Ruby," she said, "if you had a clear shot without so much bone in the way, could you cut this thing in half?"</p><p>"I think so," Ruby said. She looked at him. "With a bit of a boost, definitely."</p><p>"Pyrrha," Sunset said, "when I give the word, get ready to pin this thing into the ground, okay?"</p><p>Pyrrha glanced towards the pile of rails that the railway crew had brought with them to fix the line. "Understood."</p><p>"Great," Sunset said. She pulled her hand out of her pocket, holding a couple of crimson fire dust crystals in her hand. "Hey, over here, you big dumbass!" She stepped to the side and threw the dust crystals at the beowolf. Jaune guessed that she must have been using her magic on them, because they flew perfectly up towards the beowolf's face, almost to its one remaining eye.</p><p>And then a bolt of green energy shot from the tip of Sunset's finger and struck one of the dust crystals. They exploded in an orange fireball that consumed half of the beowolf's face in flame. The beowolf roared in pain, its bone mask burned as it thrashed in agony, but it still had its eye. And that one eye, red and shining with malice, was now squarely fixed on Sunset Shimmer.</p><p>"Yeah, that's right," Sunset said. "That's it, come and get me."</p><p>With a thud that made the earth shake, the alpha beowolf, half its face ablaze, dropped to all fours and roared in Sunset's face.</p><p>"Now, Pyrrha!" Sunset snapped.</p><p>"Jaune," Pyrrha said, and Jaune immediately put his hand to her shoulder and activated his semblance, boosting Pyrrha's aura and thus her own semblance as she held out both hands towards the pile of rails. Five rails rose into the air before Pyrrha gestured with her hands towards the beowolf, and those same rails flew across the air and drove themselves through the only parts of the giant beowolf that weren't completely protected by bone: the four paws and its tail. Pyrrha drove the rails like nails through the beowolf's feet and into the ground beneath it before she bent the rails – hopefully the railway crew had spars – so that the beowolf was trapped, impaled into the ground, unable to do more than roar and growl and bite the empty air as it struggled against its newfound bonds.</p><p>And as it struggled, Sunset stretched out her own hands and a few of the bone spurs protecting the beowolf's back became surrounded by a green aura as Sunset began to pull them apart.</p><p>Sunset struggled to rip apart the spurs of bone and make somewhere for Ruby to hit it. The beowolf struggled to pull itself free of its restraints. The huntress struggled, and the monster struggled, and it became a question of whose struggle would pay off first. Sunset growled with effort as she matched her- her magic – it was still really weird thinking of it like that – against the strength of the ancient grimm's outgrowths, and the beowolf growled too as it matched its strength against Vale-made steel.</p><p>The bones cracked, and Sunset was able to pull them apart to reveal a patch of plain and unprotected black fur near the centre of the beowolf's back.</p><p>"Ruby!" Sunset yelled.</p><p>"Jaune!" Ruby called.</p><p>Jaune leapt down just as Ruby leapt up. He took her by the legs and amplified her aura and her semblance as he threw her up and forwards like some kind of adorable human football.</p><p>Ruby flew into the air, trailing rose petals behind her, and then she descended, spinning, like lightning from the heavens, and sliced the great and ancient beowolf clean in half.</p><p>And thus, the day was saved once more, and if it hadn't been saved by Jaune, then did that really matter?</p><p>The day was saved; that was what really mattered.</p><p>They were the ones that really mattered.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Why We Fight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Team SAPR arrive at Cold Harbour, where they are reunited with Blake and Team RSPT; after sneaking aboard an Atlesian military train, the talk turns to the reasons that have brought them all to the forefront of the battle to protect mankind.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Why We Fight</p><p> </p><p>Cold Harbour was not a pretty place, and certainly, it was nowhere that Sunset would have come for a visit. </p><p>It was a working town, one which existed purely and entirely to serve the needs of the port and the rail line. It had nothing else. They didn’t even build the ships here; they were all Atlesian-made. If the rail line had remained down, if the ships ever stopped sailing from Atlas, if the dust ever did run out, then Cold Harbour would wither and die like a flower in the cold. </p><p>And then there was the fact that, while Sunset had no doubt that somebody was making a lot of money out of Cold Harbour and its business, that somebody didn’t live in the city or anywhere near. Most probably, the someone who was making the most money out of this place was Jacques Schnee, and he lived far away from here. The work was done here, but the profits flew away, over the oceans and the land, to fill the pockets of men in Atlas or the city of Vale. Only the scraps of that prosperity remained in the port, where faunus scrabbled for work as labourers and dreamed of one day getting to drive a truck or operate a power-loader because they couldn’t imagine it getting any better than that. </p><p>All of which meant that when team SAPR arrived in Cold Harbour on their train, the railway line having been repaired and the first trains already prepped to flow back the other way, they found it a rather grim, dour, and forbidding place. The buildings were dull and functional, in the appropriately-named Brutalist style of architecture of which Sunset was decidedly not a fan, and the atmosphere felt as cold as the chill wind. There was nothing fun about this town, unless one counted the bars they passed where no doubt the labourers were encouraged to spend their meagre lien on bad drink and pleasures more sordid still. It was a place of crushing banality, full of people living to work because they had nothing else to live for, the sort of place where the ideology of the White Fang would flourish amongst the poor and exploited faunus. </p><p>She couldn’t wait to get out of this place. Out of the cold air blowing down from the north, out of these ghastly buildings, out from where the humans looked at her with unveiled contempt and the faunus looked at her like she was a traitor for associating with her team. </p><p>“How much further until we rendezvous with Blake and Team Rosepetal?” Pyrrha asked.</p><p>“Soon, I think, I don’t know!” Sunset snapped. She cringed at the hurt expression on Pyrrha’s face. “I’m sorry, I…I don’t like it here. Too… Atlesian by far.”</p><p>“We understand,” Pyrrha said calmly. “You don’t have to apologise.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Sunset muttered. She wondered if, perhaps, she wasn’t giving Atlas enough credit. After all, Canterlot had never been this bad… well, that depended on how one defined or described ‘bad.’ It had been an uncomfortable experience for her, but the architecture hadn’t been too terrible, although some of the people had been bad enough.</p><p>Or had they? Sunset remembered it that way, but then she also remembered herself as a victim, and a rather passive victim devoid of agency at that, which was… probably not the truth. </p><p>But then, what was the truth? If things hadn’t happened the way she remembered them, then how had they happened?</p><p>
  <em>Perhaps I tried to turn the most popular girls in school against one another and got caught doing it, which meant that everyone hated me after that. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yeah… I kind of prefer the original version over the rewrite. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>After all, if everything that happened to me at Canterlot was all my own fault, then that might mean that Flash…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>No. No, that’s just ridiculous. Absolute nonsense. He was explicit about the reasons why he was breaking up with me, and he had no reason to lie. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He broke my heart because he couldn’t live with my tail any more. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Didn’t he?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Of course he did. And I was the victim. Except when I wasn’t.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>At least, I hope I was. </em>
</p><p>She had been… not the nicest person back then, but at the same time, why would Flash lie to her about something like that? Why would he pretend to be a racist?</p><p>
  <em>A racist who I never saw have a problem with Rainbow Dash. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Who doesn’t seem to have a problem with Blake. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I know what he said, but Cardin Winchester, he isn’t.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But then why would he say that?</em>
</p><p>Sunset was roused from these unanswerable musings by the sound of a startled cry and a heavy thud behind her. She whirled around, reaching for her gun – the rest of her team did likewise and grasped at their own weapons – but it turned out to be Blake Belladonna, between a dozen and twenty feet behind them, crouched down in the middle of the road astride the unconscious form of a ram faunus, horns curling out from either side of his head, swathed in a long, dark trenchcoat. </p><p>It was a measure of what a dive Cold Harbour was that nobody seemed to find the fact that Blake had plainly just jumped on this guy and knocked him unconscious to be anything worth making a fuss about. All around them on the street, people continued on their way without offering the scene a second look.</p><p>“Blake!” Ruby exclaimed. “When did you-?”</p><p>“I’ve been following you since you got off the train,” Blake said, as blandly as she might have made an observation about the cold weather – which she must have been feeling, dressed as she was. She got up off the guy she’d just knocked down. “I noticed that he’d been following you as well.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Sunset said. “Nice of you to drop in.”</p><p>Blake looked at her.</p><p>Sunset grinned briefly.</p><p>Blake rolled her eyes as she began to walk towards them. “Follow me,” she said. “I’ll take you to join the others.”</p><p>Blake led them into a back alley and through various other small, narrow, dark, and mostly uninhabited streets that even the denizens of Cold Harbour seemed to want to avoid. Considering that some of them were covered in garbage, Sunset could well see why, and the smell…  – Sunset’s sense of smell was more acute than most, but Pyrrha seemed to be struggling with it too – some of these alleyways stank to high heaven. What a place, she couldn’t wait to be out of here.</p><p>“I’m sorry about the route,” Blake said, and as she glanced back at them over her shoulder, Sunset could see from her expression that she wasn’t the biggest fan of the stench either; probably her sense of smell was as good as Sunset’s, what with her being slightly catty and all. “But ever since Team Rosepetal arrived here, we’ve had people trying to find out what they’re doing here, where they’re going next; we’ve been followed, and I noticed that the base was being watched.”</p><p>“The White Fang,” Sunset said.</p><p>“They don’t wear masks, but almost certainly,” Blake said.</p><p>“Have you ambushed and beaten up all of them?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“No,” Blake said, with just a thin trace of amusement in her voice. “Mostly, we try to avoid them. After our Search and Destroy mission was complete, we left the base, flying southward on a Skyray which Rainbow Dash left a few miles out of town for recovery, then we snuck back in and found somewhere more inconspicuous to lay low until you arrived. Usually, Rosepetal stay in their room, and I get sent out when somebody has to leave. I still stand out,” – she briefly grasped the handle of Gambol Shroud – “but not as much as… some of the Atlesians. Or you four, for that matter.”</p><p>Pyrrha looked a little guilty, as though she had anything to be guilty about. “I’m sorry, I didn’t-”</p><p>“It’s not your fault,” Blake said. “You’re a huntress, not a spy, but that’s the point: you and Rosepetal both stand out as obviously being huntsmen, and that makes the White Fang ask why you’re here.”</p><p>“Are we going to be able to get onto the train without being spotted?” Sunset asked. If they didn’t have secrecy, then the entire plan was shot full of holes before it had even begun; either the White Fang would leave the train alone, or they would attack in strength sufficient to overwhelm the combined forces of the two teams. Neither option was particularly desirable. </p><p>“I think so,” Blake said. “We have a plan and the route already chosen. We’re almost there.”</p><p>“So,” Sunset asked, “what’s it been like working with Atlas?”</p><p>Blake hesitated for a moment. “They’re… not what I expected,” she said. “I didn’t expect that they would be so… human.”</p><p>Sunset pressed her lips together and restrained herself from offering a witty response to that. She came to the end of an alleyway and pressed her back against the wall as she gestured out of the end of the narrow lane. Before them was the rear of a rather cheap-looking motel, with three rows of windows obscured by old-fashioned lace curtains looking out at the insalubrious view of an empty car park and some big blue bins on wheels overflowing with garbage bags. Discarded bottles and cigarette butts littered the concrete, and there was graffiti on the walls of the alleyway in which they waited.</p><p>“This is where you’re staying?” Sunset asked sarcastically. “Nice.”</p><p>Blake glanced at her momentarily. “We’ve rented six rooms, the three climbing up the west wall and the three next to that so that nobody can take those rooms and see us coming or going, but everyone actually sleeps in the room on the northwest corner, as it’s the hardest to observe.” She looked back at the members of Team Sapphire. “Does anybody think they might not be able to climb up the drainpipe? Or get up to the top window?”</p><p>Jaune raised his hand at once. So too, after a moment's hesitation and slightly more tremulously, did Sunset.</p><p>Blake nodded. “Don’t worry, I can help you.” She turned back and looked at the motel windows. “Now, we wait for- there.”</p><p>The northwest window opened, and the face of Rainbow Dash briefly appeared there, beckoning to them. Sunset noticed that the window next to it was also open, and she thought… was there someone in there?</p><p>“The window to the right-”</p><p>“That’s Ciel,” Blake murmured.</p><p>“So long as it’s someone on our side,” Sunset muttered.</p><p>“Let’s go,” Blake said, and she led the way as they dashed quickly across the open ground between their alleyway and the back of the motel. Blake gestured for them to go first, up to the open window on the northwest corner of the top floor. </p><p>Pyrrha was the first up, not bothering with the drainpipe that ran up the side of the wall as she simply leapt straight up to the window and grabbed the ledge with both hands before hauling herself inside. </p><p>Ruby went next, scampering up the drainpipe with simian agility before sliding sideways onto the windowsill, where a hand reached out to help her get inside the room. </p><p>Sunset went next, and although she had conceded that she might need some assistance getting there, she was determined to at least try and do it herself. She gripped the rusting metal drainpipe with both hands, feeling the cold of the metal and the slight rough unevenness of the surface beneath her palms, and she gritted her teeth as she started to climb. Her aura made her stronger and gave her greater endurance besides, but it didn’t make you good at all the things that you wouldn’t necessarily have been great at otherwise, and Sunset felt no shame in conceding that Pyrrha and Ruby were both more athletic than she was, if only because they’d been training in those skills for longer. But she wasn’t about to let Blake just help her up without at least attempting it herself, and so, though her boots sometimes slipped against the surface of the wall and her hands felt as though they were going to slip on the pipe, nevertheless, inch by slow inch, Sunset hauled her body up the drainpipe and reached out to place her fingers on the windowsill.</p><p>Rainbow’s hand grabbed hers, and immediately, Sunset felt the weight on her arms ease off as Rainbow helped her the last bit of the way and pulled her into the motel room. The carpet was faded, there were black stains in the corners of the walls, and there was a dent in the wall like somebody had punched it once. </p><p>“Yo,” Rainbow greeted. “Glad you could make it.”</p><p>“You say that as though we’re late or something.”</p><p>“I’m just bored of having to wait for you.”</p><p>“Don’t blame me because you’re impatient,” Sunset countered.</p><p>“Hello, Sunset!” Penny said cheerily.</p><p>“Hi,” Sunset replied. “Hi, Twilight.”</p><p>“Uh, hey, Sunset,” Twilight said, before looking down at her scroll. </p><p>“Hey, guys,” Sun said. “Have a good trip?”</p><p>“Hey, Sun,” Ruby replied. “What are you doing here?”</p><p>Rainbow folded her arms across her chest. “Somebody helped him sneak into our Skyray and hide out there. We didn’t notice him until it was too late to turn back.”</p><p>Sunset smirked. “What can I say? I’m a sucker for romance.”</p><p>There was a click outside the window, and looking out, Sunset could see the hook of Blake’s weapon bury itself in the wall before Blake lifted herself and Jaune up to the level of the window, where Sunset and Rainbow helped Jaune in before Blake slipped into the room afterwards, shut the window after herself, and closed the curtains.</p><p>“Cosy,” Sunset observed as the nine people now present in a room designed for two tried to find some room to stand.</p><p>“I know, but it isn’t for long,” Rainbow said. “Once it gets dark, we’ll sneak out of here and slip aboard the train with nobody any the wiser.”</p><p>“All loading at the rail yard stops at night,” Blake explained. “Even the night trains are loaded up during the day; there are only a couple of night watchmen around, and we should be able to avoid them.”</p><p>“You’ve thought this through,” Sunset remarked.</p><p>“We’ve had time to think while we waited for you,” Rainbow said. </p><p>“How was your mission?” Penny asked brightly.</p><p>“It was mostly pretty quiet,” Ruby replied, “but then this pack of beowolves showed up, and they were led by one of the biggest alphas that we’d ever seen, and…”</p><hr/><p>They passed the time as best they could in that crowded space – it got even more crowded once Ciel joined them from the room next door, bringing her rifle with her – as they waited for it to get dark outside. Rainbow and Ciel both did weapons maintenance – or tried to as best they could in the conditions – and Sunset cleaned out the chambers of the cylinder in Sol Invictus so that they wouldn’t get fouled in battle; it was, she had to say, much easier for her to do that than it was for the two Atlesians to do their maintenance in the circumstances. </p><p>Penny read from a book of stories, not the <em>Fairy Tales of Remnant</em> prescribed for Doctor Oobleck’s class, but a much older-looking book with a cover so worn that Sunset couldn’t read the title. “My new friend Blake gave it to me. It has so many other stories that weren’t included in the book for class. I’ve never read anything like some of these stories before.”</p><p>“That’s why I gave it to you,” Blake said. “These stories may be simple, but as Doctor Oobleck said, they represent where we come from; our ancestors told those stories, and by knowing the stories… we can know them, what kind of people they were, what kind of world they lived in. Plus… they’re often very good stories. Simple, but compelling, and sometimes, even beautiful.”</p><p>“It looks like an old book,” Sunset said, observing the slightly dog-eared cover, the many creases on the spine, the way the corners of some of the pages looked as though they’d been folded over to mark the place – Sunset, who always used proper book marks, couldn’t help but feel a slightly sense of disapproval at the practice – all marked the book out as having been long-owned and often-read.</p><p>“My… my mother used to read it to me,” Blake said, and a look of deep sadness crossed her face for a moment. “A long time ago.”</p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose a little. “A generous gift,” she murmured. She couldn’t imagine giving a book from Celestia away, to Penny or anybody else.</p><p>“Not really,” Blake said, in a voice that carried an undertone of melancholy. “I… I know most of those stories by heart by now.”</p><p>“Penny,” Pyrrha said in the tone of someone who is very deliberately changing the subject. “How far have you gotten? Do you have any favourites yet?”</p><p>“I’m not sure if I’ve found a story that I like better than <em>The Shallow Sea</em>,” Penny murmured.</p><p>The corners of Pyrrha’s lips rose upwards in a smile. “Yes, that’s one of my favourites too.”</p><p>“Not many humans know that story,” Blake said, surprised.</p><p>“There are many faunus who fight in the tournaments,” Pyrrha replied. “I think it was… yes, it was Metella who told us that story, when we were waiting in the green room for a photo shoot. I was only a girl at the time; I’d just started fighting. She was rather dismissive, but I always found it a rather lovely story.”</p><p>“Being seen for who you really are?” Penny asked.</p><p>Pyrrha’s smile broadened. “Exactly, Penny. Isn’t that what we all want? Isn’t that what we’re looking for in the end?”</p><p>Blake frowned. “Penny, what was the other story you said that you enjoyed? You talked about it last night.”</p><p>“Oh, you mean <em>The Little Angel</em>?” Penny asked. “Yes, I think that’s a lovely story, too.”</p><p>“<em>The Little Angel</em>,” Ruby repeated. “I don’t remember that one. Yang used to read me stories from books just like that all the time, but… no, I don’t remember it.”</p><p>“It’s about an angel, the daughter of a god, who lives in the sky,” Penny explained. “Each night, she watches the people on land and wishes that she could join them, especially after she sees the human prince, and she-”</p><p>“She falls in love with him,” Pyrrha said. “And so determined is she for them to be together that she sheds her wings and becomes human so that she can be with the man she loves and finally explore the world that she’s watched from afar for so long. I think it’s a lovely story.”</p><p>“I used to like it,” Blake said. “But now… it isn’t one of my favourites.”</p><p>“Why not?” Pyrrha said. “What changed?”</p><p>“Not the story,” Blake said, “but I realised… the prince, if he really loved her, then he wouldn’t ask her to change who she was so completely for his sake. If he loved her truly, then he’d take her as she was and not ask her to change a thing.”</p><p>“But he didn’t ask her to change,” Pyrrha said. “He didn’t know her; she made the decision to transform herself all on her own.”</p><p>“Is that better?” Blake asked, without malice or anger of any kind in her voice. “Can we really say that she loved him? Or was it just a shadow that she loved, the idea of something that was never really there at all?”</p><p>“I… I don’t know,” Pyrrha said. “But I do know that there’s nothing wrong with the idea of transformation. Sometimes, when we descend from the heavens and into a whole new world, we transform for the better. We become… what we were always meant to be, better than what we are now. Like <em>The Shallow </em>Sea, so many stories are about that, that moment of transformation, of becoming.”</p><p>“Transforming and becoming are not the same thing,” Blake replied. “One is revelation of what was always there but was hidden behind rags or an ugly exterior or whatever it is; the other is being remade by some external power deciding that what you are, as you are now, is just not good enough.”</p><p>“Are you sure you’re not both reading too much into this?” Ruby asked. “I love a lot of these stories myself, but they’re just stories.”</p><p>“Stories matter,” Sunset said from where she leaned against the wall. “Just as every story began with a life lived somewhere, so each of our lives contains a story within it. We have to remember that and bear it in mind if the story is not to become a tedious and repetitive thing filled with inconsequential happenings and transient experiences amounting to nothing. Sound and fury signifying nothing.”</p><p>“Live like you’re the hero of your own story?” Ciel remarked. “From literary analysis to egotism.”</p><p>“I’ve read that in Mistral of old, there were few among the mighty there who <em>didn’t </em>consider themselves to be the hero of their own history,” Sunset said.</p><p>“An attitude that did much to bring Mistral to disaster in the Great War,” Pyrrha remarked.</p><p>“Maybe,” Sunset conceded. “But before that, it first made Mistral great. How can we seek to be heroes if we do not understand what a hero is, what made them heroes, and what made them acclaimed as such by those around them? That’s why stories matter, because without them, how will we know what to do?”</p><p>“That’s why what they mean matters too,” Blake added wistfully, “or we might… do the wrong thing and not realise it until it’s too late.”</p><hr/><p>That night, once the darkness had descended upon Cold Harbour and the activity of the streets had slowed as people retreated either to their homes or to their favourite bar, it was time to leave the cramped hotel room behind and get to their train before it left without them. </p><p>Blake confirmed that there was no one watching the back of the hotel as they slipped out the window and down to the ground below – Rainbow Dash carried Twilight down in her arms like a bride, the rest of them jumped and trusted to their aura to dull the impact, and Jaune tripped and almost fell as he leapt – as quickly and as quietly as they could with all their gear and weapons with them, not to mention supplies for the journey, sleeping bags and all the rest. Blake led the way, taking the two teams and Sun through more dingy back alleys of the same kind that they had used to get to the hotel in the first place. Now, they headed back towards the railyard, avoiding the main streets that SAPR had first taken before Blake showed up and instead taking the more indirect route which brought them step by step and back alley by alleyway back to the yards, which now were dimly lit and quiet. When SAPR had dismounted the train they’d arrived on, accompanied by Red’s working crew, the yard had been abuzz with activity; the word that the railway had been repaired had travelled ahead of them, and so, a half dozen trains were being loaded at the time to make the trip to Vale during the evening and night, crates bearing the snowflake emblem of the SDC by the multitude being lifted into railway cars. Faunus by the score and the hundredfold had worked by hand and primitive machine while power loaders painted in yellow and black strode amongst the trains carrying especially large and heavy containers, and all the while, the overseers and the foremen called out directions to the workers. Judging by what Blake had said, the chances were that the White Fang already knew what was in every single train and had known since preparations to move the trains as soon as the rail line was reopened had been made. </p><p>The Atlesian military train had, according to the plans that Sunset and Rainbow had made, been loaded up and standing by for some time now. The White Fang could have robbed it in the yard by now if they’d wanted to, but of course, it was much easier to do it in the wilds of the Forever Fall than in the middle of a city where there might be a law enforcement response and with an Atlesian military base so close.</p><p>In any case, they could see it in the yard ahead of them as they crept across the empty railway lines and in between the stationary and unattended containers. Rainbow took the lead at this point with Twilight; Blake dropped back, presumably because the Atlesians knew what they were looking for. As they approached, the engine began to hum and thrum with suppressed energy.</p><p>“Quickly,” Rainbow hissed. “It’s about to leave.”</p><p>They quickened their pace, though those of them that had super speed stopped short of actually using it. They ran, covering the ground more quickly as Twilight Sparkle got out her scroll. Sunset could hear a faint beeping sound, and the doors to one of the cargo cars slid open with a hydraulic hiss. </p><p>Rainbow and Twilight reached it first, and Rainbow leaped aboard the car; she turned and helped Twilight up inside a moment before the train began to move. The rest of the group ran faster still, with Rainbow and Twilight already aboard and waving them on, and rushed for the open door as it began to crawl away down the rail line. </p><p>They just about made it, leaping or scrambling aboard or being helped aboard moments before the train began to accelerate to the point where it would have been impossible to get on – nor, indeed, was it possible to get off now. They were on this train until it stopped again, which it was not scheduled to do until it reached Vale but it might do depending on how the White Fang decided to stop it. </p><p>They were trapped aboard the train absent destination or external influences, which is why, as the eight huntresses and the two huntsmen crouched in the darkness of the train car and the door shut behind them, it was a little disconcerting to see a pair of red eyes light up in the darkness as a metallic and synthesised voice said, “Intruder, identify yourself.”</p><p>“Twilight,” Rainbow said, urgently but not so urgently that she might seem frightened.</p><p>Twilight, on the other hand, squeaked with alarm. “R-right. I’ll just…um, give me a second.” In the darkness, Sunset could hear Twilight tapping on her scroll.</p><p>The lights came on, revealing row after row of Atlesian security droids standing in ranks like a column of old-fashioned soldiers ready for an assault, all of them staring right at the huntsmen who had the temerity to board their train.</p><p>But then, the red eyes faded. “Understood. Atlesian forces recognised. Your facial patterns have been uploaded into our database and logged as friendly.” The droids, apparently deactivated again, lowered their faces and said no more and did no more and troubled them no more.</p><p>“These guys are a lot creepier than the ones you had on the base,” Sun observed.</p><p>“Yes,” Twilight agreed. “That’s kind of the point of the 200. One of the biggest points, anyway.”</p><p>Rainbow Dash walked up to them, looking them up and down. “Old 130s; I thought we were replacing all of them.”</p><p>“Upgrading our entire capability takes time,” Ciel reminded her. “The first available knights are being deployed to front line positions, 130 models will remain in service in some rear-echelon areas for a considerable length of time.”</p><p>“'Upgrading'?” Pyrrha said, her voice soft as she rose to her feet. “Is that what you call it?”</p><p>Rainbow turned back to her. “We’re replacing the old models with the newer ones; what would you call it?”</p><p>“Terrible,” Pyrrha said. Her brow furrowed. “The idea that this is the future of warfare… it horrifies me.”</p><p>“Pyrrha?” Jaune asked.</p><p>“You don’t like robots?” Rainbow said.</p><p>“I don’t much care for them, no,” Pyrrha replied.</p><p>“Is there any particular reason for that?” Ciel asked.</p><p>Pyrrha was silent for a moment. “Do you know why the faunus were victorious in their rebellion after the Great War?”</p><p>“Because of the faunus generalship of…” Ruby trailed off. “Um, Blake, what was his name again? I’m sorry, I know we did our essays on it, but that was months ago now and-”</p><p>“And it’s only Modern History, I get it,” Blake said easily. “It was Ares Claudandus, and his preparation and generalship led to a decisive victory as much as the mistakes of General Lagune.”</p><p>Pyrrha smiled thinly. “That’s why they won the battle at Fort Castle, but in my opinion, it isn’t why they won the war.”</p><p>“You’re talking about the mutiny at Camp Fury, aren’t you?” asked Sunset, who thought that she had worked out where this was going. “When the faunus rose up, the veteran troops refused to march against their old comrades, the ones they’d fought alongside in the Great War. And because of that, Mistral and Mantle were forced to fight the war with green recruits, boys dragged out of the fields and off the streets.”</p><p>Pyrrha nodded. “And because of that, the faunus won the war.”</p><p>“I think we would have done alright against the most experienced troops that humans could find,” Blake muttered. “Although I suppose the inexperience of your troops didn’t hurt.”</p><p>“The point is that those soldiers did what they thought was right, not what they were ordered to do,” Pyrrha said. “They had that freedom, just as we do now. If Professor Ozpin ordered us to burn down a city block with all the people trapped in their homes, would we do it?”</p><p>“No,” Jaune said. “Of course not, that would be murder.”</p><p>“Exactly, and we know that,” Pyrrha said. “But these automatons.” She gestured with her shield hand at the Atlesian androids. “This is an army that will never tell its commander ‘no,’ no matter how monstrous the order. An army without conscience.”</p><p>“Its conscience is that of the man who wields it,” Ciel declared. “General Ironwood has conscience enough for an entire army. He is a good man, perhaps the best; he would never wield his power to wicked purposes.”</p><p>“Can you guarantee the same about the man who will succeed him, or their successor after that?” Pyrrha asked. </p><p>Neither Ciel nor Rainbow Dash said anything in reply. What could they have said, in any case? Penny looked sad and a little upset for some reason.</p><p>Rainbow put one hand on the door leading into the next carriage. “We should go,” she said firmly.</p><p>“Fine by me,” Sunset replied. “Does anyone want to sleep in here with the robots?”</p><p>“Not me,” Sun muttered. “I don’t know about what Pyrrha’s been saying, but they give me the creeps.”</p><p>“Then let’s go,” Rainbow said. “Twilight, do you want to give us the layout?”</p><p>“Right,” Twilight said, pulling up a map on her scroll and displaying it as a three-dimensional hologram. “We’re here, in carriage six of a ten-car train. Car number one is directly behind the engine; car ten is the caboose. Cars six, and ten are filled with droids; that’s the standard security complement for this kind of train. Cars one, two and three contain the paladin mechs; cars four and five contain small arms and ammunition. Car seven contains munitions for the heavy weapons mounted onto the paladins, while cars eight and nine contain dust for military purposes. There should be enough space in car five for us to sleep in.”</p><p>“Thanks, Twi,” Rainbow said. “Let’s go.”</p><hr/><p>“So, icebreaker question,” Rainbow said. “What are we all doing here?”</p><p>The ten huntsmen sat amongst the crates of guns and ammo in the middle of the Atlesian train as it rattled along down the recently repaired railroad towards Vale. </p><p>Sunset sat on the floor, with the portable stove that they had used to heat up their dinner still burning in front of her. Sunset turned off the stove with one hand while, with the other, she held onto her bowl of noodles. “What do you mean, what are we doing here? We’re here to ambush the White Fang when they try and rob the train.”</p><p>Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Well, obviously. I mean, why did we all want to become huntsmen in the first place? If we’re going to go into battle together-“</p><p>“We’ve already gone into battle together,” Sunset pointed out. “Twice.”</p><p>“Yeah, but we didn’t plan it that way either time,” Rainbow reminded them. “I just… I want to know who you all are.” She looked at Sunset. “Better than I thought I did, maybe. I’ll even start us off if you like.” </p><p>“We already know why you’re here,” Sunset presumed. “For the Glory of Atlas.”</p><p>Rainbow folded her arms. “You say that like it’s such a terrible thing.”</p><p>“Well I, for one, find thoughtless chest-thumping a little gauche,” Sunset declared.</p><p>“'Gauche' is the least that I could say about you,” Ciel muttered. “We stand for the flag; there is no shame in that, nor will we be intimidated into feeling shame by being told that our patriotism is somehow indecorous.”</p><p>“Don’t you find it a bit exhausting to have to talk up your kingdom all the time?” Sunset asked. “To feel obliged to defend it constantly?”</p><p>“I find the arguments deployed against Atlas to be rather wearisome in their weakness,” Ciel replied in a dismissive monotone.</p><p>“Anyway,” Rainbow said, “it isn’t all about the glory of Atlas. In fact, it isn’t even mostly about the glory of Atlas. Yes, Ciel’s right, we stand for the flag, and we fight for our kingdom, but it’s more than a flag, it’s more than just an idea; people can trash talk Atlas all they want, and I’m not even going to say that it’s a perfect place to live, but… but it’s home. It’s home to all my friends and to people like them. Rarity, Fluttershy, Pinkie, Scootaloo, Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and hundreds of thousands of people just like them, they’re all kept safe by the strength of Atlas. So you can go ahead and make your fun of us and how we do things, you can look down on us like we’re idiots who need to wake up and realise that the General is an evil dictator or something, but while you’re all doing that, my friends sleep safe. While I’m here, they don’t have to be afraid. Even though the world is full of grimm, even though it sometimes feels like we’re only one step ahead of the monster taking us out, even though, in spite of everything… they don’t have to be afraid. Because they’re my friends, and they can sleep safely tonight because I’m out here, watching over them, keeping the monsters at bay. That’s why I do what I do. For them.” </p><p>“A worthy motivation,” Pyrrha murmured. “For my part, if I have ever given you cause to feel slighted, I apologise.”</p><p>“Don’t worry, Pyrrha; you’re not the one I had in mind,” Rainbow replied.</p><p>“I’ve already said sorry,” Blake muttered. “Wasn’t that enough?”</p><p>“It was,” Rainbow agreed. “From you.”</p><p>Sunset shuffled uncomfortably in place. “I know that you care about your friends,” she said. “Everyone knows that you care about your friends. But couldn’t you care about them with a little less of the oorah stuff?”</p><p>“Nope,” Rainbow said. “Sorry, but I’m going to keep on being proud so long as we’ve got stuff to be proud of.” She paused for a moment. “So, come on, who else wants to share with the group? Sunset, what are you doing out here? Why did you want to become a huntress?”</p><p>Sunset shrugged. “For the fame. For the glory.”</p><p>Rainbow snorted. “'Glory'? What glory?”</p><p>“The great glory that will accrue to us as a result our deeds in the field and in the tournament arena,” Sunset declared grandiloquently. <em>The glory that is our due.</em> “And the immortality that we will win there.”</p><p>“There is neither immortality nor glory for soldiers,” Ciel said. “History remembers the generals who commanded the battle, it remembers the politicians who ordered the battle, but it does not remember the soldiers who fought in the battle.”</p><p>Sunset smirked, undismayed by Ciel’s words. “Is that so? Good thing that we’re not soldiers, isn’t it?”</p><p>“Do you really think that you will accrue such great glory as to deserve the name immortality?” Ciel asked. “From being a huntress?”</p><p>“I believe it so,” Sunset assured her. “I cannot believe that it is otherwise. This… this is my destiny; I cannot doubt it. I have come too far to be halted by mere doubt. I will do great things, and in the doing, I shall become more, much more, than I am now.”</p><p>“What if you don’t?” Ruby asked, her voice high and soft but clear in the cramped, enclosed space in which they found themselves. </p><p>Sunset drew breath in through her nostrils. “What if I don’t? What if <em>we</em> don’t? That outcome is not possible. I will not suffer it.”</p><p>Ruby frowned; her face could sometimes seem childlike, but now, she seemed older, and Sunset was reminded that there was only a two-year difference in their ages, that this was a girl who, for all that she might sometimes act immaturely, had endured and suffered much. “Rainbow Dash,” she said quietly. “My mom was a huntress. My uncle is a huntress. My dad teaches at Signal Combat School on the island of Patch. I… I guess you could say that I was always going to be a huntress, because of whom my mom was, who my family is, because of all the stories about huntresses and huntsmen that my sister Yang used to read me when it was time for bed.”</p><p>“You say 'was,'” Twilight said softly. “Your mother <em>was</em>, not your mother <em>is</em>. Then… does that mean…”</p><p>“She’s… she’s gone,” Ruby confirmed with the melancholy of a scar over an old wound. “She died on a mission when I was little.”</p><p>“Would we have heard of her?” Ciel asked, earning her a bit of a frown from Pyrrha.</p><p>“Does that matter?” Jaune demanded.</p><p>“No,” Ciel admitted. “Forgive me. I was wrong to impose simply to satisfy my curiosity,” – she glanced at Sunset – “for all that it might be said to bear upon the previous line of discussion.”</p><p>“Even so,” Pyrrha murmured, “that hardly seems reason to-”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Ruby said.</p><p>“Ruby,” Jaune murmured. “You don’t have to talk about this if-”</p><p>“It’s okay, Jaune,” Ruby said. “But… no, you probably wouldn’t have heard of her. My mom’s name was Summer Rose. She was a great huntress, and she was…” She glanced at Sunset, and the words ‘silver eyed warrior,’ though they lay unspoken in the presence of Atlas, hung heavily between the members of Team SAPR. “She was a great huntress,” Ruby repeated. “She led her team, and she fought the grimm right up until the day she died. She was a great huntress, but nobody ever built a statue of her or wrote a book about her. Nobody remembers her, nobody even knows her name apart from her family. She was a great huntress, but she didn’t get any glory from it.”</p><p>“Then wh-?” Sunset cut herself off before she could say it.</p><p>Ruby looked at her. “What?”</p><p>Sunset looked away, paying particular attention to the rust on the walls of the train car. “Nothing.”</p><p>“Sunset-”</p><p>“I said, it’s nothing,” Sunset said, more sharply this time. She didn’t want to seem unkind, but… well, if she said what was on her mind right now in front of Jaune and Pyrrha and the Atlesians, then she was afraid that she would seem very unkind. Let Ruby think what she liked, let the fact that her mother had died in ignominious obscurity, tell her something about the lot in life of the average huntress, but they were not average. Sunset would not endure to be average. She would win. She would rise. She would claim all things that she desired and deserved.</p><p>And she would not ask in the presence of all this company whether or not Ruby really believed that her mother’s blood, sweat, tears, and very life itself had been worth it for… for what? For a little plot of earth to lie in and the memories of a handful of people? Whether she was ready to launch herself on that same course for that same reward. </p><p>But she couldn’t say it in front of all these people; it would seem too harsh. She would not seem unkind, even if she was.</p><p>And besides, she didn’t <em>want</em> to be unkind, not to Ruby. She didn’t deserve it, especially not over something like this. </p><p>She didn’t want to hurt Ruby with her words, even if she would defend to herself the sentiment that underpinned those words.</p><p>She exhaled. “Somebody say something else. Please.”</p><p>“My family has a long history of military service, predating even the foundation of Atlas itself,” Ciel said, picking up on the cue without complaint. “Soleils have fought for Mantle, and they have fought for Atlas. And now I fight for Atlas, as I will send my daughter to fight for Atlas one day in her turn.”</p><p>“As simple as that?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“As simple as that,” Ciel said. </p><p>
  <em>If you live to have a daughter.</em>
</p><p>Sun grinned. “And the award for shortest answer of the night goes to Ciel!” He looked a little disappointed at the lack of response. </p><p>“You may not have to send your daughter to fight for Atlas,” Pyrrha said, softly but solemnly too.</p><p>“Why would I not?” Ciel asked, sounding genuinely curious.</p><p>“I am here… I believe… I’ve always believed that my destiny is to protect the world,” Pyrrha said, sounding halting as if she was afraid that at any moment people would try to mock her for what she said. “I came to Beacon because I wanted to do more than just win tournaments, because I wanted to protect humanity from its enemies and put my skills to better use than entertainment. I’m here because I want to save lives and because I believe, I truly believe with all of my heart, that we can do more than just hold the line against the grimm, more than just take back a little territory beyond the boundaries of the kingdoms or found a few new villages. I believe that we can retake our world from the monsters who plague it.”</p><p>Silence greeted her pronouncement. Rainbow let out a puff of breath. “That would be awesome. That would be the greatest thing… no more grimm, no more fighting, no more risk. You’re talking about a world where kids like Scootaloo and Apple Bloom can just be kids without having to decide if they want to learn how to kill monsters, where Pinkie and Rarity and Fluttershy wouldn’t have to worry about what happens when the levee breaks, where…you’re talking about everything. And I’d love to believe that you can do it, I’d love to believe that we can do it, but… Pyrrha Nikos, I’ve seen you fight, and you are good. But I don’t believe that even you are that good. Do you really think you’re that good?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Pyrrha said, “but I know that we have to try, all of us, together. If we don’t try, if all that we do is bequeath the battle to our children so that they can leave it to their children, I…” She reached out, and placed a gloved hand on Ruby’s shoulder. “I mean no disrespect to your mother, Ruby… but I believe that we have to aim higher than that.”</p><p>“To make a world where there’s no need for people like us?” Rainbow asked, as her ears twitched and a smile played across her face.</p><p>“That is my ambition,” Pyrrha said. “I cannot promise I’ll achieve it… but it’s what I aim for.”</p><p>“And maybe we will,” Ruby said, looking up from where she sat on the floor into Pyrrha’s face. “Maybe we’ll do what no one else could. If we stick together and keep getting stronger and never give up, then-“</p><p>“Then what?” Blake said. “Say that you did it. Say that you exterminated the creatures of grimm… somehow. Let’s say for a moment that that actually happened. There would still be a need for huntsmen and huntresses. Even if all of the grimm disappeared tomorrow, the world would still be full of cruelty and injustice and corruption, and I’m not just talking about the White Fang but also all the things that created the White Fang in the first place. That’s why I’m here, to fight against all of that, and that won’t change just because the grimm are gone.”</p><p>“Did you just explain why you became a huntress or why you joined the White Fang?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>Blake was sitting a little removed from the rest, her knees up and her arms wrapped around them. “I know why I’m here,” she said, “and I’ll fight against the White Fang or the grimm when I have to. If that’s not good enough for you, then I’m sorry.”</p><p>Sunset, who fancied that she knew more about why Blake was here than some but still wouldn’t claim to be able to answer for her, locked eyes with her for a moment. Sunset’s green orbs met Blake’s golden eyes before Blake looked away.</p><p>“It’s alright,” Rainbow said. “I trust you. How about you, Sun?”</p><p>“Like I told you before,” Sun replied. “It seemed-”</p><p>“'Like a good idea at the time,'” Blake quietly interrupted.</p><p>Sun chuckled. “Yeah, you could put it like that. I like to travel. I don’t… or at least I didn’t… staying in one place too long never appealed to me, you know. Having a regular job, a house, all that kind of thing. It’s just not who I am. I’m more of a ‘roam from place to place’ kind of guy, never settling down and always moseying on. And I figured that being a huntsman was a good way to do that, taking jobs in lots of different places, helping lots of different folks. Because I don’t want to be a burden, you know? I wanted to help out, and… well… that seemed a good way to do it.”</p><p>“That’s nice, Sun,” Ruby said. “I think that’s pretty much what Yang wants too. Although, to be honest, it makes me worry about her sometimes, whether she’ll be okay on her own, wandering from place to place with one to help her.”</p><p>“From what I’ve seen, Yang’s plenty tough,” Sun said. “Tougher than I am, that’s for sure.”</p><p>“A Vacuan admitting to weakness?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“Hey, we’re not all like Team Indigo,” Sun insisted. “The point is, don’t worry about your sister, Ruby; she’ll be fine.”</p><p>“I know,” Ruby said. “I just don’t always remember.” Her brow furrowed. “Hey, Sun… you said ‘didn’t.’”</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“You said you <em>didn’t</em> want to stay in one place, not don’t,” Ruby pointed out.</p><p>“Oh,” Sun said. “Well… it’s just that lately… I guess that I might have, you know, found a different reason to fight.”</p><p>“Aww,” Ruby cooed. “That’s so sweet!”</p><p>“It is rather lovely,” Pyrrha agreed.</p><p>“Don’t you think so too, Blake?” Ruby asked.</p><p>Blake almost smiled. “I’m aware of my good fortune,” she said as she reached out to take Sun’s hand in hers.</p><p>“Okay, get a room you two,” Rainbow said. “Right, who’s left… what about you, Jaune?”</p><p>“I…” Jaune looked away from Rainbow Dash; for a moment, he glanced at Pyrrha sitting beside him, but then he looked away from her as well. He got up off the crate of rifle rounds that he was sitting on. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said and began to walk away down the car towards the head of the train. </p><p>“Jaune, wait!” Pyrrha called as she got up herself and began to follow him. Jaune didn’t stop, but Pyrrha followed him nonetheless into the darker recesses of the badly lit cargo car. </p><p>Sunset was content to follow him with her eyes alone until he passed out of sight, but she could see why Pyrrha had followed because his behaviour was inexplicable to her. She’d always thought that Jaune’s motivations were simple enough and similar to her own in many ways. He wanted to be the hero, and if he didn’t have skill to commend him for the heroic role, then, well, Sunset Shimmer had many faults, but she wasn’t one to fault anyone for having big dreams. His ambition was probably the thing that she respected most about Jaune Arc: he knew what he wanted, and he was willing to put his life on the line for it; whatever else you could say about him, that fact entitled him to a little respect. </p><p>But then why be so reluctant to say it in front of everyone? It wasn’t as if it was especially ridiculous, no more so than what Sunset had said or even Pyrrha. It wasn’t as if the Atlesians were going to laugh at him. So why?</p><p>
  <em>Hopefully, it’s nothing. Hopefully, he’s just out of sorts tonight for whatever reason. Pyrrha will get it out of him, and hopefully, it will blow over after that.</em>
</p><p>“What’s with him?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>“Nothing you need to concern yourself with,” Sunset said. “He’ll be fine when the time comes. We all will.”</p><p>“Sure,” Rainbow said, sounding unconcerned by it all. </p><p>“What about you, Twilight?” Ruby asked. “Why are you here?”</p><p>“I, uh,” Twilight murmured, looking at Rainbow Dash. “I… I’m not really a huntress. I’m just here to help Penny, you see…wait, where is Penny?”</p><p>It was only when Twilight drew attention to the absence of the fourth member of Team RSPT that Sunset noticed that she wasn’t there. There were only seven people here now, with Pyrrha and Jaune having gone elsewhere. Penny was nowhere to be seen.</p><p>Ruby got to her feet. “Maybe she’s still in the other compartment. I’ll check there.”</p><p>“Ciel, go-” Rainbow began, but Ruby had already sped off in a burst of falling rose petals. “Okay, Ciel, follow her and keep an eye on Penny.”</p><p>“Affirmative,” Ciel said as she leapt up and began to follow in the direction Ruby had raced off in.</p><p>
  <em>Perhaps Jaune isn’t the only one who’s out of sorts tonight.</em>
</p><hr/><p>Ruby raced across the coupling joining the two compartments – the one they’d been squatting in and the one with all the robots where they’d first boarded the train – and into car six with its cargo of rank upon rank of Atlesian battle droids. The door to the car was open, and for a moment, Ruby feared that Penny had fallen off the train or something, but after a moment, she could see her standing in the doorway, framed by the moonlight coming in through the open door which cast her white smock in a shade of blue. The silver light danced upon her fair skin.</p><p>Penny was staring up at the source of the moonlight, at the broken moon that hung in the sky above. </p><p>“Do you ever wonder how it got that way?” Ruby asked as she walked across the carriage to join Penny at the open doorway. The moonlit landscape – in the moonlight, the leaves of the forest seemed to glow like burning embers, as though it was a forest of flame that they were passing through and not a forest of leaves – rushed by as the train devoured the miles. “When I was a kid, I used to wonder what happened and why all those pieces didn’t fall down and hit us. I still don’t know what’s holding them up.”</p><p>Penny looked at her. “I’m sorry, Ruby, but I’m afraid I don’t know either.”</p><p>Ruby smiled. “That’s okay, Penny. I didn’t expect you would, I just… I came to find you because no one knew where you were. I was a little bit worried about you.”</p><p>“That… that’s very kind of you,” Penny said. She looked back up at the moon. “As you can see, I’m fine.”</p><p>“Are you?” Ruby asked. “Are you really? Why didn’t you come in and eat with the rest of us?”</p><p>Penny said, “I thought it might be better not to. I… I don’t think Pyrrha likes me very much.”</p><p>“What are you talking about?” Ruby asked. “Pyrrha likes you. She likes you a lot. What would make you think she doesn’t?”</p><p>Penny turned around and gestured to the massed ranks of the Atlesian androids. What moonlight reached inside the carriage to touch them glimmered upon their metallic carapaces. “Pyrrha… doesn’t like robots.”</p><p>“I guess not,” Ruby said, failing to see the relevance. “But-”</p><p>“Ruby, can I tell you a secret?” Penny asked, her voice suddenly sounding urgent. “This is a big secret, but I’ve been given permission to tell Team Sapphire, and I want you to know first of all. Can I trust you, Ruby?”</p><p>Ruby looked into Penny’s eyes. “Of course you can, Penny. You can trust me with anything and everything. Whatever secret you might have to tell, it’s safe with me, I promise.”</p><p>Penny clasped her hands together above her heart, and for a moment, she cringed as if the mere act of considering telling Ruby her secret – whatever that secret might be – made her afraid. “I… I’m not a real girl,” she said. “I… I am a robot, the world’s first ever robot with aura. I was created in a lab in Atlas by my father and Twilight and their team; Mis- General Ironwood sponsored my creation because he believes in me. General Ironwood says that I can save the world one day, but… what that means is that… I’ve been lying to you. I’m not a person, Ruby; I’m not that different from those robots behind me-”</p><p>“You’re nothing like them,” Ruby said in a voice that was simultaneously both firm and gentle. </p><p>Penny’s eyes widened. “Ruby… but-”</p><p>“You’re nothing like them,” Ruby repeated as she reached out and wrapped her hands around those of Penny. Penny’s skin felt natural; if Ruby hadn’t just been told that it was artificial, she would never have realised on her own. It was soft, a little cold, but it felt like skin and not plastic or anything like that. “You just said that you have aura, right? The first robot to ever have aura. But do you know what that means? You know what it means to have aura: it means you’re alive. You have a soul, because that’s what aura is: it’s a manifestation of your soul. You’re not just a machine, even if you do have processors and a power core or whatever. You have a soul. You’re a person, just like me. Just like all of us.”</p><p>Penny’s eyes grew wider still. “You… you mean it?”</p><p>“I do,” Ruby said solemnly.</p><p>“But… Pyrrha said-”</p><p>“Penny,” Ruby interrupted. “If General Ironwood ordered you to kill me, would you do it?”</p><p>“O-of course not!” Penny exclaimed. “You’re… you are my… my friend. I could never hurt you, Ruby.”</p><p>“I know,” Ruby said softly. “I trust you, Penny. If you ever doubt that you’re different from the other robots again, just remember that: you can make your own choices; you don’t have to do just what you’re told.”</p><p>Penny smiled sadly, her bright green eyes filled with melancholy. “Ruby… thank you. To hear you say that means more to me then I know how to say. But that’s not entirely true.”</p><p>She turned away and looked out the open door again, pulling her hands gently out of Ruby’s grasp.</p><p>“What? Why not?”</p><p>“I… I couldn’t help but overhear you talking in the other car,” Penny said. “You were all explaining why you became huntsmen and huntresses. You all have something that you want, something that drives you. All of you… except me.</p><p>“I was created in a lab by Atlesian scientists to be a weapon for the Kingdom of Atlas. I was created to fight. I didn’t choose to become a huntress… I was designed that way.”</p><p>“Penny,” Ruby murmured. “Is this not what you want?”</p><p>“What I want doesn’t matter,” Penny said. “I was created by Atlas to serve Atlas.”</p><p>“Of course it matters!” Ruby exclaimed. “What you want matters; it matters more than anything else in the world. It doesn’t matter what General Ironwood wants or what your father wants, or your team or even the Council of Atlas. Penny, if… if you don’t want to fight, then… then I promise that I’ll do whatever it takes to help you be free of all of them. If that’s what you want.”</p><p>Penny stared at her. Her mouth gaped open. She was completely silent, robbed of speech. She stared at Ruby for so long, it was honestly starting to get uncomfortable.</p><p>“You… you would do that for me?” Penny said.</p><p>“I would,” Ruby said without a trace of hesitation to diminish the resolution of her tone.</p><p>“But… Ruby, do you realise what you’re saying?” Penny asked. “You can’t.”</p><p>“Yes, I do.”</p><p>“But… why?” Penny asked. “Why would you do that… for me?”</p><p>“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Ruby said, “and because…you’re my friend.”</p><p>“Ruby…” Penny enveloped her in a hug that would have been bone-crushing if she hadn’t had her aura up at just the right time. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much. Ruby; why do you fight? Is it only because of your mother and your father and your uncle?”</p><p>Ruby shook her head before she realised that Penny couldn’t see that right now with the way they were hugging. “No, Penny, it isn’t. It’s because… it’s because I can. There are things that I can to protect other people, things that they can’t do to protect themselves. And so… because I can do those things, I think… I think that I ought to do those things, because if I didn’t, then other people might get hurt.”</p><p>“Then that will be my reason for fighting too,” Penny said. “Until… until I can work out what I want to do.”</p><p>“Then when you do,” Ruby murmured. “I’ll be waiting.”</p><hr/><p>Ciel Soleil lurked in the shadows by the car door, silent, watching. She watched everything, heard everything, and as she watched and heard, a smile spread slowly across her features. </p><p>She was a soldier of Atlas, but not a mindless one; she wasn’t a drone like all those AK-190s in there. If Penny could find a reason for fighting beyond the fact that it was what she was made to do, if she could find a cause to drive her on, to light a fire in the pit of her soul and keep her going in the darkest of moments, then so much the better. If Ruby Rose could help her find that cause, then good for her. </p><p>And if Penny couldn’t find that cause, if she in the end decided that she had no desire to fight, then…</p><p>Then Ciel Soleil would not stand in her way. She was a soldier, not a slave-owner. </p><p>Penny Polendina was growing up before her eyes. And it was wonderful to see. </p><hr/><p>“Jaune, wait!” Pyrrha called.</p><p>Jaune finally stopped. There were no windows in these cargo cars, and the ventilation was terrible, so there was a door open ajar near the front of their car to let some fresh air in for them. Jaune stood in front of that partially open doorway, letting the moonlight fall down around him. It fell on Pyrrha too as she approached him. It made her fair skin look ethereal, as though she were a statue made of marble or alabaster. </p><p>She gazed at him with concern in her eyes, eyes that seemed brighter now than he’d ever seen before, the green of her eyes popping out more than they had seemed to do in the past. </p><p>
  <em>God, she’s beautiful.</em>
</p><p>“Jaune,” she repeated. “What’s wrong?”</p><p>“Nothing,” he said, and he meant it. Nothing was wrong; he just… he couldn’t quite bring himself to admit the truth in front of the Atlesians or Sunset. Or even Ruby, to tell the truth. “I just… I didn’t want to talk about it.”</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>“Because…because there are things that I feel like I can only say in front of you,” Jaune confessed. He was a little surprised at how true this was, how true it had become. Pyrrha… he could talk to her. He could unburden himself to her. He could pour out his heart and soul to her in a way that he couldn’t do to anyone else because he felt in some way that wasn’t true of anyone else that she would <em>listen</em> to him. She wouldn’t judge, she wouldn’t criticise, she wouldn’t rail at him for the mistakes he’d made; she’d just listen and counsel him and forgive him everything that he did, even when it hurt her. “Pyrrha… do you remember that night on the rooftop when I told you what… what I’d done? I told you then why I wanted to come to Beacon.”</p><p>“Because you wanted to be a hero, like your ancestors,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>She remembered. Of course she remembered. Jaune got the impression that she remembered everything that he’d ever told her. Every single word. “I meant it then,” he said. “I meant that I wanted to be the hero, not the idiot stuck in the tree while his friends fought for their lives-”</p><p>“You’re not,” Pyrrha said. “You’ve come so far, so quickly, Jaune. I’ve never seen anyone push themselves as hard as you.”</p><p>“Thanks, but I didn’t bring this up so you could put my mind at ease,” Jaune said quickly. “I might not be the idiot stuck in the tree any more, but… I’m not the hero, Pyrrha. And I never will be. I get that now. I just… I couldn’t say it in front of everybody else. Only you.”</p><p>Pyrrha took a step closer to him. “I don’t understand.”</p><p>“I used to think that I could be the hero,” Jaune said. “Save the day, save everybody, kill the monsters, beat back the darkness.” He hesitated, taking in the way she looked in the moonlight. “And then I met a real hero.”</p><p>Pyrrha’s face flushed bright red. “Jaune, I-”</p><p>“I believe in you,” Jaune said. “I believe that you can do all the things that you said you wanted to do back there, if you only try. I believe that if anyone can defeat the grimm and save the world, it’s you, Pyrrha. I’ve never met anyone so brave and so committed as you. And I want to be there to see it when you do, and I want to help you any way I can. But I’ve got no illusions anymore. I’m not the hero, Pyrrha, not of my life and not of this story. You are, or Ruby is, or perhaps even Sunset. But not me. I don’t have… it’s not me. I’m just the backup, but that’s okay. Even if I couldn’t tell the rest of them that, it’s still okay, because I can tell you. If all that I can do is help you reach your destiny, then… then that’s fine by me.”</p><p>“Jaune,” Pyrrha whispered, and it was ridiculous, but he thought for a moment that he heard longing in the way that she said it. “Don’t.”</p><p>He blinked. “Don’t… what?”</p><p>“Why should you be the only one who has to give up on your dreams? It isn’t fair,” Pyrrha declared. “Why should Sunset and I have the right to chase our destinies when you have to give up on yours so that you can support us? I know that you have a semblance that makes it seem like that’s what you need to do, and I know that you don’t have the training that I have, but I don’t think that you… I don’t want you to give up on your dreams. The fact that you don’t, the fact that you can hold on to what you want, I… I admire that about you. The fact that you believe in yourself… it makes it a little easier for me to believe in myself too. Please don’t let that go. Keep reaching for your dreams, and I… I promise that I will help you to reach them.”</p><p>“Pyrrha, I…” Jaune could only stare at her. She looked so beautiful. The way the moonlight shone on her skin. She always looked gorgeous, but somehow, in this moment, she looked even lovelier, even moreso than he had thought possible.</p><p>He kissed her, because how could he be expected to resist, with her looking as beautiful as she did, as fair and lovely? He took her in his arms and felt her melt into his embrace as their lips met. Their kisses were fumbling, inexperienced still, but Jaune didn’t care; he was pretty sure that Pyrrha didn’t care either, given the way that he seemed to leave her breathless even though he had no more idea what he was doing with kissing than he did with romance in general. And even after the kiss was done, Pyrrha kept her arms wrapped around him, leaning against him, his arms around her in turn. </p><p>“Thank you,” he said, “for caring whether I give up or not.”</p><p>“Jaune,” Pyrrha murmured. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“'Sorry'?” Jaune repeated. “Pyrrha, what do you have to be sorry about?”</p><p>“I’ve been…” Pyrrha hesitated for a moment. “Conservative, in my training of you. I’ve been able to justify it to myself, able to tell myself that I was teaching you as I was taught: the same techniques, the same footwork, the same style of fighting. But you’re not me, and my style isn’t a perfect fit for you.” She took a deep breath; Jaune could feel the rise and fall of her chest against his own. “For all your improvement, you don’t have my agility, my speed; you need to learn to fight differently from me, and I could see that, and there are techniques that I could have suggested to you, but I didn’t. Because the truth is… the truth is that I was afraid that if I pointed you in the direction of flashier, more powerful techniques, then you’d neglect the basics.” She took a step back. Jaune’s arms fell away from her; he had no desire to hold her in place against her will. “And perhaps… perhaps I just didn’t want to lose you to another teacher; I enjoyed the time we spent together too much. But I should have had more faith in you, and I should have put your desire to improve above what I wanted. I’m sorry,” she repeated.</p><p>“Pyrrha, you don’t need to say that,” Jaune said.</p><p>“But I’m the reason that-”</p><p>“That I’ve come as far as I have,” Jaune cut her off. “All of that is down to you. If it wasn’t for you, I’d still be disturbing Weiss up on her rooftop every night, exhausting myself and getting nowhere. And the truth is… you might have been right, at first. I would have jumped at a shortcut and not bothered with all of the basics that I needed to get down first. And I’m not sure that I would have been ready for another teacher, at first. I’m not sure if anyone else would have put up with me, but I know that no one else would have been as patient with me as you, as understanding as you, have explained everything to me as well as you. You’re the best teacher I could have asked for, the best partner I could have asked for. I got really lucky, when I ran into you, first day at Beacon.”</p><p>“Oh, Jaune,” Pyrrha murmured, looking away from him as her cheeks flushed red. “That… that’s very kind of you. But the truth is…” She grasped her sash in both hands, playing with it. “The truth is that I think that you’re ready for the next step.”</p><p>“Which is?”</p><p>“Well, I have two ideas,” Pyrrha explained, still not looking at him. “The first is that I’m going to ask Dove to be your sparring partner one night each week; I think that… do I guess right that you sometimes find it hard to see how much you’re improving against me?”</p><p>Jaune laughed nervously. “Well, I don’t seem to be getting any closer to beating you.”</p><p>“Dove is a little closer to you in skill, so I’m hoping that your improvement will be more obvious.”</p><p>“That sounds fair enough,” Jaune replied, “but why should Dove help me out like that?”</p><p>“I’m not sure of that yet,” Pyrrha admitted. “I’ll see if I can find a way to persuade him. My other idea is to use your aura more to attack.”</p><p>“You mean like Rainbow Dash?”</p><p>“Something like that,” Pyrrha murmured. “I have to admit,” – she looked around, as if she was worried the Atlesian team leader might be listening – “that I find Rainbow’s technique rather wasteful; she expends a lot of aura for the effect she achieves and squanders a lot of it in the sound effect; my old rival from the arena, Arslan, uses a similar technique but much more efficiently. In any case, I was thinking less of expelling your aura through your hands and more through your sword. I never learned how to do that, and I’m not sure at the moment who the best person to teach you would be, but I’ll find someone.”</p><p>“<em>We’ll</em> find someone,” Jaune corrected her. “After all, I should probably put in a little work for my own tuition, right?”</p><p>Pyrrha turned back at him, smiling. “All right then, we’ll find someone. Just don’t give up, Jaune; promise me you won’t give up. In time, you’ll be as strong as any of us.”</p><p>“I promise,” Jaune vowed. “I won’t give up.” He wasn’t sure that she was right, wasn’t sure that he could ever become that strong, but he would try. </p><p>For her, he would try.</p><p>For her, he would keep his promise.</p><p>For her, he would do anything. </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Why We Fight, Part Two</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Blake and Sun talk about their relationship; Penny confesses her secret to Pyrrha</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Why We Fight, Part Two</p><p> </p><p>Ciel was on watch. Rainbow in turn watched <em>her</em> for a moment, standing in the open doorway of the railway car, looking out as the landscape flew past. If anything happened, Ciel would spot it and wake the others who were all sleeping in the small arms car that they had claimed for their living space.</p><p>If anything happened, Ciel would spot it. </p><p>Rainbow turned away and headed into the next car along, where she and Twi wouldn’t be disturbing anybody else. </p><p>Twilight was already waiting for her in the other carriage, sitting demurely on her knees in front of all the battle droids with her scroll out and held in front of her. A smile played across her features as she waited, and her face brightened as Rainbow Dash came in. “Are you ready?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Rainbow said as she sat down besides Twilight, their shoulders touching their bodies leaning against one another. </p><p>Twilight’s folder was not, as Rainbow’s was, labelled ‘Spectacular Six.’ Twilight had gone with the more prosaic ‘Friends.’ </p><p>She clicked on it. </p><p>Five boxes appeared on the screen, all black, all waiting for responses. Rainbow’s scroll began to buzz, but she ignored it. </p><p>“Aren’t you going to get that?” Twilight asked. “It might be something important.”</p><p>“Very funny,” Rainbow said.</p><p>One of the black boxes was replaced by the image of Pinkie Pie, her face pressed so close to her scroll that she was obscuring everything behind her. “DASHIE! Twilight!”</p><p>“Hi, Pinkie,” Twilight said.</p><p>Rainbow grinned. “Hey, Pinkie, how’s it going?”</p><p>“Things are going pretty great around here,” Pinkie answered. “I mean, not as great as they’d be if you two were here, obviously, but apart from that, they’re going pretty great. I just got back from throwing Sweetie Belle’s birthday party-”</p><p>“Wait, that was today?” Rainbow asked. “Was I supposed to send a present or something?”</p><p>“Don’t worry, darling. I had no expectations on that front,” Rarity said as she joined the call. “Now, if it had been Scootaloo’s birthday, then I think we all would have had some rather harsh words for you.”</p><p>“I would have had some harsh words for me too,” Rainbow agreed.</p><p>“It’s fine, Rainbow Dash,” Rarity assured her. “No one expects to get a present from a friend of their older sister. Twilight, how are you, dear?”</p><p>“I’m fine, Rarity, thank you for asking.”</p><p>“I’m delighted to hear it, darling. I only ask because I know that being out in the field isn’t your natural habitat.”</p><p>“Hey, it’s not like she’s having to survive by herself,” Rainbow said indignantly. “I take care of her.”</p><p>“I know you do, Rainbow, but even so,” Rarity said. “Twilight, are you sure you’re alright?”</p><p>Twilight smiled fondly. “I’m very sure, thank you, Rarity,” she said. “Rainbow takes very good care of me.”</p><p>“I’m glad to hear it, and I’m sure you know your own state best, so I won’t ask again,” Rarity said. “I’m terribly sorry, Pinkie dear, I seem to have interrupted you.”</p><p>“It’s okay,” Pinkie said amiably. “It was a pretty great party for Sweetie Belle though, wasn’t it?”</p><p>“Oh, you outdid yourself, Pinkie; the girls had an absolutely marvellous time.”</p><p>Fluttershy was the next to join the call. “I’m sorry, am I late?”</p><p>“Not really, we were just missing you,” Rainbow said. “How are you doing, Fluttershy?”</p><p>“Is Applejack coming?” Pinkie asked.</p><p>“Yes,” Fluttershy said. “She just had to-”</p><p>“Howdy, folks; sorry, but I’d left my scroll back at camp when I went to fetch some water,” Applejack said as her video-feed cut in to join the rest of them. She pushed her hat upwards on her head. “Well, how’s everyone doin’ tonight?”</p><p>“We got our tickets to the Vytal Festival!” Pinkie chirruped eagerly. “Rarity paid for mine and for the hotel and everything!”</p><p>“Really?” Twilight asked. “That’s very generous of you, Rarity.”</p><p>“Yes, well, in this case, it’s my parents’ generosity that you should be praising,” Rarity said, sounding slightly uncomfortable at the praise she was receiving. “Once they understood that we wanted to see our friend closer than on a television screen, they were happy enough to pay for an extra ticket. It makes sense to make all the arrangements now before the good hotels in Vale get booked up and to make them together like we have with Scootaloo and the Apples so that we’re all staying together and don’t have to go out of our way to find each other. Fluttershy, Applejack, do you think you’ll be able to make it to the festival for a reunion, or will your ramble through the countryside keep you away?”</p><p>Fluttershy and Applejack glanced at each other, or at least, that was what it seemed like they were doing; it was hard to say for sure on the screen of a scroll. </p><p>“We’ll be back,” Fluttershy declared. “It doesn’t matter if we have to cut my trip a little short. I’ll make it back in time for us to cheer you on.”</p><p>“You don’t have to do that,” Rainbow declared. “If you’re seeing, like, some super rare butterflies or-”</p><p>“Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy said gently. “Do you mean to say this isn’t important to you?”</p><p>Rainbow had always found it incredibly hard to lie to Fluttershy, although not for the same reasons that it was hard to lie to Applejack. It was hard to lie to Applejack because she could tell as often as not when you were making something up, but it was hard to lie to Fluttershy for the simple reason that you felt like a jackass afterwards. </p><p>And so you told the truth.</p><p>And the truth was… this was important to her. Even if she wouldn’t be able to go all the way to the one-on-one rounds like she wanted to – that honour being reserved for Penny – the fact remained that this was a huge deal for her, a chance for her to strut her stuff on the biggest stage in all of Remnant, a chance for her to stand in front of the world and say ‘I’m Rainbow Dash, and this is how awesome I am!’ A chance for her to show Scootaloo that you could be whatever you wanted to be, so long as you were willing to work hard for it. </p><p>“Yeah,” she murmured. “This matters to me.”</p><p>“Then I’ll be there, in the front row,” Fluttershy promised. “We both will.”</p><p>Rainbow smiled. “Thanks, Fluttershy. Thanks, girls. That… it really means a lot.”</p><p>“How are things going out there, Fluttershy?” Twilight asked.</p><p>“Oh, it’s been wonderful so far,” Fluttershy exclaimed. “Without human habitation to worry about, animals have been able to thrive all over Vale. So far, we’ve seen otters and beavers and badgers and hedgehogs, and we even got chased by wild boar once after we strayed into their territory.”</p><p>“You’re sure that wasn’t a boarbatusk, right?” Rainbow asked anxiously.</p><p>“I know the difference between a boar and a boarbatusk,” Applejack declared proudly. “It definitely wasn’t black, and it definitely didn’t have any bone on the outside. Besides, if it had been a grimm, I would have just shot it, or else sicced Winona on it, but on account of it being a boar-”</p><p>“I didn’t think that we should hurt it,” Fluttershy said. “After all, we were the ones who trespassed into its territory.” She smiled. “But thanks to Applejack, I’ve had a great time, and I’ll have learned so much by the time we come back to Vale for the festival. Rarity, how are things going with you?”</p><p>“Oh, absolutely fabulous, darling, so kind of you to ask,” Rarity said. “I’ve just discovered a new kind of fabric that is just <em>delightful </em>to work with, and…”</p><p>Rainbow lost track of how long they’d been talking, of how long Rarity discoursed on her new fabrics, how long Pinkie talked about her new cupcake recipes, how they checked up on the pets she was looking after for them, how they just talked about everything and nothing at all, about one another and their sisters and their families and their lives. Lives that had nothing to do with the grimm or war or the White Fang because Rainbow and Applejack kept them safe from all that – Pinkie, Rarity, and Fluttershy, at least; they’d been unable to prevent Twilight being dragged into it. </p><p>They talked, and there were times when it felt as though they were all sitting around the table in Sugarcube Corner, eating ice-cream sundaes like they had last year, back in Atlas. </p><p>She really hoped that they could all meet up in person for the Vytal Festival; she hoped that Pinkie could envelop them all in a great big hug, that they could sit down and talk in person, that it could be a little more like the old days than even this was. </p><p>She hoped it could be so.</p><p>They talked and talked, and it was only when Twilight started to yawn that Rainbow realised that they’d probably been at this for quite some time. </p><p>“I think we should probably call it a night,” she said sheepishly.</p><p>“No,” Twilight said. “I’m sorry, I-”</p><p>Applejack chuckled. “Don’t worry, sugarcube; wherever we are, we all need to be fresh come morning. Looks like this is goodbye for now.”</p><p>“Ooh, ooh, one more thing before we all say goodbye,” Pinkie said. She beamed brightly as she began to sing, “Oh oh oh, oh oh oh.”</p><p>Rainbow shook her head. “No, no, we are not singing.”</p><p>“Aww, come on, Rainbow!”</p><p>“I’m sorry, Pinkie, but if Sunset Shimmer hears me singing that song, she’ll never-” Rainbow hesitated, because what was more important really, her friend or Sunset? “You know what? Screw Sunset, let’s go for it. Come on, Pinkie, lead us in.”</p><p>“Oh oh oh,” Pinkie began.</p><p>“Oh oh oh,” Rainbow added.</p><p>“You are my Canterlot Girls,” they both sang together as, one by one, the others joined in.</p><p>“You turn the light switch on,</p><p>It brightens up my day like the sun,</p><p>When my friends come a runnin’,</p><p>You were right all along, </p><p>That together we’re always better,</p><p>We could turn a sketch into a masterpiece,</p><p>When you are here I feel like I’m complete,</p><p>You are my Canterlot Girls!”</p><p>They giggled as they signed off one by one, each bidding the others goodnight until they met again.</p><p>Until they met again. </p><p>If they ever met again, if the battles against the White Fang or the grimm did not claim her life, if Applejack and Fluttershy managed to make it back to Vale okay, if, if, so many damn ifs.</p><p>“Rainbow Dash?” Twilight asked as she hung up. </p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“We’re going to make it, aren’t we?” Twilight said. “Us, Applejack, Fluttershy. We’re all going to make it and see our friends again.”</p><p>Rainbow looked at her. “Yeah. You’re going to make it. I-”</p><p>“No, Rainbow Dash, not me, us,” Twilight said firmly, even fervently. “I know that you’d give your life to save me, but that’s not what I want to know. I want to know if we’re all going to make it. I want you to tell me that we’re all going to make it, even… even if it isn’t true.”</p><p>Rainbow tried to smile. “We’re all going to make it,” she said. “We’re all going to make it, and we’re all going to meet up at the Vytal Festival and have ice cream, just like old times.”</p><p>
  <em>When you are here I feel like I’m complete.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>When will we be complete again?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>At the Vytal festival, maybe?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I hope so. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I really hope so.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Fluttershy, Applejack, stay safe. Wherever you are, stay safe.</em>
</p><hr/><p>Blake had climbed up onto the roof of the train, the better to get a clear view of the world on both sides of the southward bound train. She was aware that there was a risk that she might be spotted, many faunus of the White Fang having night vision as good as Blake herself, but she hoped that, if there was anyone out watching the train, then they wouldn’t be dissuaded from their mission by the presence of a single sentry. </p><p>And besides, she wanted to take a look. She would rather see the ambush coming, even if it was a bit of a risk. </p><p>And so, she stood upon the roof of the railcar, her legs spread out a little for balance as the train rattled and rumbled along. </p><p>She looked to the left and to the right and saw nothing. Her feline eyes pierced the darkness and saw nothing; it might be the trees concealed them, but it might be that there was – as yet – nothing to see. </p><p>With good fortune, that would, indeed, prove to be the case. It would be better for everyone if the confrontation to which they were hurtling – to which they aimed to be hurtling – took place under the light of the sun when more than just Blake could see clearly. </p><p>“Blake?” the voice was Sun’s. Blake glanced over her shoulder to see him clambering onto the train roof after her. He spread his arms out on either side of him, swaying left and right for a moment before he got his balance on the moving surface sorted. </p><p>“What are you doing up here?” he asked. “Is everything okay?”</p><p>“I’m just taking a look around,” Blake said. She paused. “Why wouldn’t everything be okay?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Sun said. “You just look a little… broody.” He grinned. “I guess that’s just the default with you, huh?”</p><p>Blake’s eyes narrowed.</p><p>Sun's smile widened endearingly, or at least, he seemed to hope that it was endearing.</p><p>Blake rolled her eyes. “I’m not brooding,” she muttered. “Not right now, anyway.”</p><p>“That’s good to hear,” Sun replied. He took a cautious step towards her, and then another, his tail sticking straight out behind him like he was trying to use it to help him balance. “Because, if you have anything that you need to brood on, you know you can always talk to me instead, right?”</p><p>Blake turned to face him. “I… need to get better at remembering that,” she admitted. “Anyway, we should go back down into the train.”</p><p>“Right now?” Sun asked. “Do we have to?”</p><p>Blake frowned. “Is there something wrong with <em>you?</em>” she asked.</p><p>“No,” Sun answered quickly. “Not wrong, exactly, I just… can we talk?”</p><p>“Up here?” Blake said. “You don’t seem very comfortable.”</p><p>“I’m not,” Sun admitted. “But no one can overhear us up here.”</p><p>The frown remained on Blake’s face. “What’s wrong?”</p><p>“Do you remember what you were talking to Pyrrha about earlier today?” Sun asked. “When you were talking about Penny’s fairy tales?”</p><p>“I… sure,” Blake said. “<em>The Little Angel</em>, right?”</p><p>“You talked about transformation,” Sun reminded her. “You, uh, you weren’t much of a fan.”</p><p>“No,” Blake murmured. The idea of changing yourself to fit someone else’s idea of what you ought to be, it… it hit too close to home for her to enjoy stories like that anymore. Pyrrha might say that the angel was becoming her true self so that she could love and be loved, and that was all very well for Pyrrha to say  – and Blake could even see why Pyrrha wanted to see it so; she would even say that for Pyrrha, it really was happening just like that, Jaune had seen her for who she really was and appreciated her for it. But Blake had thought that she was becoming once, becoming the person she was meant to be and being seen and loved for who she really was… but she had gradually come to realise that what she had thought was becoming was really Adam forcing her to become someone who suited him better. </p><p>
  <em>If the prince really loved her, then she wouldn’t have needed to shed her wings to obtain his love. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>And if he didn’t know her, then she was stupid to cast away a part of who she was in the hope that they would fall in love. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Because she didn’t love him; how could she? What she felt was… just dangerous.</em>
</p><p>“Did you mean it?” Sun asked anxiously.</p><p>“I did,” Blake replied and noticed that he seemed to wilt a little as he said. “Sun, why are you asking me this?”</p><p>“I just… I don’t think that all change has to be a bad thing, does it?” Sun asked. “I mean it’s not as though we start out perfect, right? We’ve all got things we can improve on.”</p><p>“Of course, and I don’t dispute that,” Blake said. “I know that I’m not perfect, but that-” She cut herself off. She hadn’t talked too much to Sun – or to anyone – about Adam or about what it had been like with him. They couldn’t be ignorant of the fact that she and Adam had been together, but at the same time… she didn’t want to spill the truth, not even to Sun. She felt she had a right to that much privacy. “There’s a difference,” she whispered, “between me recognising that I have flaws and trying to move past them and someone else deciding that who I am isn’t good enough and that I should change to please them better. No one should change who they are for someone else.”</p><p>“I’m willing to change,” Sun said. “For you.”</p><p>Blake gasped. Her eyes widened. She wished… she wished that he had said anything but that, anything at all. She would have rather that he ended things than say that as though it was a mark of his commitment. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t say that, Sun; you mustn’t say that.”</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>“Because it makes me feel like him!” Blake cried, taking a step back and away from Sun. “And I’m not… I don’t want to… I won’t be like him. I won’t remake you in my image and call it love.”</p><p>“You’re not,” Sun declared. “You’re not like that guy; you’re not doing… that.”</p><p>“Then why do you think that you should change who you are for my sake?”</p><p>“Because I’ll lose you the way I am!” Sun shouted. “Because… because I’m not the guy you want, not like this. You don’t want someone who can’t settle down, someone whose feet start to itch if he stands still for too long, someone-”</p><p>“Footloose and fancy free?” Blake suggested. “Sun, if that’s who you are, then I have no right to demand that you change that.”</p><p>“But it’s not who <em>you</em> are,” Sun said. “Is it?”</p><p>“I…” Blake hesitated. “I don’t know who I am, Sun. I don’t know what’s me and… and what are the parts that he made of me.”</p><p>Sun stared into her eyes. “I do,” he said. “You’re not the person who walks away when the monster’s gone; you’re the person who stays and fights for what she believes in until all the problems are taken care of. And I-”</p><p>“Don’t,” Blake said, holding up one hand, and arm, so that the moonlight started glinting off her armband. “Please don’t. I know that… that we don’t seem to be a perfect fit, but… but that doesn’t mean that you need to change who you are for me. I don’t want you to change who you are for me.”</p><p>“But-”</p><p> “It doesn’t matter right now,” Blake insisted. “Nothing is stopping us being together now, and later… I’m not ready to fall in love yet, not again, not after… and it has nothing to do with you.” She forced a smile onto her face. “You’re perfect just the way you are.”</p><p>“For now,” Sun murmured.</p><p>“Isn’t 'for now' enough?” Blake asked.</p><p>“With you?” Sun asked. “Yeah, it’s more than enough.”</p><hr/><p>Jaune plucked at the strings of his guitar. “I, uh, I’m not really sure how good I am. I never had much of an audience outside of my sisters, but, uh, well… are you sure you want to hear this?”</p><p>Pyrrha smiled. “I can’t wait,” she said softly.</p><p>A flush of colour rose to Jaune’s cheeks. “Okay then, well, why don’t we-?”</p><p>“Pyrrha?”</p><p>Pyrrha looked around. It was Ruby who had spoken, but Ruby was standing behind Penny, half-hidden behind her, her hands upon the Atlesian girl’s shoulders as though she was both supporting her and stopping her from running away, although why Penny would want to run away was something that Pyrrha couldn’t fathom. </p><p>Pyrrha got to her feet; she and Jaune had both sat down for him to give her a performance, but now, she rose again. “Ruby, Penny,” she greeted, “is something wrong?”</p><p>Penny certainly looked as though something was wrong, it had to be said; her head was bowed, and she had her hands clasped together in front of her. “N-no,” she said, “there’s nothing wrong.” She hiccupped. “I should go.”</p><p>“Penny, no,” Ruby hissed, whispering something into Penny’s ear.</p><p>Pyrrha took a step towards them. Her boots tapped against the metal floor of the train. “Penny, what’s the matter?”</p><p>“Nothing!” Penny cried, before hiccupping again.</p><p>“Do you need me to go?” Jaune asked.</p><p>“No!” Penny said loudly, and this time, she didn’t hiccup. “I… I’ve been given permission to tell all of you. I just…” She looked at Ruby, her expression stricken with fear. </p><p>Ruby nodded eagerly. “It’ll be okay, Penny.”</p><p>“Penny,” Pyrrha said gently, “if there is something that you want to tell us, then there’s no need for you to be afraid of saying it.”</p><p>Penny didn’t look reassured by that. “I… Ruby has something important to tell you on my behalf!”</p><p>“What?” Ruby cried. “This isn’t what we talked about!”</p><p>“I want you to tell them,” Penny said.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because you’ll know how to say it.”</p><p>“No, I don’t!”</p><p>“But I don’t know how to say it either!” Penny cried.</p><p>“Say what?” Jaune demanded. “Why don’t one of you just spit it out, whatever it is?”</p><p>“Penny’s a robot!” Ruby cried, her words followed hard upon by a squeak of alarm as her hands left Penny’s shoulders and flew to her mouth. </p><p>Penny did not run, but she tensed to do so, her legs bending and bracing, her whole body lowering as though she were a sprinter waiting for the starting gun. </p><p>Pyrrha’s eyes widened. A robot? Penny was a robot? That was… how was that possible?</p><p>“Oh,” Jaune said, in a tone of flat surprise. “I… okay.”</p><p>“Really?” Pyrrha asked, for want of anything else to say. Her mind seemed to have been dried of words. </p><p>Penny bowed her head, but it was still just about possible to make out a nod. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I’m a robot. My father… built me in a lab in Atlas, with the help of Twilight and some other people you haven’t met. That is the reason why Team Rosepetal gets changed in a different part of the locker room from all the other first years, even from Team Sapphire: it’s because, if people saw me… outside of my clothes, I don’t look entirely human.”</p><p>Pyrrha didn’t ask what that meant, and neither did Jaune. Pyrrha found herself staring and, upon realising it, felt ashamed of herself. Not just for staring but for the reasons why Penny looked so nervous around her which were now as clear as daylight in her mind. </p><p>She bowed, her teal drops, hanging on chains from her circlet, falling down on either side of her eyes. “I’m sorry, Penny.”</p><p>Now, it was Penny’s turn to gasp in surprise. “'Sorry'? But, sorry for what?”</p><p>“For what I said, earlier tonight,” Pyrrha explained. “Knowing what I know now, I can only imagine how I must have upset you. That wasn’t my intent, but we are judged not by our intentions, but by our deeds and by the effect those deeds have on others… but the effect that my words had on you which are plain to see. For that, I can only hope that my apology is enough, and if it is not… any way that I can make it up to you, I will.”</p><p>“But… but I’m a robot,” Penny protested. “Just like all of these androids on this train.”</p><p>Pyrrha smiled thinly. “I don’t think that you’re exactly like them. You… you have aura, don’t you?” It was the only explanation that made sense. She had seen Penny’s aura on the board in combat class, when Penny had been called up to face some luckless opponent, and it was more logical to assume by that that Penny had aura than that everyone was somehow and for some reason being deceived into thinking that she had that which she, in truth, had not.</p><p>“Yes,” Penny said. “I’m the world’s first robot with aura.”</p><p>Even though it was the response she had suspected and expected, hearing confirmation of it from Penny’s own lips made Pyrrha’s mouth form an O and her eyes widen a little. “Extraordinary,” she murmured. She couldn’t imagine how the idea had even been conceived of, let alone accomplished. Making aura? Making a soul? A religious person might have found the idea rather horrifying, but as somebody who ticked the ‘spiritual, not religious’ box on her census form, Pyrrha found herself rather in awe of the accomplishment. </p><p>“You have a soul, then,” she said. “In that alone, you are nothing like any other robot in the world, and by being so unalike in the most important way… you’re barely like them at all. I… I stand by what I said about Atlas’s other robots, but you… you’re not like them. You have a soul and, having a soul, are free.”</p><p>Penny’s lips twitched upwards in a smile. “Ruby said something like that.”</p><p>“And Ruby can be very wise,” Pyrrha said with a glance at her teammate. “Please don’t take what I said to heart. I meant no offence by it.”</p><p>“It’s the control that Pyrrha objects to,” Jaune said. “Isn’t it? Not the… the robot-ness in and of itself.”</p><p>“Indeed,” Pyrrha said. “We’re not just weapons, and because of that… we cannot stop asking if what we’re being asked to do is the right thing. But you can question, as much as I can, you can ask, and you can refuse, for all that these other androids cannot. I’m sorry if you thought that I had something against you.”</p><p>“It’s okay,” Penny murmured. “I… I think I understand why you feel the way you do, and I understand… it was just hard, to think that someone I admire so much might… hate me for what I am, so that who I was didn’t matter anymore. Blake… she said that… she took it back, but I wasn’t sure if… I’m so glad that you and Ruby feel this way.”</p><p>“And me, too,” Jaune said. “No matter what you’re made of, you’re still one of us in my book.”</p><p>“Thank you, Jaune,” Penny said sweetly. “Although…”</p><p>“Penny?” Pyrrha asked. “Is there something else?”</p><p>“I have permission to tell Team Sapphire the truth about what I am,” Penny said, “but that doesn’t change the fact that General Ironwood doesn’t want many people to know about it, so you won’t tell anyone else, will you?” she looked anxiously at Ruby, at Pyrrha, and at Jaune.</p><p>“Of course not,” Ruby declared. “You’re our friend; we would never do that to you.”</p><p>“Your secret’s safe with us,” Jaune said.</p><p>“For my part, I promise that nobody will hear of it from me,” Pyrrha vowed, placing one hand over her heart. “You have my word.”</p><p>Penny smiled. “Thank you, Pyrrha. That means a lot.”</p><p>“Although,” Pyrrha added, “I don’t see why the need to keep what… to keep your true nature a secret from everyone. What purpose does it serve?” <em>And how would you keep it a secret for a long time?</em> Did Penny age? It seemed a rude question to come out and ask her directly, but at the same time, Pyrrha could only assume that the answer was ‘no,’ because how could materials age in the way that a person did? Some people retained a youthful countenance – one of Pyrrha’s beauty consultants had told her once that her skin would keep her looking young, provided she took proper care of it – but at some point, people were going to notice that Penny wasn’t ageing a day over seventeen, surely? Looking closer to fifteen than seventeen, in point of fact. Why lie to the world, when it was sure to come out at some point?</p><p>“I think,” Penny said, after a moment’s thought, “that it’s a little because some people might not like it – a robot who looks like a human, a synthetic being with aura – but mostly, I think it’s just so I have an advantage in the tournament next semester. My father really wants me to win.”</p><p>“I know exactly what you mean,” Pyrrha said. “I…” She hesitated, but decided that, after sharing with Pyrrha and the rest her greatest secret, Penny might be said to be owed a secret from Pyrrha in return “My semblance is polarity,” she said. “It gives me the power to manipulate metal.”</p><p>Penny’s eyes widened. “Really? But lots of people don’t even think you’ve discovered your semblance! You’ve never-”</p><p>“Precisely,” Pyrrha said. “Like you, I keep my full potential a secret in order to retain a competitive edge if I should need it. I suppose it makes competitive sense, although…”</p><p>“Although what?” Penny asked.</p><p>“Pyrrha,” Jaune ventured, “hasn’t always found that… Pyrrha… it’s hard to explain, Penny; we should probably let Pyrrha tell you.”</p><p> “Tell me something, Penny,” Pyrrha said. “Do <em>you</em> want to win the Vytal Festival? Not your father, not General Ironwood, but <em>you?</em> Is that what <em>you</em> want?”</p><p>Penny tilted her head first one way and then the other. “I… yes, I think I would,” she confessed. “At least, I want to be…” She stopped. “I’ve never been in a tournament before; what’s it like?”</p><p>“Intimidating, if you don’t like crowds,” Ruby muttered.</p><p>A slight smile crossed Pyrrha’s face. “Forget everything that you have learned about combat in the field, because a tournament is nothing like that. This will be my first Vytal Festival too, and I can’t speak for the team rounds, but when it gets to the one-on-one rounds… when it’s just you and your opponent, facing each other across the circle, that is combat at its purest essence. No reinforcements, no tricks, no surprises: just you and your opponent matching the skills that you’ve honed and refined against each other. Of course, it goes the other way as well: competing in tournaments isn’t always the best preparation for going out and confronting monsters, but when you find yourself in the arena, that little space becomes the whole world to you, that crowd that you can hear cheering you on become all the people in the world, and when you win and throw down your opponent, the exhilaration…” She sighed. “For a long time, I thought that was the greatest feeling in the world.”</p><p>“Did you find something better?” Penny asked.</p><p>“Yes,” Pyrrha said softly, glancing at Jaune as she thought of the sensation of his kisses, so clumsy but at the same time so wonderfully full of feeling. That made her blush, and she decided that she didn’t necessarily want Penny to ask her about it. “But, uh, even so,” she continued with a slightly forced laugh, “it’s still a great feeling, to triumph in that space like that.”</p><p>“It sounds incredible,” Penny said in wonderous longing.</p><p>“It is,” Pyrrha agreed. She couldn’t stifle a sigh before she said, “Actually winning the tournament, on the other hand, is something else altogether. Something rather less pleasant.”</p><p>Penny frowned. “I don’t understand. If winning the matches feels so good, then what’s the problem with winning the tournament?”</p><p>“Because once you win the tournament, you…” Pyrrha sought the right words to explain it. “You become the property of everyone who watched you win the tournament. They feel as though they know you, even though they don’t and never will, and because they feel that way, they feel entitled to your time and to yourself, and all the while, you’re prevented from ever getting close enough to really know anyone at all because of your status and everything else that surrounds you. Competition can be exhilarating if you feel that way, but victory… there are times when I’m not sure that I would wish the cost of victory on anyone.”</p><p>“I… aren’t your teammates close to you?”</p><p>“Yes!” Pyrrha said quickly, before Ruby or Jaune could respond. “Of course they are, and they know it too, but…  I had to almost retire from the tournament circuit and come to Beacon in order to have a chance at a normal life. I don’t know. Perhaps my own experience isn’t universal. I wouldn’t want you to think that I was trying to put you off. You should do what you think is best, what you want.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Penny mused. “I… when you describe what it feels like to win in a tournament, it sounds like all I’ve ever dreamed, except that none of my dreams ever meant that I’d have to say goodbye to my friends. So I suppose… I don’t really know what I want.”</p><p>“I see,” Pyrrha murmured. “Penny, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”</p><p>“Sure,” Penny said. “Go right ahead.”</p><p>“How old are you?”</p><p>Penny smiled. “I am eleven months and fifteen days old.”</p><p>“Really?” Jaune explained. “That… that’s really young!”</p><p>“So?” Ruby asked. “Even if Penny’s young, she’s old enough to understand what she’s doing and old enough to fight.”</p><p>“I suppose,” Pyrrha murmured, feeling ever so slightly appalled at the idea that this mere child – she was aware that there were many who wouldn’t consider her a child, but this was surely something else altogether – being placed into such danger. But, on the other hand, if Penny didn’t mind, then who was she to judge either her circumstances or those closer to her than Pyrrha herself who had placed her in this situation? She mastered her feelings of mild disgust and kept them off her face. “In that case, perhaps it isn’t so surprising that you haven’t figured out exactly what you want yet.”</p><p>“I do have a lot to learn,” Penny acknowledged. “I think that’s a reason General Ironwood wants me to enter the tournament. I’ve studied great fighters like you, but by competing against the best in Remnant, I’ll learn so much more about different ways of fighting.”</p><p>“You flatter me, Penny,” Pyrrha said lightly. And then, because she didn’t want to experience any more flattery, she continued, “But do you <em>want</em> to fight in the tournament? Do you enjoy fighting?”</p><p>“Not against the grimm,” Penny admitted, “but sparring can be fun. I’d like to at least try this Vytal Tournament, if only to see what it’s like. And besides, I’m not sure how my father or General Ironwood would take it if I told them that I didn’t want to do it now.”</p><p>“If they care for you and have your best interests at heart, then I’m sure that they would accept any decision that you make,” Pyrrha said, albeit with a touch more hope than any knowledge born out of experience. “As I said, I’d hate to discourage you from something that you want to try. In any case, Penny, perhaps you’d allow me to give you some advice if you wish to fight, in the arena or in battle.”</p><p>“Of course,” Penny said. “I’d welcome any help that someone as great as you could give me.”</p><p>“You really don’t have to flatter me like this.”</p><p>“I’m not,” Penny said. “As part of my initial training, I watched footage of all of your fights alongside other elite fighters. You’re amazing! I can’t wait until we get to meet in the tournament and I can see how I stack up against you. I know that my father is looking forward to that as well.”</p><p>“Is he?” Pyrrha murmured. <em>Hearing that, Mother would probably disapprove of what I’m about to do. So might Sunset, for that matter.</em> “From what I’ve seen of you in action, you share a common fault with Ruby in that you rely very heavily upon your weapons.”</p><p>“Doesn’t every huntsman rely on their weapons?” Jaune asked.</p><p>“To an extent,” Pyrrha conceded, “but Ruby wouldn’t know what to do without hers, would you, Ruby?”</p><p>Ruby pouted. “No,” she muttered aggrievedly. “Yang tried to teach me how to throw a punch before the year started, but I never got the point of it.”</p><p>“The point is that you might be disarmed,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>“You never taught me how to throw a punch,” Jaune pointed out.</p><p>“I… thought that perhaps you should concentrate on mastering your weapons first,” Pyrrha told him.</p><p>“Ah,” Jaune replied. “Yeah, that makes sense.”</p><p>“But, in general, I think it’s best if you have some idea of what to do if you found yourself without your weapons or in a situation where you could make best use of them,” Pyrrha continued. “If I were you, Penny, I should ask Rainbow Dash to teach you how to fight hand to hand.”</p><p>Penny’s eyes were wide. “You really are amazing.”</p><p>“Hardly,” Pyrrha said. “This is very rudimentary. Have you found your semblance yet?”</p><p>Penny shook her head. “My father isn’t sure that I have one.”</p><p>“If you have aura, then you have a semblance,” Pyrrha said, “and you can unlock it, with proper training.” If she could unlock it, then, depending on what her semblance was, it would be another way for Penny to protect herself or engage her opponents without having to rely solely upon her ability to direct her swords.</p><p>Penny nodded. “I will. I’ll keep trying. Thank you, Pyrrha.”</p><p>“There’s nothing to thank me for,” Pyrrha said. She paused. “Would you care to join us? Jaune was just about to play something.”</p><p>Penny clasped her hands together. “Oh, that would be wonderful!”</p><p>“Don’t say that until you’ve actually heard me play,” Jaune said. “But, uh, I’ll do my best.” He picked up his guitar, and the car began to fill with music as he strummed on the strings. </p><hr/><p>“Sunset?”</p><p>Sunset glanced at Ruby out of the corner of her eyes. The sun had broken on the new day, and the two of them found themselves alone. Jaune and Pyrrha were sparring; the Atlesians, Sun, and Blake were… Sunset couldn’t have said exactly where they all were, but the point is that they weren’t here, and Sunset and Ruby were here – here being the ‘living’ car with its crates of guns and ammo – and nobody else was. </p><p>This wasn’t a position which Sunset found wholly disagreeable, depending on what, precisely, Ruby wanted. </p><p>“Yes, Ruby?” she replied. “Is there something I can help you with?”</p><p>“I don’t know, maybe,” Ruby replied. “I wanted to ask you something about what you said last night. Or… what you didn’t say?”</p><p>Sunset frowned. She had an unfortunate idea of where this might be going, but because it was unfortunate, she didn’t want to preempt it going anywhere if she could help it. “You might have to forgive me; I don’t always remember the things that I didn’t say.”</p><p>Ruby looked as if she didn’t entirely believe Sunset on that point, and she might even be right to look that way. “When I said that my mother wasn’t famous, that she didn’t win any fame for being a great huntress or a… a silver-eyed warrior,” she hissed the name, “you were going to say something. But you didn’t.”</p><p>“It wasn’t the time or the place.”</p><p>“Is now the time or the place?”</p><p>Sunset snorted. “It’s as close to both as it will ever get, I suppose,” she said. “I was going to ask… then what’s the point? Your mother, your father, their team. They were great you say, and I believe you. They were good at what they did, very good, and yet… what? What was it all for? I… I didn’t want to say it but if there is neither fame nor glory at the end of this, then what’s the point? I… I don’t want to die, but I’d be willing to do it if I knew that my memory would linger evergreen and immortal in the hearts of men. For it is in passing that we achieve immortality, like Pyrrha said.” She fell silent for a moment, and her frown deepened. “But if there is no immortality, if in death, the ashes of our memory will be blown away, cast to the winds and forgotten by all but a few of us then… then what’s the point?” </p><p>
  <em>That is not my destiny. That is not what I’ve fought and kicked and struggled for. That is not my fate. I am not made for passing mortal life but for things grander by far. I was made to ascend to greatness. A forgotten death is not my end.</em>
</p><p>So Sunset hoped. So Sunset devoutly hoped. But she could not believe with absolute certainty. Ruby’s words, they… Ruby had not meant to gnaw at her insides, but she had. Ruby’s mother had been a great huntress, possessed of a magical power of immense… power. Yet she had perished in uncertain circumstances, and only her family remembered her.</p><p>Would that be her fate also? Would that be the fate that they all shared?</p><p>
  <em>Forbid it, destiny.</em>
</p><p>“The people that she saved are still alive,” Ruby said. “I think that’s the point.”</p><p>“Yeah, but…” Sunset hesitated, because this was the bit that had the highest likelihood of coming out wrong, but equally, Sunset didn’t see how she could avoid saying it. Her mouth twisted awkwardly.</p><p>“Sunset?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“I don’t want to say it,” Sunset said. “It will seem too cruel.”</p><p>Ruby hesitated. “I… I want to hear it. I want to hear what you have to say.”</p><p>“Do you?” Sunset said. “Do you really?”</p><p>“I do,” Ruby said resolutely. “Whatever it is, I want to hear it.”</p><p>Sunset hesitated for a moment. “Your mother was loved, I have no doubt, but… would you rather have all those that she saved yet saved, or would you rather have your mother alive to tuck you in at night and read you bedtime stories and take care of you when you were sick?”</p><p>Ruby hesitated. She glanced at her booted feet. She drew her rifle from behind her back and ran one hand down the crimson barrel. It was as if… she looked ashamed of herself for some reason that Sunset couldn’t fathom. Eventually, the words came, but even then, they came slowly, haltingly, as if she was forcing every word past some obstruction in her throat. “I… I don’t know. There are times when I think about what my mom did, going on missions like she did, and I get so angry. I ask myself why she couldn’t have quit hunting grimm and started teaching like my Dad did. I think about what it did to Dad when she was gone, I think about what Yang had to do to take care of me, and I get so angry because I wonder if she even cared about us. There are times when I ask myself the same question that you just asked me, and I ask myself… if she really loved us, then why didn’t she stay with us?</p><p>“But then… then I remember how kind she was, the way that she smiled, the sound of her voice when she sang me to sleep. I… I don’t remember very much about my mom, but I remember that she was a good person, and that’s what… that’s what everyone tells me about her, and that’s what her diary tells me about her too. And so… so I have to ask myself if she had stayed, if she hadn’t fought for what she believed in, then… would she have been the same person that I remember? The person that we all loved.”</p><p>Sunset looked down upon her younger, smaller teammate and the shamefaced look upon her face. “That… that was hard for you to say, wasn’t it?”</p><p>Ruby closed her eyes and nodded. “I… I think… I think you’re the only person that I could say this to. I couldn’t tell Dad or Yang or even Uncle Qrow; they all want… I think they need me to be…”</p><p>“The good girl,” Sunset finished for her. “The girl who smiles and never gives up and keeps everyone else’s spirits up the one who never lets anything get to them or get them down.”</p><p>“They’re not wrong!” Ruby said. “I am that person. Most of the time. But there are times when… I don’t know, I just couldn’t tell them that I sometimes need stuff like that.”</p><p>“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean that you have to be ashamed about it,” Sunset said. “The truth is, if your mom was alive, you’d probably be a lot angrier with her than you are now. There’s no shame in it; it’s… I think it’s pretty natural to rage against our moms.”</p><p>“Even… even when they’re… not around?”</p><p>“That just gives us different things to be mad at them for,” Sunset muttered. She shook her head, “Listen, Ruby… just because your family all want you to be something doesn’t mean that you have to be what they want. Our parents… sometimes, they want things from us that we can’t give to them, and that’s not our fault. You can’t give and give and give of yourself, because in the end, there’s nothing left.”</p><p>“Even if it hurts them?”</p><p>“Even if it did, nobody’s worth sacrificing your own self for,” Sunset declared. “Nobody. If you can’t be you, if you let other people's expectations or desires reshape you, if you let the world bend you to its will, then you’ve lost, and you’ll never amount to a damn thing. You have to be yourself, you have to have your pride no matter what they think, no matter what it costs you… because the cost of surrendering yourself is always greater.”</p><p>“You’d sacrifice your life but not yourself?”</p><p>“I’d give my life for you, for Pyrrha, for Jaune,” Sunset said. “Maybe for Blake, as strange as that might sound. But I wouldn’t become a completely different person just because you asked me to.”</p><p>Ruby looked pensive, but whatever else she might have said or not said was interrupted by the sudden jarring shaking of the whole train which knocked Ruby to her knees and forced Sunset to grab the side of the compartment to avoid being thrown out the open doorway. </p><p>The train began to slow to a complete stop. </p><p>“What’s going on?” Ruby asked, looking up at Sunset. “Do you think-?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Sunset said as she helped Ruby to her feet. “I think this is what we came here for.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. On Rails</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Teams SAPR and RSPT go head to head with the White Fang to protect the train and its deadly cargo.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>On Rails</p><p> </p><p>Rainbow lowered her crimson goggles down over her eyes and magnified as she stuck her head out of the car. </p><p>The train was slowing down after a substantial bump coming from up front.</p><p>Staring down the train was enough to confirm her suspicions: a stolen Paladin had gotten onto the railway line, which was causing the engine’s proximity sensors to kick in and start slowing the train to prevent a collision. The train was getting slower all the time, and they were coming to a stop in the lee of a scarlet ridge. </p><p>A ridge down which Rainbow could see, as she turned on the magnification, eight figures slid down towards the decelerating train.</p><p>
  <em>Eight of them; nine of us who can fight. They’ve got the Paladin; we’ve got the droids. This feels like a straight fight. It would be nice if we could do something about that, but I won’t lose sleep if we can’t.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yeah, yeah, Yang, we can’t fight without air support. But we might as well use it if we can get it.</em>
</p><p>Rainbow ducked back into the car, her gaze – tinted red on account of the goggles – passing over Twilight and to the looming humanoid war machines packed into the car. “Twi, get in one of these Paladins and contact the General; let him know we've got visuals on eight men and a Paladin, then stay there until I tell you that it’s safe to come out.”</p><p>Twilight’s mouth formed an O of surprise. “But I can-”</p><p>“No,” Rainbow said quickly. “There’s eight guys coming down here towards us. Just eight guys, which means that they’re serious, like Blake said they would be; which is why you’re going to get into that armoured cockpit and you aren’t going to come out until it’s safe. Understand?”</p><p>Twilight hesitated for a moment, before she nodded her head and put her bow away. She pulled out her scroll, tapped a couple of buttons, and the cockpit of the closest Paladin opened with a hydraulic hiss. </p><p>Twilight climbed in and sat down. Her look was serious. “I think I can issue some basic command directives to the battle droids, if you think it would help.”</p><p>“I think that would be great,” Rainbow said. “I’ll tell you what I want them to do, okay?”</p><p>“Right,” Twilight said. “Rainbow… you’ll be okay, won’t you?”</p><p>Rainbow grinned and put on an uncannily good impersonation of Applejack’s unique accent, even if she did say so herself. “Now don’t you worry about a thing, sugarcube. Everything is gonna be just fine.”</p><p>Twilight giggled. “Stick a cupcake?”</p><p>“In both eyes,” Rainbow said as the cockpit door rose up and gradually hid Twilight from her sight as it sealed her away inside the armoured belly of the mech. </p><p>She pulled an earpiece out of her pocket and inserted it into her ear. It was wirelessly linked to her scroll, and though it only had a short range, it would let her talk to the other members of RSPT and SAPR – and Blake and Sun – without having to hold her scroll in one hand all the time. </p><p>“Okay, people, this is it; we have a stolen mech up front and eight bad guys coming down on us,” Rainbow said. “Comm check; everybody sound off and report your position.”</p><p>“Pyrrha here; Jaune and I are in car nine.”</p><p>“Jaune here; I can hear you.”</p><p>“Blake here; I’m in car six with Sun.”</p><p>“Sun here, uh, reading you loud and clear; is that what I’m supposed to say?”</p><p>“Sunset here; I’m in car five with Ruby.”</p><p>“Ruby here; I’m in car five with Sunset.”</p><p>“Ciel reporting from car three.”</p><p>“This is Penny in car three with Ciel!”</p><p>“Okay, and I’m in car two with Twilight,” Rainbow said. “Twilight, do we have any Onagers?”</p><p>“Just one,” Twilight said. “It’s in car number one just ahead of us.”</p><p>“Okay, can you get it out and engaging that Paladin grabbing the train?” Rainbow said. “And have the rest of the mechs dismount and form a skirmish line in front of the train as a first line intercept against our boarders.”</p><p>“Robots won’t stop eight White Fang elites,” Blake said.</p><p>“I know, but they can chip away at their aura some and make them think twice about calling in a whole mass of goons for backup,” Rainbow said. She was making the assumption that the White Fang would ignore the robots once they got past them, but then, part of leadership on the battlefield was guessing what you thought the enemy would do and reacting before they did it. “Ciel, you and Penny support the Onager and get that Paladin off the front of this train. Blake, Sun, and I will join you and cover your backs.”</p><p>“Understood,” Ciel said.</p><p>“I’m combat ready!” cried Penny.</p><p>“You got it,” Blake drawled.</p><p>“Sunset, I’ll leave your team to you.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Sunset said. “Okay, we’ll fight by pairs. Pyrrha, Jaune, defend the caboose; Ruby and I will get up on the roof and fight where we stand. Whichever pair repels the enemy assault first will join the other team before we all make our way towards the front of the train to assist Rosepetal. Clear?”</p><p>“Understood, Sunset,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>There was a moment’s silence on the line before Sunset said, “Pyrrha, Jaune. Good luck out there.”</p><p>“And you,” Pyrrha said. “Good luck, Ruby.”</p><p>“Good luck, Pyrrha; good luck, Jaune,” Ruby said. “Good luck out there, Blake.”</p><p>“Good luck, everyone,” Rainbow said. “Remember, we want a prisoner.”</p><p>“And nobody fights alone,” Sunset said.</p><p>“Yeah, if possible,” Rainbow said. She left the car with the Paladins and leapt in a single bound up onto the roof of the train. “Let’s do this, people. Ciel, do you want to say a few words?”</p><p>Ciel was silent for a moment. “Arise, arise, flowers of the north; up, through snow and cold and heart of winter; rise up and bloom in glory, for our kingdom calls to us! For the Lady and the glory of Atlas!”</p><p>“Thank you, Ciel,” Rainbow said.</p><p>“Vale needs a battle cry,” Sunset griped.</p><p>“Go Sapphire!” Ruby cried.</p><p>“Or we could just use that,” Sunset said.</p><p>Rainbow grinned a little as she focussed on the eight guys descending down upon their train. As far as she could see, one of them wasn’t wearing a mask, which meant… yeah, it was Torchwick’s little girl; she recognised her from the wanted photos, the one with the hair that was halfway to pink. </p><p>“Heads up. Torchwick’s girl is here, which means the man himself can’t be far behind.”</p><p>“Yeah!” Ruby cried. “Just as planned.”</p><p>“Not entirely,” Sunset said. “We haven’t seen the guy himself yet.”</p><p>The Atlesian droids were starting to deploy off the train, even if there was – as yet – no sign of the quadrupedal AW-250 Onager. But as Rainbow Dash watched, one of the eight enemies – one of those wearing a White Fang mask over their face – unfurled a pair of brown wings which caught the light of the sun and began to soar away from their comrades and over the heads of the AK-190s, dodging their upwards fire as they traced a delicate pattern through the air.</p><p>Rainbow Dash hit the button to pop her wings out of her flight suit. “We’ve got a flier on the other side; moving to intercept!”</p><p>“Wait!” Sunset yelled. “I said nobody fights alone!”</p><p>“You lead your team; I’ll lead mine,” Rainbow said as she jumped off the roof of the train car, her jetpack giving her thrust before the wind caught her wings and carried her upwards on the current. A burst of thrust guided her, the current kept her aloft, and the wind blew through her multi-coloured hair and pushed against her exposed cheeks as she soared through the skies.</p><p>This was the most thrilling feeling that Rainbow Dash had ever or probably would ever experience. It was better than flying an airship, it was better than fighting grimm, it was better than standing in an arena and hearing a crowd bellow out your name, it was… it was pure exhilaration, the feeling of the wind beneath your wings, the feeling of the air rustling through your hair, the force of the air pressure, her wingsuit guiding her and driving her on. It was already the biggest thrill Rainbow would ever have in her life, but she’d never had a chance to test her aerial prowess against an actual faunus flier before. This promised to be something special. </p><p>The faunus was aware of her now, angling her wings as she drew a pair of swords from across her back and flew, the sunlight glittering upon the metal blades, straight towards Rainbow Dash.</p><p><em>So you want to go head to head, do you?</em> Rainbow smirked and drew her submachine guns from the holsters at her hip. As the two fliers closed with each other, Rainbow Dash squeezed both triggers. </p><p>The faunus weaved her swords in swift, fluid patterns, tracing transient silver shapes through the air as she deflected Rainbow’s bullets away with her swords. </p><p><em>Oh, I think I like you,</em> Rainbow said. She holstered her SMGs – for now – and clenched her hands into fists as she soared through the air straight towards her masked opponent.</p><p>Rainbow cocked back her fist for a punch. The White Fang flier drew back both swords for a double slashing stroke. They both bellowed at the tops of their lungs as the air beat at their faces, and they charged at one another.</p><p>The two of them collided in mid-air. Rainbow blocked the sword strike, taking the faunus’ arms on her wrist before the blades could connect, but her fist hit home and knocked the White Fang mask off the bird-faunus’ face, revealing a familiar pair of golden eyes and familiar white hair in a short, cropped style, and a familiar angular face set in a surly expression.</p><p>“Gilda?”</p><p>“Rainbow Dash,” Gilda snarled the name vituperatively as she retreated a few feet away. </p><p>The two of them hovered in the air, facing one another.</p><p>“I don’t…” Rainbow’s words died on her tongue. Gilda? Gilda was with the White Fang? Gilda was with the White Fang <em>in Vale?!</em></p><p>“What are you doing here?!” Rainbow Dash demanded. “You actually went and joined the White Fang?”</p><p>“Of course I joined the White Fang!” Gilda snarled. “Did you think I had those pamphlets so that I could start a collection? The White Fang opened my eyes, Dash, and I’m going to help them change the world!”</p><p>Rainbow gritted her teeth. She had hoped… she didn’t know what she’d hoped. Of course Gilda was with the White Fang; it had been inevitable that she would join them, what with how bitter she was, what with the things that she chose to believe, the White Fang propaganda that she absorbed like a sponge soaked up water. It had only been Rainbow’s wishful thinking that had made this a surprise to her. “How long have you been with them?”</p><p>“Since you abandoned me to spend all your time with your human friends!” Gilda yelled. She charged forward, slashing at Rainbow with her swords. Rainbow dodged. “Tell me, Dashie, do they still pretend to forget that you’re complete trash in their eyes?”</p><p>Rainbow growled. “It’s not like that!” She flew straight for Gilda with a spinning kick aimed for her head. Gilda ducked down beneath the blow, but Rainbow was able to evade her upwards cut in response.</p><p>“It’s exactly like that; they’re humans!” Gilda snarled. </p><p>“So what?” Rainbow demanded. “They accepted me anyway, they care about me, they’re a part of my heart like I’m a part of theirs. If you could have just gotten over yourself, they could have been your friends too.”</p><p>“I don’t need a bunch of patronising humans to take pity on me, to bend down and pull me up!” Gilda yelled. “The White Fang is my family, and we push each other forward!”</p><p>“Forward to what?” Rainbow demanded. “Off a cliff? You can’t win this, Gilda. There’s nothing waiting for the White Fang but defeat and death.” <em>And I really don’t want that for you.</em></p><p>Gilda shrieked in wordless fury, like an eagle descending upon the hapless field mouse in the meadow, as she surged towards Rainbow Dash with blades drawn back. But Rainbow was no helpless field mouse, and she flew backwards, away from her erstwhile friend and present enemy, drawing her submachine guns and taking aim. </p><p>“Don’t make me do this, Gilda,” she begged. <em>Your mom worked for my dad for years, our families went on vacation together to share the costs, we were neighbours, we hung out all the time.</em></p><p>
  <em>For a while, it was like you were the sister that I never had.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I really, really don’t want to kill you.</em>
</p><p>“Do you think that I want this?” Gilda cried as she drove Dash back with a series of wide slashing strokes, forcing Rainbow to fly away to keep out of reach of her twin shining swords.  “Do you think that I want to fight against my best friend?”</p><p>Rainbow evaded Gilda’s slashes, flying over her old friend’s head. “If you don’t want to do it Gilda, then don’t do it!”</p><p>“Right back atcha!” Gilda shouted as her wings propelled her straight towards Rainbow Dash, driving Rainbow before her. “If you don’t want to fight me, then throw down your guns.” She stopped, hovering in place, her wings beating lazily. “You know, the White Fang could use a good fighter like you, Dash.”</p><p>Rainbow’s eyes widened. “You want me to join the White Fang? You want me to let you take our weapons so you can kill innocent people? So you can kill kids?”</p><p>“Do I look like the sort of person who kills kids to you?” Gilda demanded.</p><p>“The White Fang tries,” Rainbow growled. She had lost touch with Gilda before the Canterlot Wedding, although not too long before; if Gilda had said some of what she’d said before the wedding after it, well, Rainbow’s reaction wouldn’t have been so polite as to storm out of Gilda’s place.</p><p>Gilda winced. “That… Adam says that… liberation might not be pretty, but it will be just. You remember Low Town, right? Don’t you want the folks there to have the chance to stand as equals with the people up above in Atlas?”</p><p>“Not like this,” Rainbow declared. “Not at any cost. I can’t let you take our weapons, G. But I don’t want to fight you either. Throw down your swords, and I promise you’ll be fairly treated. I’ll put in a good word for you, maybe get you a deal like-”</p><p>“I’m not going to surrender,” Gilda said, “and if you really remembered me, then you wouldn’t insult me by asking me too.”</p><p>Rainbow exhaled through her nostrils. “No, I guess I wouldn’t. Sorry.”</p><p>Gilda snorted. “Apology accepted. So, I won’t surrender to you, and you won’t join me, so where does that leave us?”</p><p>Rainbow gritted her teeth. “I don’t want to fight you, G.”</p><p>“Doesn’t seem like we have much of a choice, because I’m not leaving without those weapons.”</p><p>“And I’m not letting you leave with them.”</p><p>Gilda grinned. “Then it looks like we’ll find out once and for all who’s the best!” she cried as she lunged forwards, her wings carrying her on, her swords thrust out before her. Rainbow fled, flying away as Gilda pursued. The two of them flew parallel to one another. Rainbow didn’t fire at Gilda, but at the same time, she kept out of the way of Gilda’s swords. </p><p>“You remember when we were kids, Dash? I thought you were going to be something special! You were supposed to destroy Atlas, not join it!”</p><p>It was all Rainbow Dash could do not to roll her eyes. “Ugh, enough with the hair thing, G, it’s just an old story my parents liked to talk about.”</p><p>Gilda’s response was a dive, her swords held out before her like lances; Rainbow swooped out of the way and let Gilda fly past her, arresting her descent and turning in mid-air to face Rainbow once more.</p><p>“Why, Dash?” Gilda demanded. “Why would you sell out your own people to Atlas? Why would you betray Atlas to defend the racist order that keeps us down in the dirt?”</p><p>“At least I’m not a terrorist,” Rainbow muttered.</p><p>“What was that?”</p><p>“We don’t have to do this! You don’t have to do this!”</p><p>“Yes, I do!” Gilda screamed as she lunged at Rainbow Dash. Rainbow ducked down, and Gilda’s stroke passed harmless overhead.</p><p><em>Well, if that’s how you want to play this.</em> </p><p>Rainbow began to dive headfirst towards the ground.</p><p>Gilda followed, her wings beating furiously as she began to overtake Rainbow’s wingpack. Rainbow pushed it harder, still headed straight towards the ground without any deviations. She didn’t go to full power, just enough to stay ahead of Gilda without pulling so far ahead that her erstwhile friend would give up the chase. </p><p>“You going to ground?” Gilda taunted her as she pursued. “That’s smarter than challenging me in the skies, Dash. You see, I’m the real deal; you’re just a faker with an Atlesian toy strapped to your back.”</p><p><em>Oh, we’ll see who the faker is,</em> Rainbow said as she continued to dive.</p><p>Rainbow dived, and Gilda followed. The wind beat against Rainbow’s face. It pushed her hair backwards out of her forehead. It drove the goggles into her skin.</p><p>Rainbow dive, and Gilda followed. Rainbow grinned as the ground rushed closer and closer and closer, as the trees of the Forever Fall reached up like grasping hands to grab at her. Rainbow nimbly dodged between two trees, the leaf-covered ground waiting to receive her; at the last possible moment, Rainbow pulled up and soared back over the trees and into the sky, sunlight glinting off her wings.</p><p>Judging by the crack and the cry of pain, Gilda hadn’t been quite so lucky.</p><p>Rainbow dropped to the ground, folding her wings up into the pack on her back as she found Gilda lying on the forest floor, half-buried under falling scarlet leaves.</p><p>Two kicks from Rainbow’s boots were sufficient to send Gilda flying into the nearest tree so hard that both the tree and the remains of Gilda’s aura broke. Gilda slid down the ruined stump to the ground, her breathing heavy as she stared at Rainbow Dash.</p><p>Gilda grinned. “So this is it, Dash? Are you going to shoot me? Or just take me in so Atlas can throw me in a hole and forget about me while I rot?”</p><p><em>How many people have you killed?</em> Rainbow thought but didn’t ask. She didn’t really want to know. She hoped that the answer was zero, that this was Gilda’s first mission for the White Fang, but if that was a forlorn hope… she didn’t want to know. </p><p>“Just tell me why you’re doing this?”</p><p>“Because we’ll have the chance to build something so much better by the time we’re through!”</p><p><em>At what cost?</em> Rainbow wanted to ask, but didn’t because she suspected the answer would be something like ‘at any cost,’ and she didn’t want to hear that come out of her friend’s mouth either.</p><p>She didn’t get it. She didn’t get it one bit. Gilda had always had a bit of an antisocial streak, but she wasn’t a bad person, not when Rainbow knew her. But now… the White Fang? </p><p>“What happened to you?”</p><p>“I opened my eyes,” Gilda snapped. “Maybe you should try it sometime. Or don’t. Whatever. Just do whatever you’re going to do to me and get it over with.”</p><p>Rainbow snorted and holstered her pistol. “Get out of here.”</p><p>Gilda stared at her for a moment as the forest fell silent around them. “What? Are you serious?”</p><p>“Yeah, I’m serious,” Rainbow replied. <em>I might be stupid, but I’m serious.</em> “I can’t restrain you right now, and I have the authority to either spare you or kill you. I’m choosing to spare you. Get out of here and maybe think about what you’re doing.” She turned her back on the incredulous Gilda and began to walk away. She stopped and glanced back over her shoulder. “Hey, G?”</p><p>“Yeah?” Gilda asked, her voice laced with suspicion.</p><p>“It was good to see you, but if I see you <em>again</em>… things will go differently next time.”</p><p>“Yeah, you bet they will,” Gilda muttered.</p><p>Rainbow scowled and leapt into the air on Wings of Harmony. So, that was it then. There was going to be a next time. A time when she would have to… when she would have to kill someone she’d once called friend.</p><p>But at least that time was not today.</p><p>Today, she could still walk away.</p><p>And who knew? Gilda’s resolve might not actually last that long. </p><p>Until recently, Rainbow might have taken the shot when she had it or hauled her back to captivity, which was probably what she ought to have done now, in spite of the practical obstacles. But if Blake could change, renounce her White Fang ways and become… if Rainbow could give Blake the opportunity to become a good soldier of Atlas, how could she deny Gilda that same chance to come around to the right way of seeing the world?</p><p>And how likely was it that Gilda would come around to that way of thinking from a prison cell?</p><p>
  <em>Look at me, I’m Rainbow Dash, and everyone gets a second chance when I’m around.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Pinkie would tell me I’d done the right thing.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I hope she would.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I hope someone would.</em>
</p><p>“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight’s voice crackled a little in Rainbow’s ear. “I made contact with General Ironwood; unfortunately, there’s no air support available; we’re still too far north of Vale. We’re on our own for now.”</p><p>“We’ll make do,” Rainbow assured her. “That flier got away from me, but she had her tail tucked between her legs – not literally, but you know. I’m on my way back now. Do you know how everyone else is doing?”</p><hr/><p>Crescent Rose roared.</p><p>Two faunus – a bull and a deer, both well endowed with horns and antlers respectively – crashed through the unfolding line of Atlesian androids as they rushed towards the train.</p><p>Ruby fired again, and Sunset fired too, Sol Invictus barking in high-pitched counterpoint to the heavier booming sound of Crescent Rose. Ruby scored at least one hit, hurling the deer faunus back and knocking him on his back for good measure; she fired again, and she was sure that she hit the bull faunus just as she had hit the deer, but unlike his comrade, the bull faunus was not hurled back; he didn't even seem to be slowed, he just kept on running towards the train.</p><p>Sunset frowned. "Ruby, hit him again if you can."</p><p>Once more, Ruby pulled the trigger. Once more, Crescent Rose barked out across the battlefield, and once more, the bull faunus continued his approach as though the shot had missed for all the effect it had on him.</p><p>"This guy's tough," Ruby muttered.</p><p>"This guy's got a semblance; you can see it when he gets hit," Sunset muttered. "It's like he's turning the air solid in front of himself; your bullet isn't quite landing."</p><p>"You can see that?"</p><p>"I can see your round isn't quite hitting," Sunset replied. She held Sol Invictus in one hand, and with the other hand, she fired a burst of green energy – of magic, although Ruby was still getting used to the idea of thinking of it that way – at the bull faunus as he charged. Now, Ruby could see it, the way that Sunset's magical pulse wasn't actually hitting the faunus; it was running into some invisible barrier just in front of him, so the reason he was carrying on as though he wasn't feeling it was because he really wasn't feeling it.</p><p>"What do we do?" Ruby asked.</p><p>"Shoot the other one before he gets here," Sunset said. "Once he arrives, we'll see if he can keep that barrier up in two directions."</p><p>Ruby returned her attention to the deer faunus, who had regained his feet and was running as quickly as he could to catch up with the comrade who had left him behind. Ruby fired twice more, but the first shot was parried by the deer faunus' staff, and the second, he swerved at the last possible second, and she missed.</p><p>And she was out of ammo.</p><p>Ruby ejected the magazine and pulled another out of one of the pouches at her waist. However, barely had she managed to reload than the bull faunus had made the leap from the ground beside the rail up onto the train. Ruby didn't fire as he descended, knowing – now – that it wouldn't make any difference; they would have to hope that he couldn't defend himself like that in two directions or that they could wear down his aura by making him overuse his semblance.</p><p>Their opponent landed heavily upon the roof of the railway car; he was tall and muscular, with broad shoulders and a proud pair of horns sprouting from either side of his head before curving inwards even as they extended up about a foot or more. His arms were armoured, and he held a spiked mace lightly in one hand.</p><p>He had landed with Sunset and Ruby both in front of him, maybe because Sunset was right after all.</p><p>Sunset fired Sol Invictus; the faunus seemed to grunt in satisfaction as the round was stopped by his invisible barrier. He certainly growled wordlessly as he began to charge torwards them.</p><p>Sunset teleported, disappearing with a crack and a bright green flash to appear behind their enemy; the second crack as she reappeared alerted the warrior of the White Fang to her movement because he turned, swinging his mace wildly for Sunset's head. Sunset ducked the swing of the mace but didn't manage to avoid the beefy fist that reached out to wrap tightly around her throat.</p><p>Ruby fired twice, and this time, the bullets of Crescent Rose slammed straight into her enemy's back, sending him staggering forwards. He threw Sunset away, tossing her off the edge of the train as he rounded on Ruby, snarling as he charged at her.</p><p>Ruby fired again, but this time, her enemy was protected by his semblance, and the rounds slammed harmlessly into his barrier.</p><p>Sunset teleported back onto the roof of the train, emptying all the chambers of Sol Invictus into the back of their enemy who seemed to ignore the shots as he rushed at Ruby with increasing speed, as if he were a locomotive – not just fighting on top of one – that starts off slow and builds and builds until it's flying.</p><p>As he rushed her, Ruby leapt, levelling Crescent Rose at the roof and hoping there was nothing explosive underneath. She fired, the recoil of her weapon carrying her up into the air out of her opponent's reach – and bringing her down again behind the bull faunus before he could finish his turn.</p><p>Ruby swiped with Crescent Rose in a wide arc, catching him in the side and sweeping him bodily off the train to send him flying through the air and, eventually, dump him on the ground.</p><p>He didn't seem to want to move much afterwards.</p><p>There was still the deer faunus to think about, but Ruby's eyes – and Sunset's too – glanced down the train to where Blake was all alone and having some difficulties.</p><p>"Sunset, go help Blake!" Ruby cried.</p><p>"What about you?" Sunset asked.</p><p>Ruby fired and knocked the deer faunus back a second time. "Don't worry," she said. "I've got this."</p><hr/><p>Blake paused on top of the railway car and watched for a moment as the White Fang – and Torchwick’s girl – broke through the line of the Atlesian droids attempting to bar their way. Twilight might or might not be directing them, but Blake couldn’t say that she’d noticed any real increase in how well they were performing. They’d gotten a few shots in, which was about the best that Rainbow Dash could have hoped for when she set them up like that. </p><p><em>Actually, no,</em> Blake corrected herself as she saw two White Fang guys – she didn’t recognise them, but at this distance, they looked to be some sort of lizard-faunus – at the far right of the formation decide to take their time wrecking all the droids instead of breaking through and going for the train. That kind of stupidity was the best that they could have hoped for: it gave Pyrrha on the caboose ample time and opportunity to take them under fire while they were busy destroying mostly harmless robots, and for what? Yes, when the time came to bring in the main force to carry everything away, the robots would have to be dealt with, but that was the time to deal with the droids, not right now. Right now, nothing else mattered to the White Fang but getting to the train and neutralising the huntsmen defending it, because if they didn’t deal with Pyrrha now, then bringing in a whole load of aura-less chaff wasn’t going to help them at all. </p><p>If Blake had been leading the operation, she would have made that fact explicit to her troops before they started to move, even before they sent the Paladin down to stop the train. Either that, or she would have chosen an assault team that didn’t need to have this kind of thing spelled out to them. She wondered who was leading the attack and why they had chosen to use knuckleheads like that on their attack force. Walter, Perry, Cotton, and Skoll were all in custody, which left Gilda – possibly the flier that Rainbow had soared up to deal with, Blake hadn’t gotten a good look – or Billie or someone new, someone that Blake didn’t know.</p><p>It wasn’t Adam. Blake would have recognised him at once, and if he had been anywhere nearby, he would have been in the thick of the fighting; Adam would never ask any of his men to do what he was unwilling to do himself, which meant that he was some distance away from here. But why? </p><p>“Where are you?” Blake muttered under her breath.</p><p>Sun was close enough to hear her. “Where is who?”</p><p>“Adam,” Blake said. “He ought to be here. What could be more important to him or the White Fang than stealing a trainload of Atlesian weapons?”</p><p>“Yeah, but it’s a good thing we don’t have to deal with him, right?” Sun argued. “I mean, you know what they say about gift horses?”</p><p>“In Mistral, they say to beware of gift horses,” Blake replied.</p><p>“That’s… not exactly what I had in mind,” Sun said.</p><p>Blake turned towards the front of the train, where the Atlesian Onager on its four legs was clambering clumsily out of the front car to engage the Paladin that was halting the train. She could see Ciel and Penny not far away, looking very small compared to the bulk of the great robot, which planted its four feet on top of the roof of the train and combined the barrels of its guns together. </p><p>Not a bad choice; from the look of the armour on that Paladin, they would need a powerful shot to punch through it.</p><p>The cannon glowed blue as it began to charge. </p><p>A shower of missiles descended from above to strike the spider droid in an explosive shower. </p><p>Blake’s eyes looked upwards. A second Paladin, up on the ridge! As Blake watched, it began to follow up the salvo of missiles by opening up with the two cannons mounted on its arms. It hit the Onager in the exposed flank over and over again as it blasted the legs and the body of the hapless and helpless automated weapon.</p><p>They had a second Paladin? Blake gritted her teeth as she watched the Onager topple off the train before the Paladin finished it off with a final shot that blasted it into fragments. They’d brought a second Paladin here; why would they-?</p><p>Blake spotted the third Paladin descending the slope down from the ridge to back up the two clowns who had allowed Pyrrha to sharp-shoot them while they wasted time playing with robots and now – having realising the error of their ways – found themselves fighting the Invincible Girl at a considerable disadvantage.</p><p>
  <em>This fight just got a lot more complicated.</em>
</p><p>Blake glanced at the next car over. Sunset and Ruby had already been engaged by a pair of White Fang warriors, one of whom had large horns and the other deer antlers. They didn’t look like they were struggling unduly, but it was equally clear that they couldn’t go to aid Pyrrha and Jaune against the Paladin descending upon them just yet either. </p><p>Rainbow had vanished into the sky, and at the other end of the train, Ciel was trying to follow her last instructions while Penny looked to be locked in combat with Neo.</p><p>There were only Blake and Sun left unengaged. </p><p>“Sun, you need to go help Jaune and Pyrrha,” she said.</p><p>“Me? But what about you?”</p><p>“Someone needs to stay here,” Blake replied. “If we leave this whole stretch of train unattended, then someone could get behind Ciel and Penny, and nobody would be close enough to respond.”</p><p>“Sunset said-”</p><p>“I’ll be fine. I can take care of myself,” Blake declared.</p><p>“And Pyrrha can’t?”</p><p>“That’s a state-of-the-art Atlesian war machine she’s fighting,” Blake cried. “She shouldn’t face it alone. Go!”</p><p>Sun hesitated for a moment, looking from Pyrrha and Jaune to Blake and then back again. “Okay,” he said, with obvious reluctance in his voice, “but you’d better be fine on your own, you hear?”</p><p>Blake smiled at him. “I’ll be fine,” she said, with a little more certainty in her voice than she actually felt. </p><p>“Well… okay,” Sun said, and he leapt down and began to clamber swiftly along the side of the train, passing beneath Sunset and Ruby and their struggle and making his way towards Pyrrha and Jaune at the very rear of the train. </p><p>Blake watched him go, watched him so intently that she didn’t notice-</p><p>“Traitor!”</p><p>Blake leapt away, her request unfinished as she just got clear of Billie’s downward stroke as she descended upon Blake like lightning from a clear sky. She landed heavily on the roof of the train, her longsword gripped between two hands. Hair so pale that it was almost white spilled out down her back, while her mask was decorated with a pair of goat’s horns jutting out of the forehead.</p><p>“Billie,” Blake said evenly as she reached slowly for the hilt of Gambol Shroud. “I might have known you’d be leading this operation.” <em>After all, Adam’s not here, everyone else except Gilda is in prison, and I’m on the opposite side. There aren’t many other choices.</em></p><p>It also explained some of the failure of leadership that she’d observed on the right flank. Billie was a good follower, and she’d been in the White Fang longer than Gilda, but Adam had never rated her as a leader of men; she needed grip and direction, and left to her own devices, she was pretty ineffective. That didn’t matter much because Adam kept her close or else made sure she knew exactly what to do at any given moment, but it made clear to Blake why things hadn’t been done that had seemed obvious to her.</p><p>Billie’s lips curled into a sneer of disdain. “You won’t sneer at me after I’ve taken your head, traitor.”</p><p>Blake shifted her feet subtly and tightened her grip on the hilt of her sword.</p><p>She heard someone else land behind her, and a moment later, she heard the voice of Strongheart, familiar to her even after all these months.</p><p>“That’s enough, Blake,” Strongheart commanded. “Hand away from your weapon.”</p><p>“I can’t do that,” Blake replied.</p><p>“I don’t want to shoot you,” Strongheart said, her voice trembling, and Blake found that she could imagine that rifle shaking a little in the hands of the young buffalo faunus, her animal ears emerging from out of a thick and tangled mass of brown hair. “When they told me that you’d betrayed the movement, I… I didn’t want to believe it. Tell me that it’s not true, tell me that you’ve been deep undercover with our enemies, tell me anything, any excuse at all, and I’ll believe it, but please, tell me something so that I don’t have to call <em>you</em> my enemy.”</p><p><em>Would it be so simple, to convince you?</em> If Adam had said that, she would have laughed in his face, but somehow, when the words were coming out of a more… Blake would not say innocent, and naïve sounded unnecessarily unkind, but coming out of a mouth that had not become so foul to her, it did not elicit laughter. Would it be so easy? Walk away from Atlas, from Beacon, and go back?</p><p>Go back to a life she knew was wrong and, in so going back, betray Sunset, betray Sun, betray SAPR and RSPT, betray Rainbow Dash, betray everyone who had believed in her and fought for her?</p><p>
  <em>Welcome home, Blake.</em>
</p><p>No, it wouldn’t be simple at all. For it would cost her very soul to do it.</p><p>“I can’t,” Blake repeated, because at this point, what else was there to say?</p><p>She heard a click, and in her mind’s eye, Blake could see Strongheart’s lever rifle. Seven shot repeater. </p><p>Strongheart behind her, Billie in front. </p><p>
  <em>Let’s see if we can’t do something about that.</em>
</p><p>Blake leapt a moment before she heard the bang of Strongheart’s rifle; the shot did nothing more than destroy the clone that she had left in her place. She drew Gambol Shroud, and as she fell, she flung her hook, catching it around the edge of the metal bar that ran around the edge of the roof, and on the wire, she swung in an arc that carried her past Billie and upwards to land light upon her feet behind her. </p><p>Now both her enemies were in front of her. </p><p>Blake gripped her cleaver-like scabbard in her free hand as she switched Gambol Shroud back into its sword form. </p><p>Billie’s lips settled into a scowl as she flowed like water into a sword-stance, her long, two-handed blade held in a high guard for a downward stroke. </p><p>Blake charged for her, and she dashed forward to meet her. Blake parried with her scabbard and slashed across Billie’s midriff with her blade. Billie recoiled, slashing into a clone while the real Blake was behind her and driving Strongheart backwards with a series of furious strokes while she parried desperately with the stock of her rifle. Billie attacked from behind, and when Blake turned to face her, Strongheart shot her in the back, but once again, a clone dissipated into black mist before she dropped on Billie in a flurry of blows. </p><p>They were neither of them bad fighters; Billie’s sword strokes were precise, her stances were technically correct, and her footwork was sure and controlled. Strongheart’s shots were well aimed, and she reloaded her rifle every time she didn’t have a shot so that she wouldn’t suddenly run out of bullets. They were both decent fighters, and their eyes burned with hatred for her borne out of the betrayal that she had inflicted upon them. But Blake hadn’t risen high in the ranks of Adam’s forces simply because she was his girl, and Sienna Khan hadn’t kept her on in the White Fang simply to humiliate Blake’s father. She really was good, and they didn’t have an answer to her semblance, nor had either of them unlocked theirs-</p><p>Billie sidestepped, opening up a way for Strongheart to surge forward with an unexpected burst of speed; one moment, she was a distance away from Blake, and the next, she was body checking Blake hard enough that she was sent flying backwards, tumbling head over heels as she bounced off the roof of the railway car and onto the next car along. </p><p>Blake lay on her belly, her dark hair blew around her as she looked up to see Strongheart aiming down her lever rifle.</p><p>The buffalo faunus fired once, twice, three times, but each shot slammed into the green forcefield that appeared between Blake and the two White Fang fighters. </p><p>Sunset had her rifle slung across her shoulder and one hand raised up to maintain the shield. The other hand she offered to Blake. “What part of ‘nobody fights alone’ did nobody seem to get?”</p><p>Blake took the offered hand as she climbed to her feet. “I was doing fine,” she muttered. “Thanks.” She looked away from Sunset towards Strongheart. “You’ve unlocked your semblance.” It reminded her a little of Adam’s: a single swift forward charge, and if Strongheart lacked the ability to simply slice through aura with it, then at least she didn’t seem to need to endure attacks first.</p><p>“You’d have known that, if you had stuck around,” Strongheart growled.</p><p>“I had no choice,” Blake said.</p><p>“There’s always a choice,” Strongheart said, her lip curling into a sneer.</p><p>Blake hesitated for a moment. “You’re right. I did have a choice.” <em>A choice between giving up my life or giving up my soul.</em> “And I made the right one.”</p><p>Strongheart shook her head, her eyes shining with disbelief. She turned her gaze on Sunset. “And you, you’re a faunus too; how can you fight for the masters against your own people?”</p><p>“My people are named Jaune, Pyrrha, and Ruby,” Sunset replied. “And Blake.” She glanced at Blake out of the corner of her eye, and from the corner of her mouth, she whispered, “Dark Phoenix.”</p><p><em>And I thought coming up with team attacks with SAPR members was a waste of time. Not that we’ve had much time to practice, but with luck, it’ll work out. </em>Blake tilted her head, a gesture so imperceptible that there was no way Strongheart or Billie could have noticed it.</p><p>Sunset dropped the shield. “We take them together-”</p><p>“No way, they’re mine!” Blake yelled impetuously as she leapt across the gap separating the railway cars, charging forwards towards Strongheart, her arms pounding as she ran. </p><p>Strongheart powered towards her – and burst through the clone which dissipated into black smoke as the real Blake appeared in front of Billie, swept the sword out of her hand with her first stroke, swept her legs out from under her with the first kick, sent her flying upwards with the second kick, and then leapt up after her to bring both sword and scabbard down upon his stomach with Blake’s final stroke to send him falling downwards to the carriage roof with a rippling crack of broken aura.</p><p>Strongheart stopped, she gasped in surprise, and then Sunset Shimmer teleported above and right in front of her and fell upon her like a lightning bolt. Sunset swung her rifle in reverse, gripping it by the barrel and whacking Strongheart across the head with the wooden stock hard enough to knock her clean off the train and down to the ground below. </p><p>Blake – satisfied that Billie was unconscious for now – transformed Gambol Shroud into pistol configuration and took aim at Strongheart as she ran for the cover of the trees. Her finger tightened slightly upon the trigger… but not enough to actually fire the pistol. </p><p>
  <em>“Have you seen my dad?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Why do they hate us so much?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“One day, I’ll be old enough to fight alongside you; I want to be just like you, Blake!”</em>
</p><p>Strongheart was the same age as Ruby, two years younger than Blake herself, but the gap seemed larger when it came to her old comrade, probably because she’d known Strongheart when she was a real kid, and Blake herself had thought herself so very grown up at the time when she’d been left to babysit the orphaned children of the camp while the real grown-ups went out to fight.</p><p>It was a hard thing to shoot somebody in the back when you’d once wiped their nose while you waited for the adults to come back from a raid; even harder when you didn’t know how much aura they had left and suspected that it probably wasn’t very much. </p><p>So hard, in fact, that Blake couldn’t do it. They might be enemies, but that didn’t mean she was just going to kill without mercy; if she started down that road, there would have been no point leaving the White Fang in the first place. </p><p>Sunset had fewer compunctions; she snapped off two shots as Strongheart fled for the woods. </p><p>“Stop!” Blake cried, but before she could say anything else, Strongheart had fired back and forced them both to dive for cover. </p><p>Sunset raised her head. “Lost her,” she said. She glanced at Blake. “What was that about?”</p><p>“She’s just a kid.”</p><p>“A kid who probably wouldn’t show you the same mercy.”</p><p>“So?” Blake asked. “We have to be better than they are, or we don’t deserve to win.” <em>And besides, just because I want to stop the White Fang doesn’t mean I want to kill everyone who wears a mask. </em></p><p>
  <em>I want to save them, all the ones who can be saved. </em>
</p><p>Sunset rolled her eyes. “Why do I end up surrounded by so many heroes?”</p><p>“You decided to attend a school for heroes; what did you expect?” Blake asked.</p><p>“Shut up, you,” Sunset snapped. “The question was purely rhetorical.”</p><p>The corner of Blake’s lip twitched. “Thank you,” she said, “for backing me up.”</p><p>“What else was I going to do?”</p><p>Blake shrugged. “I didn’t think you liked me that much.”</p><p>“I don’t,” Sunset declared, very insistently. “I just… never mind, okay. You’re welcome.”</p><p>Their attention was drawn to the head of the train as the third and final Paladin, the one that had destroyed the Atlesian Onager from on top of the ridge, descended to join the battle. </p><hr/><p>Of the two lizard-faunus – that was the best Jaune could do as far as describing what they were, judging by the scaly skin on one and the reptilian tail on the other – the one with the scales had been apparently knocked out by Pyrrha, and the one with the tail was fleeing in terror even as the Paladin, bearing the White Fang marker on its shoulder in blood red, advanced upon the train to back him up. </p><p>The two fighters hadn’t stood a chance, certainly not once they decided to waste time and let Pyrrha get some shots off at them with pinpoint accuracy. </p><p>Although judging by the way that she’d dealt with them even once they tried to rush her, fending them off and carving up their aura with all the grace under pressure that he’d come to admire about her, they probably wouldn’t have stood a chance against Pyrrha regardless. </p><p>Anyway, it didn’t matter now. One was out of it, and the other was running away. What mattered now was the giant Atlesian war machine bearing down upon them. </p><p>It had slid rapidly down the slope, but now, it had done something to its feet and was advancing with a slower, heavier, and more clanking step. And with every step it took, making the earth shake with its mechanical tread, joints creaking and hydraulics hissing, Jaune felt his knees begin to shake a little more. This was a machine built for dealing death to monsters, designed by the kingdom at the cutting edge of military technology and armed with all the latest and most powerful weapons in the arsenal of Atlas. And he had a sword and shield. <em>Pyrrha</em> had a sword and shield. How was even she going to deal with this?</p><p>“So,” said Sun, who had apparently been sent by Blake to back them up, although with a bo-staff, he didn’t seem much better equipped to deal with this than they were, “does anybody have a plan?”</p><p>“Jaune, wait here with Sun,” Pyrrha said, and Jaune was surprised that her tone was so calm. Sure, Pyrrha was always calm in battle, but surely, this had to faze her just a little. “I’ll handle this.”</p><p>“Seriously?” he said. “By yourself.”</p><p>She smiled at him, if only a little. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “I promise.”</p><p>She leapt down off the train, landing in a roll before standing up, back straight and proud, and walking slowly towards the Paladin as the Paladin walked towards her. </p><p>“I guess we’re staying here then,” Sun declared.</p><p>“It’s our lot in life,” Jaune sighed. “We probably should have expected it when we decided to get involved with awesome women.”</p><p>Sun grinned. “You talk a lot of sense sometimes, Jaune.”</p><p>The war walker loomed over Pyrrha, casting its shadow over her and killing the glimmer of sunlight off her gilded armour as the wind rustled through her long red ponytail. </p><p>The Paladin stopped, and Jaune could almost sense the surprise of the driver inside at the impertinence of a single huntress thinking that she could challenge his titan.</p><p>Pyrrha flowed into a guard, her shield held before her and her spear at the ready.</p><p>The two faced one another, the culmination of thousands of years of Mistralian chivalry and martial tradition squaring off against the highest pinnacle of technological innovation and advancement.</p><p>Jaune’s heart was in his mouth. He wanted to look away, but he could not. He wanted to scream in fear, but he could not. He wanted to cheer her on, but he could not. He couldn’t do anything. He was frozen in place, a still and silent observer of this clash. </p><p>He didn’t know whether to be afraid or expectant; he existed in a limbo between the two, torn between terror and confidence, between ‘you can do this’ and ‘please be okay,’ between cursing Pyrrha’s confidence and envying it as the thing that would carry her to the fulfilment of her destiny. </p><p>The Paladin took another step forward. The war machine fired twice, once from each of the great guns on the ends of its arms. Pyrrha’s left arm was surrounded by a black glow as she held out her hand. The heavy ordinance stopped, held suspended in the air for a moment, and then rebounded to hit the Paladin squarely in the armoured torso. Pyrrha began to dash forwards. The Paladin fired again, but once again, its shots rebounded, and this time, they struck the slender metallic legs that held it up. </p><p>The Paladin fired a third volley, and the missile racks mounted upon its blocky shoulders opened as a deluge of rockets leapt up, trailing fire behind them before they fell upon her.</p><p>
  <em>Pyrrha!</em>
</p><p>Pyrrha threw her shield, striking first one shell and then the next, and her hand was still wreathed in a dark corona as she swept it widely out before her and, with a wave of her hand, sent all the myriad missiles that had a mere moment before been poised to fall on her with fiery fury and sent them flying back to whence they came. The Paladin reeled like a boxer on the receiving end of his opponent’s right hook, staggering backwards as missiles exploded all across its body: torso, arms, and legs alike. </p><p>Pyrrha ran with the speed of a lioness chasing her prey across the plains; she held out her hand, and her shield flew into it. She dived beneath the Paladin’s fists, and as she skidded along the ground beneath the metal titan, Miló transformed from spear to sword as she slashed at one of the metal legs. </p><p>Pyrrha stopped her skid. The Paladin swivelled its torso upon its waist, but Pyrrha was still in the shadow of the colossus and far too close for it to bring its weapons to bear. She charged and hacked again at the same leg that she struck before, bursting out from beneath the war walker as the leg that she had struck gave way and collapsed into twisted shards of metal. For a moment, the Paladin stood, unbalanced, upon one leg before with a shriek and a crash it toppled onto its side.</p><p>The Paladin had to use one fist to keep itself somewhat upright enough to use its other fist, aiming a punch straight at Pyrrha. Pyrrha thrust her shield like a weapon, using the edge of Akoúo̱ to strike the clenched metallic fist in return and shattering it like glass. Pyrrha dodged the shot that followed, not bothering to deflect it but letting it explode harmlessly behind her. She charged, slinging her shield behind her as she converted Miló back into spear form and gripped it tightly in two hands. </p><p>She thrust her great spear straight into the centre of the Paladin’s torso hard enough that it pierced the armour. </p><p>The Paladin flailed with what remained of its remaining arm, but Pyrrha had planted herself upon the Paladin itself, and it could not reach her there as she dragged her spear downwards, scoring a rent in the grey armour of the war machine as though it were a can of peaches. Then both of Pyrrha’s hands began to glow as she slowly spread them outwards until they were outstretched on either side of her, and as she spread her arms, so too did the armour of the Paladin spread out until the cockpit was completely exposed, revealing a cowering rabbit faunus with his hands raised in surrender. </p><p>Jaune was speechless. She… she’d done it. He didn’t know whether it was that he lacked faith in his partner, but he preferred to think of it as the Paladin having been just that intimidating to look at. But Pyrrha had taken care of it single-handedly, without so much as taking a hit. </p><p>She really was on another level, wasn’t she?</p><p>“Well, I think she’s good,” Sun said. “I’m going to go back and help Blake.”</p><p>“Sure,” Jaune said, without even looking at him. “I’ll be fine.” He still didn’t look at Sun, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other huntsman depart the same way that he had joined them. </p><p>Pyrrha turned to look back at him, the wind blowing through her hair and making her crimson sash wave in the breeze. She was smiling, but then her smile died as she began to race back towards him. “Jaune, look out!”</p><p>It was the first warning Jaune had that the scaly-skinned faunus who had seemed to be so out of it was not quite so out of it after all. He got up off the roof and came for Jaune with a shotgun-axe which probably would have looked really cool if it hadn’t been being used to try and take his head off. </p><p>The faunus growled wordlessly as he charged. Pyrrha was moving as fast as she could, but she was too far away. </p><p>This was something he would have to do himself. </p><p>This was something he <em>could </em>do himself. </p><p>The White Fang fighter’s stance and movements were awful. Jaune took a deep breath. <em>You can do this. You can do this. Just remember what she taught you. Show her you’ve learnt something.</em></p><p>He put his front foot forward, he steadied himself, he thrust out his shield and turned the axe blow, beating the weapon away and leaving his opponent open. Jaune yelled as he brought his sword down in a slashing stroke. A slashing stroke that shattered his opponent's remaining aura like a hammer through glass and clove into his neck and collarbone. </p><p>Jaune’s eyes widened in shock and horror as he realised what he had just done.</p><p>A dead enemy hung on the end of his sword; it was a grotesque sight, like a puppet without strings or hands to animate it, lifeless eyes staring at him. He had done this. Him, and no one else. He had… he’d thought that he would… it hadn’t occurred to him that he might… what had he done?</p><p>Jaune cried out in shock as he lurched backwards, freeing his sword, his red sword as the faunus dropped to the carriage roof in front of him. Jaune kept on staggering back until he tripped over his own feet and landed on his backside. He had… he’d killed someone. He’d taken a life. This wasn’t a creature of grimm; this was a real life, a person with a soul, and he had…</p><p>What was he supposed to do now?</p><p>Pyrrha leapt up onto the roof. “Jaune, are you-?” She stopped, looking down at the… at the body. </p><p>She didn’t look at him, not at first. Jaune didn’t want her to look at him. He didn’t want to see revulsion in her eyes at what he’d done, but surely, that was what he would see when she turned her gaze upon him.</p><p>Pyrrha looked at him, and her soft green eyes were filled with sorrow.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Jaune,” she said gently. “I should have… I’m sorry.”</p><p>“I… I didn’t…” Jaune stammered. “I didn’t realise…”</p><p>Pyrrha knelt before him, completely blocking his view of… of what he’d done. “It’s going to be alright,” she said. With one gloved hand, she gently brushed his cheek. “It’s going to be alright,” she repeated. “I promise.”</p><hr/><p>The green lights of Penny’s lasers flashed in the corner of Ciel’s eye as she tried to block it out. She trusted Penny. Whatever else might be said of her, when the battle started, she knew exactly what she was doing. As good as this brigand girl might be, Ciel had no doubt whatsoever of the eventual outcome. </p><p>What she saw of the ensuing battle, what parts of the struggle between the two of them forced their way into her vision, seemed to bear out Ciel’s judgement. The little robber girl was good, but there was just no way for her to get through the hedge of swords at Penny’s command, and the sheer volume of laser fire and blades at Penny’s command meant that her ability to dodge was failing her. </p><p>Which meant that Ciel could leave the situation safely in Penny’s capable robotic hands and concentrate on her own task: dealing with the Paladin.</p><p>Twilight had overriden the safeties on the train, which was even now beginning to roll slowly - but with ever increasing speed - forward once more. It would have rolled over the Paladin, had not the machine already begun to clamber up and onto the train itself like a toddler trying to get up onto the sofa. </p><p>It was Ciel’s task to get it off again. </p><p>The wind caused Ciel’s blue skirt to flap around her knees. Distant Thunder, her anti-materiel rifle, was fully extended in her hands. The magazine was full of lightning rounds. Ciel aimed down the sight at the titan that was slowing their engine down to a near stop. Even without the Onager – the third Paladin, the one up top, had stopped firing now, probably for fear of damaging the cargo they wished to steal – she could do this. </p><p>She would do this. </p><p>BANG!</p><p>Her first shot hit the Paladin on the shoulder, and lightning sparked across the armour plating as said shoulder recoiled backwards; blue and white sparks danced and snapped across the grey. </p><p>Ciel snapped the bolt back, expelling the spent cartridge and chambering a new round. </p><p>BANG!</p><p>The second shot hit the Paladin squarely in the cockpit; once more, the walker jerked backwards and shuddered as the lightning rippled across the steel skin. Ciel thought she could see its grip on the train weakening.</p><p>She snapped the bolt back, expelling the spent cartridge and chambering a new round.</p><p>BANG!</p><p>She hit the opposite shoulder.</p><p>Bolt back. New round.</p><p>BANG!</p><p>She hit the cockpit again, and it certainly looked as though the Paladin was struggling to hold on.</p><p>Bolt back. New round.</p><p>BANG!</p><p>Ciel’s shot hit the right arm this time, and it shattered into splintered fragments of metal. The Paladin reeled, its torso spinning as the momentum of the train pushed it on the side that was still holding onto the engine. </p><p>The Paladin’s missile racks opened up. Evidently, they decided that damage to the cargo was worth the risk at this point.</p><p>“Penny!” Ciel cried. “Switch.”</p><p>Distant Thunder folded up in her hands, becoming compact enough to swing across her back as Ciel drew a machine pistol from her waist. Penny leapt athletically behind her, landing with a grace that would have won her perfect tens from any panel of judges. </p><p>The brigand, now facing Ciel, looked torn between a renewed confidence and a sense of uncertainty. </p><p>Ciel’s expression didn’t alter as she opened fire. She wasn’t aiming to defeat the younger girl – although she looked notably tired after her battle with Penny – but merely to keep her occupied for a short while, and so, the fact that none of her short, three-round burst had any notable effect was not particularly troubling. They kept her adversary at bay.</p><p>The Paladin fired its missiles, two score of them leaping from the racks like arrows, rising swiftly into the air before turning to descend upon the Atlesian huntresses. </p><p>Laser beams leapt from Penny’s swords in swift succession, green bolts lancing up to strike the descending arrows, bursting them, covering the sky in the fiery flowers of their explosions which blossomed harmlessly over the heads of Ciel and her highwaywoman opponent. </p><p>“Switch!” Ciel called again, and once more, Penny leapt over Ciel’s head to resume her battle with the parasol-wielding girl while Ciel drew and unfolded Distant Thunder once more. </p><p>Draw back the bolt. Chamber a new round.</p><p>BANG!</p><p>She shattered the Paladin’s other arm. The train began to pick up speed as the Paladin, now armless and without any means to hold onto the train, became not so much an impediment as an obstacle to be overrun. The engine struck the Paladin, denting the torso as – judging by the squealing – the legs began to give way beneath it. </p><p>Ciel saw the White Fang pilot eject a moment before the remains of the Paladin were dragged beneath the train and ground to fragments under its irresistible and accelerating wheels. </p><p>That was at the same moment that Penny broke her opponent’s aura with a blow from two of her swords. </p><p>Ciel opened her mouth to speak, but all her words were stolen away by the shadow that fell over their heads as the last Paladin leapt off the slope and descended upon them.</p><p>The war machine landed heavily upon the roof of the train carriage, standing protectively over the prone and aura-less girl like a bear protecting the cubs from the eager hunters. Ciel started to aim Distant Thunder at the last Paladin, the last threat upon the battlefield, but she was blindsided by one of its giant fists which struck her in the side and flung her off the train and through the air.</p><p>Rainbow Dash caught her in both hands, barely stopping as she soared back towards the train. She grinned. “Hey.”</p><p>“Nice of you to join us,” Ciel said.</p><p>“Heroes always arrive in the nick of time, right?”</p><p>Ciel pursed her lips in mild disapproval as Rainbow carried her back to the train. She could see – they could both see – Penny standing in the shadow of the Paladin, lasers leaping from the tips of her swords to strike the armour of the war engine. </p><p>The Paladin drew back its fist, and the blow descended towards her.</p><p>Ruby Rose was between the two in a burst of crimson rose petals, turning the robotic punch aside and slashing furiously at the first with her scythe until she had severed all of its fingers. She landed on the roof. “Penny! Are you okay?!”</p><p>“Thanks to you, Ruby!”</p><p>The Paladin took a step backwards, balancing unsteadily upon the roof. The missile racks opened.</p><p>Sunset appeared above the Paladin’s head in a green flash, her arms folded across her chest and her eyes closed, looking as though she was lying in state even as the wind blew her hair in all directions. </p><p>She spread her arms, and fire dust like rain from the skies fell gently down towards the Paladin... and its open missile racks.</p><p>Sunset held out her hands, and the fire dust ignited. </p><p>The light of the fire dust’s burning was but the spark before all the missiles in the racks went up, blowing the back off the Paladin and setting what remained on fire. The smell of burning electronics and ignited dust filled the air as Rainbow set Ciel down upon the roof. </p><p>The Paladin shook, its torso swivelling left and right as though the pilot were trying to clear their head. It began to move.</p><p>A metal hand erupted out from underneath, bursting through the ceiling and grabbing the White Fang Paladin by the foot.</p><p>“Twilight?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>“You said I had to stay in the Paladin, but you never said the Paladin had to stay motionless,” Twilight said apologetically as a shot ripped through the roof to strike the stolen Paladin in the groin area. </p><p>Rainbow grinned. “Hold on just a little longer, Twi,” she said as the stolen Paladin tried to shake Twilight off. “Blake!”</p><p>“Understood,” Blake said as she threw her hook and wrapped it around the same leg that Twilight was holding onto. </p><p>Ciel watched as Rainbow swept Blake up in arms and carried her away. The two of them flew off the train, Blake’s silk ribbon growing taut as they circled before Rainbow turned in the air, the sunlight catching her wings as she soared back towards the Paladin, dipping under its thrashing arms and looping around the legs over and over again as the line wrapped around those same legs as the burning Paladin spun around in a vain effort to catch them. </p><p>Rainbow and Blake stopped, landing once more.</p><p>“Twilight, let go,” Rainbow commanded. “Ciel!”</p><p>“Ruby, finish it once she fires,” Sunset said.</p><p>Ciel chambered a new round. “Understood.”</p><p>BANG! Ciel’s shot hit the Paladin squarely in the cockpit. The Paladin leaned backwards as lightning rippled across the armour. </p><p>Ruby leapt forward, transforming into a whirling cyclone of rose petals as she hit the Paladin head on, squarely where Ciel’s shot had struck it, and the momentum of her speed was enough to topple the Paladin, its legs bound and unable to move, onto its back with a tremendous crash.</p><p>Ruby slashed at the fallen giant again and again and again until the Paladin simply fell apart, crumbling before their very eyes into its component parts which tumbled off the train to litter the forest floor on either side. </p><p>And there, standing amidst the wreckage, was none other than Roman Torchwick. </p><p>Roman Torchwick, who was immediately confronted with five guns and all of Penny’s laser-capable swords pointed into his face. </p><p>Torchwick laughed nervously as he raised his hands, his companion doing likewise as she got to her feet behind him. “Well… looks like you got us this time, kids. I suppose I’ll be enjoying the hospitality of Atlas for awhile.”</p><p>“Something like that, yeah,” Rainbow said.</p><p>Torchwick sighed. “I don’t suppose the prison food has gotten any better.” He looked at Ruby. “I suppose you think this makes you a big hero, Red.”</p><p>“Well, it kind of does,” Sunset said.</p><p>Torchwick chuckled as he shook his head. “You can arrest me, you can stop a couple of robberies, but one of these days, you kids are going to realise that you can’t stop what’s coming; none of you can, and all of you would-be heroes are going to find out what real power is, and you’re all going to pay the price that every wannabe hero in history has ever paid with the only currency that matters.” He shrugged. “Or maybe not. Maybe you kids are the real deal after all. I guess I’ve got a front-row seat to find out now, and you know something? I can’t wait to see what the answer is.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0023"><h2>23. A Chill in the Air</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Team YRDN encounter the rigors of the field.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A Chill in the Air</p><p> </p><p>The first Bullhead lifted off the ground and turned its bulbous nose back towards the inviting lights of Vale. </p><p>The contractors who were working on this section of the outer wall were not getting paid enough to camp out at night on the very edge of what might be called the City of Vale, at a point at which the city itself had faded into a few farms and abandoned cottages, and so, every night, the airships came to pick them up and take them home to the safety of the city itself. </p><p>No such luck for the huntsmen and the soldiers protecting the workers, who <em>were</em> expected to camp out here at nights, something which occasioned no small amount of grumbling amidst the privates of the defence platoon. </p><p>Yang was much more sanguine about the whole thing. In fact, she kind of liked it out here. Sure, camping on the edge of civilisation was different from when she and Ruby had ‘camped out’ in the garden round the back of the cabin – with Dad sat out on the deck watching them in case any grimm showed up – but it wasn’t so bad. The food was okay, the company was good, and if they had to get their own firewood and keep watch, then so what? This was the life they’d signed up for, and if she hadn’t thought it was a decent life, then she wouldn’t have gone to Beacon in the first place. </p><p>If Ruby had been back at Beacon, then she would have missed her, but Ruby was off on a mission of her own right now, and so, it didn’t really matter where Yang was. </p><p>And so, Yang lay on her back, her head resting upon her pack like a pillow, and stared up at the night sky. The moon was a little way to the west tonight, and without the lights of Vale polluting the sky – and with no Atlesian air patrols over this particular region to get in the way – Yang was afforded one of the first uninterrupted views of the stars above that she’d had since, well, since leaving Patch really. </p><p>She’d missed them. </p><p>They were so beautiful up there, all those lights in the sky. It was really amazing how they could be so far away and yet shine so brightly that they could be seen all the way down here.</p><p>
  <em>“They’re as bright as your eyes, Mommy!”</em>
</p><p>Yang’s lips twitched upwards in a smile. She hadn’t thought about that in a while. That was an old memory, from when Ruby had been so small that she’d been left back home in her cradle when Mom took Yang up onto a hill not far from home to show her the stars. </p><p>Back home in Patch, there were precious few lights, not enough to get in the way of the stars like there were in Vale, and so Yang and Mom had been able to see absolutely all of them.</p><p>Yang remembered sitting in her mother’s lap with a smile on her face while Mom had pointed out all the different shapes they made and told her their names and the stories behind them.</p><p>Right now, directly overhead, she could see the constellation Leucippides, the two sisters. </p><p>
  <em>Can you see it too, Ruby? Are the same stars of the Two Sisters shining down on both of us?</em>
</p><p>Yang felt her smile broadening as she imagined it. </p><p>“That’s me on the right, you know,” Nora declared as she flopped down on the ground beside Yang. </p><p>Yang glanced at her. “What?”</p><p>“The stars!” Nora explained. “That’s what you were looking at, right?”</p><p>“Uh huh.”</p><p>“Well, that’s me on the right,” Nora said, pointing up at the smaller of the two celestial figures who made up the constellation. “And that’s Ren.”</p><p>Yang smirked. “Oh, really? I knew that you two had gotten up to a lot of stuff before you made it to Beacon, but I didn’t realise that you were already so famous that they named stars after you.”</p><p>“Sure they did!” Nora cried. “It was after we saved Mistral from a horde of stormvermin gathering in the sewers underneath the city. I killed the apex alpha with one swing from my mighty hammer, and the people of Mistral were so grateful that they renamed the star signs in our honour.”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“Yeah! And they held a big public feast in our honour, and we got to ride in a chariot, and Pyrrha gave us these fancy crowns to wear, and do you know what she said to me?” Nora slipped into a passable impression of Pyrrha’s more cultured and cultivated tone. “’Oh, Nora, I can only dream of one day being as strong and brave as you.’ And then she kissed Ren on the cheek, and I yelled ‘stay away from my man, woman!’”</p><p>Yang couldn’t contain the sniggers that escaped her lips. Her whole body trembled with mirth. “I bet you showed her.”</p><p>“Oh, she backed off right away,” Nora assured her. “Not that Ren and I are, you know, we’re not together-together. I just… Ren deserves… I knew that Pyrrha was meant for someone else. Yeah! I was saving her for Jaune, because I’ve got premonitions!”</p><p>“Uh huh?”</p><p>“Uh huh,” Nora declared. “And with my powers of foresight, I can tell you that Ruby is going to be just fine.”</p><p>Yang chuckled. “You can see it with your third eye?”</p><p>“I can see it with my regular two eyes; that team is too good to be taken out by a few grimm in the Forever Fall,” Nora said. “I mean, they’re not us, but Team Sapphire is pretty darn special.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Yang replied, her voice softer than the breeze that stroked their cheeks. “Yeah, they certainly are.” She paused. “It makes you think, doesn’t it?”</p><p>Nora was silent for a moment. “Think what?”</p><p>“That we can be here, looking at the stars, and Ruby can be miles and miles away with the very same stars shining down on her from all the way up in the sky,” Yang said.</p><p>Once more, Nora took a moment to reply. “Yeah,” she agreed. “That is pretty amazing.” She turned her head to look at Yang. “So have you always liked them?”</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“The stars.”</p><p>“Oh, right,” Yang said. “Yeah, well, almost always, anyway. I… one of my earliest memories is my mom taking me out one night to watch the stars. Where we grew up, way out in the country with no cities and barely any towns to speak of, you could see them all as bright as… as bright as my mother’s eyes.” She sighed wistfully. “Unfortunately, that was before they got renamed after you and Ren.” Yang chuckled. “I was taught that those stars up there were two sisters.”</p><p>“Two sisters, huh?” Nora asked. “Two sisters named Yang and Ruby?”</p><p>“No!” Yang exclaimed. “But, well… I remember when I took Ruby out one night, up to the same hill where my mom had taken me, and I remember that the stars were as bright as Ruby’s eyes that night, when I told her all about the stars, and how they were two sisters, just like us. And I told her how they’d always be together, just like us.”</p><p>Nora made an affirmative noise. “Together. That’s the important part.”</p><p>“What do you mean?”</p><p>Nora’s tone was earnest, moreso than usual. “You can call them sisters if you want to, but the way I always saw it… you notice how one of them is bigger than the other.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Yang agreed. “She’s the older sister.”</p><p>“But Ren’s taller than me, too,” Nora said. “And it’s really hard to be sure that they’re both girls, what with them being stars and everything. My mom never took me up any hills to tell me all about them, but when Ren and I were on the road… a lot of the time, there wasn’t much to do but look at the sky – that and tell stories – and Ren told me the same thing: that those two would always be together. Just like us.”</p><p>Yang turned her head to regard her teammate silently for a moment. “You’re really lucky, you know that?”</p><p>Nora’s eyebrows rose. “You think luck had anything to do with me and Ren getting on the same team together? Girl, that was the result of planning and forethought. When it comes to Ren, I don’t trust luck.”</p><p>“I can believe that,” Yang murmured. A sigh escaped her. “Perhaps I should have planned ahead when it came to Ruby. Only…”</p><p>“Only what?”</p><p>Yang shuffled where she lay. “At the time, I thought that it might do Ruby good to get out of her shell, meet some new people.”</p><p>“Well, if it helps, I think she couldn’t have done better in the people she met,” Nora said.</p><p>“Oh, sure, I know,” Yang agreed. If Ruby had to be on a team without Yang, at least she was on a team with the kindest, most caring people in Beacon – and Sunset Shimmer. “But still…”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“It doesn’t matter.”</p><p>“Come on! Who can you tell if not your best friend?”</p><p>“Nobody,” Yang admitted. “But… it really doesn’t matter okay?” Nora might be her best friend, but that didn’t mean that Yang was ready to tell her about Raven yet. “It’s probab-… it’s nothing.”</p><p>“Well, okay,” Nora said. “If you say so.”</p><p>"Yang," Ren's voice, raised higher than his usual soft volume, carried across the night even as Ren himself crossed the open ground briskly towards the two girls. "Mister Danvers should have been back by now."</p><p>Yang sat up. Jett Danvers was the professional huntsman whom Team YRDN were shadowing on this mission; only, he hadn't seemed particularly keen on the whole 'shadowing' aspect of the deal. It wasn't so bad, for the most part, since they were just there to stand guard, and they could easily do that alongside him, but when he had gone out scouting, he had refused to take any of the young huntsmen along with him, claiming that they'd only slow him down.</p><p>Only Ren was right; he was slow enough already. He should have been back by now. It had been – Yang checked her scroll – more than two hours; how much scouting did he feel the need to do?</p><p>Yang scrambled to her feet. On the plus side, they had heard no gunshots, nor the roaring and howling of any grimm, and it was unlikely that he could or would have gone so far that they wouldn't have heard any of those things if he'd gotten into trouble. On the other hand, however, the fact remained that he should have been back by now, and he wasn't. And it wasn't as though the grimm were the only dangers lying in wait in the dark. He might have fallen and hit his head for all they knew.</p><p>"Have you tried calling his scroll?" she asked.</p><p>"He didn't answer."</p><p>"And you didn't hear anything?"</p><p>Ren shook his head. Not that that meant a great deal; one of the pieces of advice that he <em>had</em> given them was to put their scrolls on silent, lest they be given away when they least wanted to be.</p><p>Yang's brow furrowed a little as she walked – with Ren and Nora following behind her – across the grass in front of the wall in Dove's direction. As she walked, Yang and her companions passed beside the campfires of the soldiers as they sat around said fires in groups of five or six, brewing tea or cooking desiccated rations. Most of them were about her age or not much older, boys and girls in green jackets with red facings on their cuffs; her age, but much less well trained. Maybe a couple of them were combat school dropouts or people who had failed to get into Beacon, but for the most part, they didn't even have their auras unlocked, who had joined the Defence Force less because they wanted to protect humanity than because they thought the army would teach them a skill.</p><p><em>That would probably sound a little judgemental if I said it out loud. </em>But it wasn't meant to; it was just a fact: she had the skills, and so did her team; they… didn't.</p><p>To be honest, she felt the same way about the Atlas military; why did they need so many ordinary soldiers when they had huntsmen?</p><p>Yang's thoughts were drawn away from that as, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lieutenant Whittard put aside the book he had been reading and get to his feet, weaving his way through his men to intercept Yang on her journey.</p><p>The commanding officer of the Valish platoon was no older than the bulk of the men he commanded and only a couple of years older than Yang at most; he was thin and a little pinched in the face, with a pair of round spectacles resting on top of a thin nose. "Miss Xiao Long," he said, his tone oddly deferential for someone older than she was, "is anything amiss?"</p><p>Yang smiled reassuringly. "No, El-Tee, nothing's wrong. We're all good here, aren't we?"</p><p>Lieutenant Whittard frowned. "Sergeant Trent tells me that our huntsman has been away too long," he murmured.</p><p>Yang glanced briefly at Sergeant Trent, the only man in the platoon who looked over the age of twenty-five, let alone thirty. "It… has been a while," she admitted, "but I'm not that worried. We're talking about a real huntsman here, after all. And we haven't heard anything that suggests he got into trouble."</p><p>"Are you sure?" Lieutenant Whittard asked. "I don't need to be reassured there are no monsters under the bed, Miss Xiao Long; I need to know the truth."</p><p>Yang snorted. "Sorry. Natural big sister habit, I guess. The truth is… I don't know where Danvers went, but I'm going to take my partner and go see if we can find him but leave Ren and Nora here with you, okay?"</p><p>Lieutenant Whittard nodded carefully. "And if… if you don't come back either?"</p><p>"Then call for Bullheads," Yang told him. "Because if we don't come back either, then it means there's something out there."</p><p>Lieutenant Whittard paled visibly, which was quite a feat considering how whey-faced he was ordinarily. "I… I see," he murmured. "Good luck, Miss Xiao Long."</p><p>"Thanks a bunch, Lieutenant," Yang replied affably before she left him behind and covered the rest of the distance separating her from Dove. The fourth member of her team was standing sentinel, his back to the incomplete wall and the platoon of soldiers, his sword gripped lightly in one hand.</p><p>"Do you see anything?" Yang asked, as she came to stand alongside him.</p><p>Dove's blue eyes glanced towards her. "I haven't seen any grimm… but I haven't seen Mister Danvers either," he said.</p><p>Yang sighed. "You and me are going to take a look around. Ren, Nora, stay here and guard the soldiers."</p><p>"There's something rather absurd-sounding about that statement, don't you think?" Dove muttered.</p><p>"You know what I mean," Yang replied. "Ren, if we don't come back-"</p><p>"Don't talk like that," Nora said sharply, cutting her off. "Come back, okay? You've got so much to come back to."</p><p>"I mean to try," Yang assured her. <em>But I bet Mom meant to try and come back, too.</em> "But if we don't, call Professor Ozpin. Or Professor Goodwitch. Call somebody." <em>And tell Ruby that I'll always be with her.</em> Not that she said that out loud; it would have been too gloomy for words, and she'd regret the melodrama of it once they found Jett Danvers and it turned out that he'd just fallen down a hole and broken his leg or something.</p><p>Ren nodded. "Of course," he said, his tone clipped.</p><p>"Thanks," Yang said. "You ready, Dove?"</p><p>"I think so," Dove replied.</p><p>"Okay then," Yang said. "Let's-"</p><p>She was interrupted by the sound of a dry twig snapping underfoot, somewhere in the darkness beyond the reach of the light of their fires.</p><p>Yang assumed a boxing stance, her Ember Celica snapping back to expose the guns concealed within the vambraces; Dove raised his sword; Nora pulled Magnhild over her shoulder and unfurled it; Ren's StormFlowers appeared in his hands.</p><p>The four members of Team YRDN spread out a little, presenting a less inviting target than the four of them clumped together in a single mass.</p><p>Of course, they didn't know that it was anything bad out there, but better to be safe than sorry.</p><p>Even if it was alarming the soldiers a little bit, judging by the way that heads had turned towards them. Some of the young men and women snatched up their rifles. Lieutenant Whittard had one hand on his holstered pistol as he began to gingerly step forward, the burly figure of Sergeant Trent keeping pace beside him.</p><p>"Hello?" Yang called into the dark. <em>If you're not a grimm, now would be a good time to say so.</em></p><p>A figure shambled out of the darkness and into the light; Yang breathed a sigh of relief: it was Jett Danvers, their professional huntsman. "Hey," she shouted. "What took you so long? We were getting worried back here."</p><p>Jett ignored her. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with black hair descending to just beneath his ears, dressed in a dark parka and jeans. He carried a billhook, the weapon resting lightly on his shoulder as he gripped the shaft in one hand.</p><p>His head was bowed a little as he walked with an unsteady, almost stumbling gait. He ignored the young huntsmen completely and walked towards Lieutenant Whittard and Sergeant Trent.</p><p>Lieutenant Whittard laughed. "Mister Danvers," he said, "you gave us all quite a scare there for a moment."</p><p>Jett did not reply. He walked closer, head down covering the distance between the two men, and then he swung his billhook and drove the hook into Lieutenant Whittard's head.</p><p>Yang's eyes widened in horror as the young officer, his head so suddenly misshapen and his face frozen in a look of stunned surprise, collapsed to the ground. Sergeant Trent cursed but had only started to raise his rifle when Jett drove the billhook point-first through his throat.</p><p>"Run!" Yang shouted at the soldiers, her voice rising above the panicked hubbub that was beginning to rise from their throats as they saw their leaders fall to the weapon of an ally. "Get back!"</p><p>They didn't need to be told twice. The soldiers began to scramble up, fleeing from their fires, running towards Vale, running away from a huntsman who outclassed them in every respect.</p><p>This was not a fight that they could win.</p><p>
  <em>But it is a fight that we can win.</em>
</p><p>Yang launched herself forward, firing Ember Celica behind her for thrust like a pair of rockets strapped to her hands. She flew above the ground, the tips of her boots scraping the blades of grass beneath her as she threw herself bodily between the huntsman and the hapless soldiers he would make his prey.</p><p>"What are you doing?" Yang demanded as she faced the man she was supposed to learn from.</p><p>Jett's eyes were black and pitiless, and he said nothing at all as he brought his billhook down upon her head.</p><p>Yang stepped forward, catching the wooden shaft upon her wrists. She could feel the pressure of Jett's strength as he pressed down against her, yet somehow, it seemed less than she would have expected of a seasoned huntsman. "Why?" Yang demanded. "Why are you doing this?"</p><p>Jett stared at her, and wordlessly, he released his grip upon the billhook and began to reach out for Yang.</p><p>Yang felt someone collide into her from the side, someone who turned out to be Dove, who had barged into her from the shoulder and, in the process, knocked her to the ground – he too went sprawling a moment later as the momentum of his rush carried him over her in a stumbling fall. They lay on the ground, their legs tangled up.</p><p>Jett's face was blank as he reached out for them.</p><p>Dove roared in anger as he slashed at Jett's outstretched hand, slicing off his fingers with his sword. Jett drew back but did not cry out in pain. He just stared blankly at the stumps of his fingers.</p><p>"Huh?" Yang said. "But his aura-"</p><p>"It's not a huntsman," Dove declared. "It's a Chill; we have to get back."</p><p>"Oh, gods," Yang whispered under her breath as she and Dove both scrambled upright and retreated from what had been Jett Danvers.</p><p>Professor Port didn't need to cover Chills in his Grimm Studies class, and not only because Doctor Oobleck was covering them in legends; nobody came to that class unaware of the story of Poppy and Oak, of the grimm that had no body but could steal any body it wished, even one that was protected by aura. If it had laid a hand on Yang, then she would have perished in an instant, and her body would have become the new plaything of the Chill.</p><p>"We have to kill it," Yang said. She raised her fists. It wouldn't be that hard, so long as they kept their distance. It was possessing a human body, but it didn't have a human aura. So long as they didn't let it touch them. So long as… so long as she couldn't notice the human face, the body of the man who had once been a protector of the world.</p><p>Her hands and arms trembled. Ember Celica did not fire. Nor did Dove's gunblade, for that matter, which was shaking more than Yang's arms. Dove, the loveable dumbass, put himself between Yang and Jett as though it were better for him to be taken out than her, but he didn't shoot, and judging by the tremors, Yang wasn't sure if he had it in him to use the bloody blade again.</p><p>
  <em>Mind, it would be hypocritical of me to blame him for that.</em>
</p><p>Nora had switched Magnhild into grenade launcher mode, but it too was silent and showed no sign of speaking soon. Nora's eyes were wide, and Yang could understand why; this was the strength of a Chill: they hoped that nobody would be able to shoot someone wearing a face they knew.</p><p>But someone was.</p><p>"Hey!" Ren shouted, drawing Jett's attention as he dashed forward.</p><p>Jett turned slowly towards him.</p><p>Ren raised his guns and fired. He continued to charge, StormFlowers spitting, green flashes bursting from the muzzles and as he fired, and charged, the body of Jett Danvers twitched and spasmed and swayed in place as red spots sprouted all over his torso, the parka jacket withering under the fire, the bullets tearing into the aura-less body.</p><p>The billhook dropped from Jett's hand.</p><p>Ren emptied the last rounds in his StormFlowers as he closed the distance between himself and Jett. He stopped, spinning in place, and with the blades that hung beneath his pistols, he sliced off Jett's head. Still spinning, Ren tossed one of his StormFlowers up into the air and thrust out his palm towards the trunk of the man who had been Jett. Ren's aura pulsed, and the body was silently flung backwards into the darkness and out of sight.</p><p>Ren caught his pistol before it hit the ground. He was turned away from Yang. His head was bowed, in a way that made Yang afraid for a moment that the Chill had transferred to him. But it was not so; she could see it was not so when he looked at her, and she could see Lie Ren in those eyes, though it was a side of Ren that she had never seen before.</p><p>Nor was she certain that she wished to see it again.</p><p>"That wasn't a man," he said, his voice trembling. "It was once, but not anymore. It deserved no mercy."</p><p>
  <em>Who are you trying to convince, Ren? Me or you?</em>
</p><p>Ren didn't wait for a response from Yang. He turned away and walked off a few metres, moving with a weary tread as though his frenetic burst of activity a moment ago had exhausted him. He stood facing the darkness, silent, almost expectant, although what he was expecting, Yang could not have said.</p><p>"That…" Dove murmured. "That was…"</p><p>"He saved our lives," Yang replied.</p><p>"I know," Dove admitted. "But all the same."</p><p>
  <em>All the same, it's scary to think that I don't really know him at all.</em>
</p><p>"Call Beacon," she instructed Dove. "Tell them… tell them everything."</p><p>"Of course," Dove murmured. He knelt and wiped the blood from his sword upon the grass before thrusting it into his belt as he turned away and reached for his scroll.</p><p>Yang began to walk towards Ren.</p><p>"Don't," Nora said, her voice quiet and soft as she interposed herself between the two of them. "Ren… give him some space, okay?"</p><p>Yang looked over Nora's head at Ren, who had not moved. "Are you sure space is what he needs?"</p><p>"I try every day to give Ren what he needs," Nora replied. "But sometimes, I have to settle for giving him what he wants."</p><p>"Which is space?"</p><p>Nora nodded, although her expression was so melancholy, it was clear that she didn't like it one bit. Yang didn't much care for it either, but Nora knew him best.</p><p>Nora turned around, and together, the two of them watched as Ren stood, as still as any statue.</p><p>"Sometimes," Nora whispered, "I feel as though there's a wall like glass between us, and it lets me hear him and see him… but never touch him."</p><p>Yang glanced up at the stars which continued to shine above them all. "Are you sure that you shouldn't go to him? Together always, right?"</p><p>Nora looked around at Yang, her expression hesitant. Yang nodded in silent encouragement, and after a brief second more of hesitation, Nora approached Ren. He looked down at her, but when she didn't say anything to him, he didn't say anything to her either. Ren looked away, but he didn't move away; he allowed Nora to continue to stand beside him as the moonlight fell upon them both, bathing them in silvery light.</p><p>
  <em>I don't know where you are right now, Ruby, but I hope your mission is going better than ours.</em>
</p><p>The howl of a beowolf split the night air.</p><p>
  <em>Me and my big mouth.</em>
</p><p>“The fear!” Nora cried. “It’s attracted more grimm.”</p><p>Yang bared her teeth. <em>What was that you said about spinning straw into gold, Professor Goodwitch? Well, I guess the wheel’s in front of me now. Now, what were those five points of a speech you talked about in Leadership? Oh, yeah, right.</em> “Okay, listen up!” she shouted, as more beowolf howls echoed through the darkness. “We don’t have much time, and I’m not much for speeches, so it’s a good thing that you guys don’t need me to talk you into bravery. </p><p>“The grimm are coming. I don’t know how many there are. It could be half a dozen, or it could be a horde, but they’re coming with teeth and claws, and they’re going to give us a fight, and it could be a tough one. </p><p>“If we run, if we die, if we don’t hold this position, then there’s nothing to stop the grimm until they reach the Red Line, and all the farms and cottages behind us will be vulnerable to these monsters. But if we win, if we fight hard and kill them all, then all of those people will be safe. They’re counting on us, and we’re not going to let them down.</p><p>“We’ve trained for this. We’ve studied for this. We were chosen for this.” Yang turned around and gestured to the wall behind them; the Green Line was a hodge-podge of half-completed defences for which there had not been enough money or resources at the time of its initial laying-down, but this section, the repairs of which Team YRDN had worked on, was a fully-fledged wall of red brick, stout enough for modest field guns to be mounted atop it and for men to fight from it if there had been men. There was only one problem: it wasn’t finished; there was an unconstructed gap which the contractors had been labouring to close up, but it was still a dozen feet wide. “They’re going to go through that gap,” Yang declared. “It’s quicker than going over the wall, but that gap is going to be where we stop them. Dove, you’re with me in the breach. Ren, get up on the wall and shoot down on them as they come. Nora, you’re our reserve; stay behind us and mop up any that get past us.”</p><p>Nora saluted. “Yes, ma’am.”</p><p>“This might not be easy,” Yang admitted, “but we can do this. Beacon and Vale have trusted us with this. Let’s earn that trust.”</p><p>Dove, his face a little pale, nevertheless nodded in acknowledgement of her words. Nora was already grinning in anticipation. Only Ren failed to acknowledge her or what she’d said; he remained facing out into the darkness as the howling of the grimm got closer and closer. </p><p>“Ren?” Yang asked. </p><p>He turned around. His face was stern-set, but his voice was soft as he said, “I won’t let anyone else die.”</p><p>Yang forced a smile onto her face. “That’s the spirit.”</p><p>They retreated towards the bottleneck of sorts formed by the incomplete wall. With a single bound, Ren leapt high enough to reach the rampart, and as he took his position there, Yang could only think what a pity it was that there weren’t any heavier guns emplaced up there that he could use. Nora retreated about twenty or thirty feet back behind the front line, Magnhild still held in grenade launcher mode. </p><p>Yang and Dove stood between the two sections of the wall, hearing the howling grimm come on. </p><p>Dove bent his knees, holding his sword before him in a low guard. “Yang,” he said softly, “when… when you were growing up, when you were a kid, were there a lot of other children around? Did you have a lot of friends?”</p><p><em>You’re asking me this now?</em> “Uh, no,” Yang replied, wondering if Dove just wanted to distract himself. “We lived kind of out of the way, on our own. It was just me and Ruby.”</p><p>Dove nodded. “There were a lot of kids in our village,” he told her, “and in our village, there was this rise just outside my grandfather’s house, and it wasn’t much, but when we were kids, it seemed like a hill, and it had a rock sticking out of it. And we used to play a game: someone would stand on top of the rock, and anyone who wanted to could try and shove you off it and down the hill, and the winner would get to shout ‘I’m king of the hill!’”</p><p>Yang grinned. “Sounds fun.”</p><p>“It was,” Dove agreed. “Nobody could shove me off that hill. Not anybody.” He took a deep breath, and then another. “King of the Hill,” he muttered. “King of the Hill. Dove Bronzewing is King of the Hill!”</p><p>The grimm burst upon them, beowolves emerging out of the darkness with eyes gleaming red and their masks and fangs alike a shining white under the moon and stars. Ren’s StormFlowers cracked as he fired, both barrels blazing from atop the wall as he unleashed his bullets into the onrushing demons, and over Yang’s head flew grenades with pink smoke trailing after them as Nora fired over their heads to thin the monstrous ranks. But still, they came, though they died to Nora’s grenades and – fewer – died to Ren’s StormFlower rounds, yet they came, growling and snarling. </p><p>They came for the gap in the wall. They came for Yang and Dove. Their formation narrowed as they drew closer, becoming a clump as they fought to get ahead of one another, the first to reach the fight. </p><p>The first to die. Yang’s Ember Celica roared as she threw shadow punches which fired her gauntlets, and beside her, Dove’s gunblade barked as he shot all the rounds he had into the black and bone-faced mass of death. </p><p>And then Dove was out of shots and Yang was out of time as the grimm reached them. </p><p>They couldn’t move. That would have left Nora out behind facing all the fury of the grimm, not to mention defeated the point of making their stand between the walls like this. They had to stand fast, they had to make their bodies the wall and go toe to toe against the mass of teeth and claws that lunged for them, maws open. </p><p>It wasn’t Yang’s kind of fighting; she might have been trained to punch, but she was also trained to move, to weave and jab, and all of that was denied to her here. All she could do to hold the line was stand and take it, let her semblance consume the damage and turn it into even stronger punches with which she disintegrated  the grimm who hurled themselves at her. </p><p>They came. She punched. They threw themselves at her, and she killed them. She tried not to let any of them get past her. Their claws reached for her, they fueled her semblance, but they also drained her aura. As Yang punched harder and harder, she could also feel the shield of soul that protected her getting thinner and thinner, and still, she held the line. </p><p>Until there were no more grimm left and only the dark of the night before them.</p><p>Yang drew in deep breaths and exhaled just as briefly. “Hey, Dove, are you okay?” She glanced at him, and her eyes – returning to their usual lilac colour – widened at the sight of a trio of scratches – still bleeding slightly – on his cheek. “Dove?”</p><p>“I’m fine,” Dove assured her, waving her concern away. “It’s fine.”</p><p>“Did your aura break?” Yang demanded.</p><p>“Just a little bit,” Dove said, although she could see there were scores upon his armour, too. </p><p>“'A little bit'!” Yang repeated. “You should have-”</p><p>“Left you to fight by yourself?” Dove finished questioningly. He shook his head. “Not going to happen.”</p><p>Yang snorted. “Ruby will always be the bravest person I know… but you might just be the second, you know that?”</p><p>Dove smiled. “From what I know of Ruby, I’m flattered.”</p><p>“And I’m worried,” Yang said. “Too much courage could get you hurt.”</p><p>“And it might spare someone else,” Dove said. “I’m fine, really. Still king of the hill.”</p><p>“King of the hill? King of the wall.”</p><p>“King and queen of the wall,” Dove corrected.</p><p>Yang chuckled. “I like the sound of that,” she said as a Bullhead roared overhead and descended with an engine whine and a gust of wind right in front of them. </p><p>The doors opened, revealing Professor Goodwitch within. </p><p>“Mister Bronzewing,” she said, an unusual touch of alarm entering her stern voice. “You seem to be injured.”</p><p>“It’s just a scratch, Professor.”</p><p>“Have it checked out when we return to Beacon,” Professor Goodwitch instructed him. “You seem to have had an eventful evening, Miss Xiao Long.”</p><p>Yang laughed. “You could say that, Professor. Dove should get that looked at, but I don’t know about the rest of us coming back to Beacon. The mission isn’t finished yet.”</p><p>Professor Goodwitch stared at her for a moment, and for a moment, Yang thought she saw a glint of approval in the combat instructor’s eyes. </p><p>“As you wish, Miss Xiao Long.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0024"><h2>24. Good Man</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Blake gives Jaune some counsel; Sunset learns something new about Twilight's past</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Good Man</p><p> </p><p>“Blake,” Sunset said as she stepped into carriage number two, one of the two cars filled with Atlesian Paladins but which, unlike car one, still had its roof intact. “You’ve heard that we won’t be getting an airlift out of here?” A pick-up for them and their prisoners was judged non-critical, apparently, given that they were perfectly capable of riding the train all the way back to Vale. Apparently, there were a lot of demands upon Atlas’ airships at the moment. </p><p>“Yes,” Blake murmured. “Twilight told me.”</p><p>“Right,” Sunset muttered. “Of course she did.” <em>Now, how to get from there to what I actually want to talk to you about.</em> “So… um…” She leaned against the leg of one of the towering war machines. “Listen… I need a word.”</p><p>Blake was sitting on the foot of a Paladin, hunching her body slightly in the process in a way that made her feel small. She was reading a book with a dark cover and a title in a gothic font; she closed it, slowly and deliberately, but kept the page marked with her thumb. Blake looked up at Sunset with a certain wariness, as though she could guess what Sunset wanted to talk to her about before the latter had even opened her mouth. “How’s Jaune doing?”</p><p>Sunset frowned. Her mouth twisted. “He… he’s taking it hard.”</p><p>“I’m not surprised,” Blake said, softly and not without consideration. “It’s hard for anyone but especially…”</p><p>“What?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“Especially a good kid like him,” Blake finished. “Some people… some people can deal with it better than others. Jaune… he’s a good kid. Not the kind who can shrug it off.”</p><p>Sunset mumbled something wordless and indistinct. That had been both what she had been afraid of, but at the same time, nothing other than what she had both expected and observed from the funk into which Jaune had descended since the battle. “Pyrrha and Ruby are with him, but… as much as they both want to help him, I don’t know how much they can really do; after all, they’ve never…” She let that sentence trail off. Sunset licked her lips. “I was hoping that you might talk to him.” </p><p>The gaze of Blake’s golden eyes seemed to sharpen and grow claws. “You want me to talk to him.”</p><p>“That’s right,” Sunset said. She shuffled uncomfortably. This had seemed a much better idea in her head than when she was standing right in front of Blake, but really, what other choice was there? Who else could she go to right now? Who else did she know who would be able to relate to what Jaune was going through? Pyrrha and Ruby couldn’t, and Sunset was willing to admit that she couldn’t either, as much as she might mean to one day. “I mean, you have…” The words ‘you have killed before’ hung unspoken but omnipresent in the railway carriage as it clattered down the line. </p><p>“Yes,” Blake said archly. “I have killed before. Would you like Jaune and I to compare methods?”</p><p>“You know what I want,” Sunset said, a little more harshly than she had originally intended. She rubbed the space between her brows. “I’m sorry, but… you must know better than anyone else how to reach him, how to help him… you must remember how you dealt with it.”</p><p>Blake laughed bitterly. Her ears drooped, and she drew her legs up closer to her chin. “'Dealt with it'? I dealt with it by being told lies by the people that I trusted, and I convinced myself those lies were true. And then, when Strongheart took her first life on a raid, I told her those same lies so that she could get to sleep that night, so you’ll forgive me if I’m not particularly eager to lie to someone else.”</p><p>Sunset was silent for a moment. “Strongheart… the buffalo girl? The one we fought?”</p><p>Blake nodded. “The one we fought.”</p><p>“Younger than you?”</p><p>Blake nodded again, forlornly. “She’s only Ruby’s age.”</p><p>“The White Fang take them that young?” Sunset asked in genuine surprise.</p><p>“Why not?” Blake replied in a tone of weary melancholy. “Apparently, the huntsman academies do.”</p><p>Sunset snorted, “That’s not the same thing.”</p><p>“Isn’t it?” Blake asked. “They’re both the same age, and they were both at the same risk of death today.”</p><p>Sunset cringed. Blake… Blake had more of a point than Sunset would have liked. What could she say? That she would have protected Ruby? She hadn’t in the past. That Ruby was a better fighter than that faunus girl? Certainly true, but once you started haggling over the particulars, you’d essentially lost the main argument. </p><p>“But she did sleep, didn’t she?” Sunset said.</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“Even though it was a lie,” Sunset said. “She got to sleep. Blake… I’m worried that if Jaune can’t find some way to square what he did, it’s going to eat away at him. I don’t know what to say to help him do that.” <em>I don’t have the empathy, for one thing. Somehow, I don’t think that telling Jaune that I don’t give a damn about some random stranger and he shouldn’t either would be a big help.</em> “And I don’t think Pyrrha or Ruby know either.”</p><p>“It’s not that simple,” Blake muttered. “There’s nothing anyone can say to just make this better. It’s something that he’ll have to live with. The same way you’ll probably all have to live with it eventually. Even if you become a huntress to fight grimm, the chances are that you’ll have to fight people eventually. And if you fight people… eventually, you’ll have to kill people.”</p><p>“I thought as much,” Sunset said. Her expression softened. “I hope… I hope you know me well enough to believe me when I say I don’t ask this lightly. Is there nothing you can say to help him out? Not even a little?”</p><p>Blake was silent for a moment. “I… I don’t know,” she said, as the shadows of the Paladins fell heavily upon them. “I honestly don’t know. But… I can try.” She got to her feet.</p><p>“Thank you,” Sunset said. “Whatever happens, I’ll appreciate that you tried.”</p><p>Blake nodded absently. “Take me to him. We… we’d better get this done, one way or the other.”</p><hr/><p>Jaune sat on a crate marked with the snowflake of the Schnee Dust Company. He slumped down, his back bent, his head bowed. He barely noticed the way that the railway car shook as it tore down the rails back to Vale, except to dread what would happen when they finally got there. </p><p>He barely noticed either Ruby or Pyrrha on either side of him, though Ruby was resting against his left side and Pyrrha had one hand upon his right shoulder. He barely registered either of them. </p><p>He could see his face. He couldn’t get it out of his mind, those lifeless eyes staring at him, accusing him. The face of the man he had killed. </p><p>Closing his eyes, opening his eyes, he couldn’t be free of it. No more than he could be free of what he’d done. He’d taken a life, an actual human life. Not a grimm, not a soulless monster, but a person just like him.</p><p>Just like him. He couldn’t stop imagining just how like him that guy might have been, the guy whose life he had snuffed out. Had he joined the White Fang because he wanted to show his family that he could amount to something? Did he have seven annoying older sisters whom he loved to pieces waiting for him at home? Did he have – did he used to have – impossible dreams? Did he have friends who would have tried to comfort him if things had been reversed and he had killed Jaune instead of… instead of the other way around?</p><p>“I’m so sorry, Jaune,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>That got through to him, the words penetrating into his mind even, befuddled and fogged up as it was by the memory of that face. He looked up into Pyrrha’s face, into her green eyes filled with sorrow. “You…you’re sorry? Pyrrha… you don’t have anything to be sorry about.”</p><p>“I left you alone,” Pyrrha said. “I strayed too far when I fought that Paladin. If I’d been there-”</p><p>“Then you would have killed him,” Jaune said. If he, Jaune Arc, had managed to… to do it in one hit, then the guy’s aura must have been very low when he got up for that last rush. There was no way that one of Pyrrha’s blows wouldn’t have done as much, been as well-aimed, as powerful. Probably moreso in every respect. He couldn’t believe that the guy would be any more alive if Pyrrha had been there. </p><p>Pyrrha was silent for a moment, and still, before she nodded her head. “Probably,” she said softly.</p><p>“But then-”</p><p>“I wish that I could take this weight away from you, Jaune,” Pyrrha said. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>Jaune shook his head. “I… I wouldn’t wish this on you. I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.”</p><p>Ruby wrapped her hands around his arm. “It’ll be okay, Jaune. You’ll get through this.”</p><p>“Will I?” Jaune asked. “I don’t… I don’t feel like I will. I can see him, everywhere. There’s no getting away from him. There’s no getting away from what I did.”</p><p>“You did nothing wrong,” Pyrrha said firmly. “When two warriors fight, there is always the chance that one may fall. Your opponent took that chance and paid the price-”</p><p>“But did he know that?” Jaune asked. “I mean, isn’t that why we have aura, so that we don’t die when we’re fighting? What was he even doing fighting with so little aura left anyway?”</p><p>“Perhaps he didn’t realise, perhaps he was overconfident, perhaps he simply miscalculated,” Pyrrha speculated. “My mother was left with a permanent injury to her leg after one hit too many broke through her aura and kept going, and that was in a tournament. These things can happen, even in the most controlled environment, and in the chaos of the battlefield… you had no way of knowing. You did nothing wrong.”</p><p>“That doesn’t really matter, though, does it?” Jaune asked. “He’s still dead, and I have to live with that.”</p><p>“Yes,” Blake said as she strode in through the doorway, followed by Sunset, who closed the door behind her and muted the sounds of the outside which had briefly risen as the air got in. Blake looked down at him, her eyes, her face alike inscrutable, before she sat down on an SDC crate opposite his own. </p><p>“Yes,” she repeated, as she leaned forward with her elbows resting on her knees. “You will have to live with it. All your days.”</p><p>“Blake-” Ruby began.</p><p>“It’s the truth,” Blake said, though she didn’t take her eyes off Jaune. “I’m sorry, Ruby, but that’s how it is. It might not be what you want to hear, it certainly isn’t something nice to hear… but it’s the truth.” She paused. “And I won’t lie, not about this.”</p><p>Jaune stared at her, his eyes into hers as she stared right back at him. Nobody else in the car said anything. He barely noticed anyone else. There was only Blake and her eyes staring into his soul. </p><p>“Who…?” he murmured, the words dropping quietly from his lips. “Who was he?”</p><p>“An SDC security guard,” Blake said. “It was my first raid. I came around the corner and saw him there; we practically bumped into one another. He reached for his gun. I drew my sword. I was faster.” She closed her eyes as her ears drooped. “When they found me, Sienna was willing to finish him off herself, but Adam… Adam told me to do it. He said… he said that it would teach me something important.”</p><p>Jaune was rendered speechless for a few moments. “How old were you?”</p><p>Blake stared at him without replying, her chest rising and falling. “A little younger than Ruby.”</p><p>Ruby squeaked in… what? Sympathy? Pity? Both? Jaune didn’t know for sure. He didn’t ask her to find out. He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from Blake, from her eyes, those eyes that looked a little wetter now than they had been.</p><p>“How…?” he hesitated, but he had to know what she’d done, what he could do to get through this; Blake was able to move forward and keep fighting. He needed – wanted – to do that too. Even if he had to carry this with him then surely Blake knew how he could, maybe put it away sometimes. “How did you deal with it?”</p><p>Blake sighed. “By being young and stupid and idealistic,” she said. “By having a cause that I believed in so much that I was willing to justify almost anything, rationalise away all of my misgivings or concerns. By believing in Sienna Khan and Adam; Adam, most of all. I was told… I told myself that… that our cause was just, that anyone who opposed us was evil and that they deserved to die for their part in oppressing our people. I told myself that everything I did was for the sake of our freedom and that a noble purpose justified all actions, no matter how dark, in pursuit of it. I told myself that I could live with it for the greater good.”</p><p>Her eyes began to fill with tears. “I know that we’re not friends, I know that we don’t know each other very well, but I’m asking you: don’t do what I did. Don’t convince yourself that the people you fight are monsters no better than the grimm and so it’s okay to cut them down like they were beowolves.” She glanced away from him for a moment, looking up at Sunset, and in that moment of broken eye contact, the spell was also broken long enough for Jaune to notice the other people in the room besides Blake: Ruby looked both sad and uncomfortable; Pyrrha was trembling with a quiet fury; Sunset looked as though she was going to be sick. </p><p>Blake looked back and Jaune, captivating him with her gaze once more. “It might seem like the easy thing to do; it <em>is</em> the easy thing to do, and it might even help you to get through the nights… but when you realise that you’re wrong, and you will… it will hurt you so much more.”</p><p>“So what do you do?” Jaune asked. “What… what did you do?”</p><p>“I ran away and left my life behind,” Blake said. “That isn’t something that I’d recommend for you,” she added, as Jaune felt Pyrrha’s grip upon his shoulder get just a little firmer.</p><p>“In my… in the White Fang,” Blake continued. “There was nobody around me who could… who would have wanted to help me once I realised that what we were doing, what I’d done, was so wrong. Even the ones who thought that they were my friends or more… I couldn’t tell them that I didn’t want to kill any more, that I’d started to see our enemies as people, I couldn’t… even those who thought they liked me only saw me as a weapon, a killer… one of the monsters that we’d made of ourselves.</p><p>“You’re so much luckier than I am,” she said. “You have good friends, friends who will stand by you and help you, even if they don’t <em>know</em> what you’re going through. Let them. I can’t tell you how to feel better or deal with it because… because I don’t know the answer myself. All I can say is that… I think we have to keep moving forward and do better next time, or else… else it was all for nothing.”</p><p>Jaune said nothing. He barely nodded his head. That… that hadn’t really helped him too much, but at the same time, he found it was impossible to blame or resent Blake for that; it sounded, honestly, as though she needed as much if not more help than he did. </p><p>Judging by the way that Sunset sat down beside Blake and gently took one of her hands, it seemed Jaune wasn’t the only one who felt that way. </p><hr/><p>They were holding the prisoners in car six. Some of the security droids had been destroyed during the battle and so there was room to hold the captives they had taken. Plus Rainbow was keen to hold the prisoners in one of the cars that <em>wasn’t</em> filled with potential weapons that an enterprising bad guy could get some use out of. </p><p>Not that androids weren’t deadly weapons, but they would be a lot harder to turn against their masters than, say, a crate full of rifles or a combustible container full of dust. </p><p>So the prisoners – Torchwick, the girl who was apparently called Neo, the White Fang leader whom Blake had named Billie, and the mouse faunus pilot of the Paladin – were held in car six. Their hands were restrained and their auras cut off, leaving them to squat or sit in a clump of four in a gap left by wrecked AK-190s. The remainder of the 190s were deactivated for now, but Rainbow Dash hoped that none of these guys were unaware that what was deactivated now could easily be reactivated if they started to cause any trouble. </p><p>Of course, they had also been dumped in such a way as to give their living captors a clean shot, if necessary. </p><p>Ciel was standing almost – but not quite – leaning against the wall near the door, maintaining correct martial posture despite what must have been an enormous temptation to lounge a little bit. In her hands, she held Blitzjaeger, her cut-down rifle which was slightly more appropriate for the tight quarters than Distant Thunder. Rainbow had Unfailing Loyalty gripped tightly in both hands as she paced up and down, keeping out of Ciel’s line of fire as her footsteps echoed upon the metal floor of the train. </p><p>“What’s the matter, kid?” Torchwick asked. “You waiting for a train or something?”</p><p>Rainbow ignored him. Rainbow tried to ignore him. She would have rather handed their prisoners off as quickly as possible, but since that wasn’t going to happen, they were stuck with these guys all the rest of the way to Vale. And she could already see how the entire rest of that trip was going to go. </p><p>She wasn’t really looking forward to spending a train ride with Roman Torchwick <em>or </em>prisoners from the White Fang, to put it mildly. </p><p>“Come on, rainbow,” Torchwick said. “I’ve got nothing else to do but talk; you might as well talk back!”</p><p>“Who do you report to?” Ciel demanded.</p><p>Torchwick was silent for a moment. “Well, I don’t want to talk about <em>that</em>,” he muttered. </p><p>“Then keep your mouth shut.”</p><p>“Fine, sheesh,” Torchwick replied as he fell silent. That lasted for all of thirty seconds before he said, “I don’t suppose one of you lovely ladies would mind fishing a cigar out of my breast pocket, would you?”</p><p>“This is a no smoking train,” Ciel informed him.</p><p>Torchwick’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t see a sign anywhere.”</p><p>“It’s above you,” Ciel said. “And to the right.”</p><p>Torchwick looked up and to the right, to where there was indeed a sign proclaiming ‘No Smoking.’ “Well, will you look at that?” he exclaimed. “Gods, you Atlesians are a bunch of killjoys.”</p><p>“And you are a man who takes pleasure in wicked work,” Ciel snapped. “I know which I would rather be.”</p><p>Torchwick chuckled. “Blue Eyes, you got no idea what brings me joy.”</p><p>“You are correct, of course,” Ciel said calmly. “And I care not.”</p><p>Torchwick’s chuckling escalated into full on laughter. “Well, aren’t you an icy one? I knew a girl like you once, she was an Atlesian too, as cold as the tundra’s heart. Or so it seemed. As it turned out, three glasses of Mistralian tokar, and she turned hotter than a pepper sprout; my gods, we had some times. I’d go into more details but, you know, there are children listening.” </p><p>The girl Neo rolled her eyes. </p><p>Torchwick continued. “What does it take to thaw you out, Blue Eyes?”</p><p>“Shut the hell up,” Rainbow snapped.</p><p>Torchwick’s gaze flickered from Ciel to Rainbow Dash. “Or what, rainbow.”</p><p>“It’s Cadet Leader Rainbow Dash to you-”</p><p>“Oh, wow, your parents were really struggling for a name, weren’t they?”</p><p>“-and if you don’t shut your mouth, I’ll tape it shut all the way to Vale!” Rainbow growled.</p><p>A smirk played upon Torchwick’s face. “I remember you from the docks,” he said. </p><p>Rainbow growled as she tapped her earpiece. “Can somebody get in here and bring me some duct tape?”</p><p>“And from the bookstore,” Torchwick continued. “Tell me something, what’s a little mustang like you doing at Atlas Academy.”</p><p>Rainbow sighed. “Ugh, not this again,” she muttered. <em>Someone hurry up with that duct tape.</em></p><p>“Don’t be like that; you’re about to throw me down a hole and then throw away the hole,” Torchwick said. “The least you could do is talk to me first.”</p><p>“You could talk to all of us,” Billie said. “What’s a faunus doing-?”</p><p>“If you say ‘betraying your race,’ then so help me-”</p><p>“We’re your brothers and sisters!” Billie cried. “You should be fighting alongside us!”</p><p>“You assholes tried to kill my sister because she was in the way!” Rainbow yelled down the carriage at them. “Don’t you talk to me about brothers and sisters. In fact, don’t talk to me at all, or I will tape all of your mouths shut.”</p><p>“Do they at least give you a nice kennel and treats for being a good dog?” Billie demanded.</p><p>“Oh, please,” Rainbow spat. </p><p>The door into the car opened, and Ruby walked in, holding a ring of duct tape in her hands. “You asked for some tape?”</p><p>Rainbow grinned. “Thanks a lot, Ruby.” She propped Unfailing Loyalty up against the wall and reached out to pluck the tape from Ruby’s unresisting hands.</p><p>Ruby frowned. “What are you doing to use it for?”</p><p>The smile didn’t waver from Rainbow’s face. “I’m going to tape the mouths shut on a few of these idiots so that I don’t have to listen to them anymore.”</p><p>Ruby walked to stand beside Rainbow, looking down the train at their prisoners. </p><p>“Well hello there, Little Red,” Torchwick said, nodding affably to her. “We just can’t seem to stay away from each other, can we?”</p><p>Ruby’s hands balled into little fists. “Why?” </p><p>Torchwick smirked. “Why what? You’re going to have to be a little more specific.”</p><p>“Why are you doing this?” Ruby demanded. “Why are any of you doing this? Killing people, hurting them, stealing dust and weapons so that you can try and kill even more people later on down the line? Why? What’s the reason behind any of this?” She paused for breath, her chest rising and falling. “The grimm are driven to destroy humanity. But you’re not grimm. Your human, and faunus, you know that what you're doing is wrong, but you still do it anyway! Why? What could be so important to you that you would do things like this?”</p><p>The smirk remained on Torchwick’s face, even as his eyes narrowed. “Let me ask you a question, Little Red. Why is it that you do what you do? Let me guess: you want to protect humanity, you want to save the world, you want to be a righteous hero that everyone can look up to, and for what? Some day, you’ll be dead, just like every other huntsman or huntress in history; you’ll be dead, and no one will remember your name; meanwhile, the rich will still be rich, the powerful will still be powerful, and they’ll keep on grinding us down while useful idiots like you fight their battles for them! Do you like cookies, Red?”</p><p>“Uh, yeah,” Ruby murmured.</p><p>“Imagine that you’ve got a plate with one cookie on it, and your rainbow friend there is sitting across the table with no plate and no cookie. And then sitting between the two of you at the head of the table is Jacques Schnee, with every gods damn cookie in the world on his plate, and he has the audacity to turn to you and say ‘careful there, kid, that animal wants to steal your cookie.’ And it works! Rich assholes play the poor off against the faunus, and the morons buy it! Well, me and my new pals in the White Fang, we’re done being morons, we’re done buying into that crap; we’re going to change the world together, and we’re going to tear down the rich and their huntsmen and their cops and everyone else who tries to get in our way.”</p><p>“No matter who gets hurt in the process?” Ruby demanded. “Even if they’re faunus? Even if they’re the people you claim to be fighting for?”</p><p>“Don’t expect them to care about stuff like that, Ruby,” Rainbow said. “People like this talk a good game, but that’s all it is: talk. Talk to justify all the crimes they commit, because the truth is that they just want to hurt people.”</p><p>“I take offence at that,” Torchwick declared. “I only hurt people when I have no choice.”</p><p>“There’s always a choice,” Ruby said.</p><p>“I don’t regard dying as much of a choice.”</p><p>“Some things are worth dying for.”</p><p>“Careful, Little Red,” Torchwick replied. “A statement like that, you might have to put your money where your mouth is some day.”</p><p>“And I will,” Ruby cried. “Because that’s what a huntress does, that’s what-”</p><p>“That’s enough!” Rainbow said, her own voice rising to cut across Ruby’s before she could blurt out something she’d regret. “That’s enough,” she repeated, more quietly as she put a hand on Ruby’s shoulder. “You don’t… you don’t need to answer this guy, and you don’t need to know what their reasons are. He wouldn’t tell you anyway.”</p><p>“Are you calling me a liar?”</p><p>“She is saying that the truth is not in you,” Ciel said.</p><p>“Any time you open your mouth offends me,” Rainbow snapped. “Which is why I’m taping it shut.” She took a step towards him, starting to unpeel the tape from the roll. </p><p>Before she could take another step, she stumbled forward a few paces as the train shuddered to an abrupt halt. </p><p>“What the-?” Rainbow began.</p><p>“Why has the train just stopped?” Ruby cried.</p><p>Rainbow tapped her earpiece. “Everyone report in! Does anybody see what’s happening?”</p><hr/><p>The Paladins filled the railway cars three abreast, lined up shoulder to shoulder, their knees bent and their hands retracted to expose the guns at the end of each arm. They loomed in the darkness of the badly-lit carriages, casting long shadows across an already gloomy space and over one another.</p><p>It was weird; they had just taken out three of these things and found them to be not nearly so tough as advertised, and yet all the same, as she stood in the doorway to car two and looked at the serried column of these war machines, shrouded in darkness, Sunset could not restrain a slight shiver up her spine.</p><p>Apparently, while Atlas was redesigning their androids to be a bit more cute and cuddly than the old models, it seemed that whoever was in charge of designing the Paladin hadn't gotten the memo.</p><p>Sunset glanced down at her scroll again. It was a text from Twilight, although why Twilight would be sending her a text was something that Sunset would have to find out, because the message itself was very short and simple.</p><p>Twilight Sparkle: <span class="u">I need to talk to you, alone. Find me in car one.</span></p><p>Cryptic, sure, but that was no reason not to do it. It might be important, or at least, there would be a reason for Twilight to behave this way. Sunset ducked beneath the legs of the Paladin directly in front of her and weaved underneath, around and between the docile, slumbering walkers who did not wake at her approach.</p><p>She reached the end of car two; a brief open gap confronted her, a space open to the world separating the two carriages, with only the coupling below connecting them both. The Forever Fall rushed northwards as the train rumbled south, every league carrying them closer to Vale and Beacon and home.</p><p>Sunset leapt nimbly from one car to the other, pushing the green button beside the door into car one.</p><p>Once more, she was confronted by row upon row of Paladins, hunched and poised and ready to fire, and once more, Sunset threaded amongst their ranks as she looked for Twilight Sparkle.</p><p>Sunset found her kneeling beneath the hole in the carriage roof that she had made in the course of their battle with Roman Torchwick; the light streamed down into the otherwise unlit car like a spotlight, illuminating Twilight even while all the rest of the world was shrouded in darkness.</p><p>"Are you trying to make yourself look ever more angelic than you do normally?" Sunset asked as she walked towards her.</p><p>Twilight looked up. She was wearing most of her suit of mechanical armour, but she was missing the helmet and both gauntlets, leaving her face and hands uncovered and her hair free to fall down her back in its long ponytail. Her scroll was on her lap; she had been typing something out on it, but what, exactly, Sunset couldn't see. Twilight frowned. "You… think I look angelic?"</p><p><em>Well, that was a stupid thing to say out loud.</em> "That… is not at all what I meant," Sunset replied. "I was just… talking about the lighting, that's all." She waved her hand up towards the hole in the ceiling, then downwards in imitation of the light filtering down on Twilight.</p><p>"Oh," Twilight replied, in a tone that left it unclear whether she believed Sunset or not. "How's Jaune doing?"</p><p>"Not great," Sunset admitted. "I asked Blake to talk to him, but I'm not sure how much it helped."</p><p>"I see," Twilight murmured. "Poor Jaune. I can't… there's a reason why Rainbow and Applejack didn't want Pinkie or Rarity or Fluttershy to become huntresses, and it's not because they were afraid they might die. Well, it's not <em>just </em>because they were afraid that they might die… it's that they were afraid that they might have to live with… this."</p><p>Sunset sat down opposite Twilight, legs crossed and Sol Invictus resting against her shoulder. "I suppose I can understand that. I can't see Pinkie as a killer somehow."</p><p>"I don't <em>want</em> to see Pinkie as a killer," Twilight replied. "None of us do." Her brow furrowed. "If Jaune is… has he considered therapy?"</p><p>"I don't know what's going on in Jaune's head right now," Sunset admitted. "But I could suggest it, if you thought it would do any good."</p><p>"It really works," Twilight assured her. "It helped me out a lot."</p><p>"You've been in therapy?"</p><p>"I've seen a therapist," Twilight corrected her. "There have been… a few things, most recently starting when I was fifteen."</p><p>"The wedding," Sunset said; it was a statement, not a question.</p><p>Twilight nodded. Her smile was tight and taut and tense. "It really helped me to come to terms with what happened that day. With what almost happened. I know I wasn't the only one who needed it. Rainbow Dash… she said that she <em>didn't</em> need to talk about it, but I'm wondering now if I should have refused to take no for an answer."</p><p>"You can't help those who don't want to be helped," Sunset replied. "And besides, Rainbow seems to be doing okay."</p><p>"She did kind of fly off the handle with Blake for a little bit."</p><p>"And then she calmed down again," Sunset countered. "Unless you're saying that therapy left you completely cleansed of all your issues."</p><p>"No, of course not," Twilight replied. "I don't think that's possible."</p><p>"Well then," Sunset said, "we all have to be allowed our hang-ups." She paused. "Do you really think it would help Jaune?"</p><p>"I do," Twilight declared.</p><p>"Then I'll suggest it when we get back to Beacon," Sunset said. "Thank you."</p><p>"You don't need to thank me," Twilight said quickly. She ran one finger quickly through her bangs. “Anyway, that’s not really what I wanted to talk to you about.”</p><p>“Okay,” Sunset said. “So what <em>did</em> you want to talk to me about?”</p><p>“Well,” Twilight murmured."It’s about your… it's magic, what you can do, isn't it?"</p><p>Sunset's ears straightened up, becoming longer and more pointed. Her tail went rigid with worry, even as her stomach chilled like juice in the fridge. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said.</p><p>Twilight gave her a very knowing look. "The power that you've been passing off as your semblance, the power that you played down when you were at Canterlot but have started to show off a lot more since you got to Beacon, that's not a semblance. The most versatile semblance ever recorded is the hereditary semblance of the Schnee Family, and as far as variety goes, your powers knock theirs into a hat-"</p><p>"Oh, so because I'm a faunus, there's no way that I could have a better semblance than the illustrious Schnee Family?" Sunset demanded.</p><p>"No, there's almost no way that you could beat the law of averages like that," Twilight said. "In all the years that semblances have been recorded, in the entire historical record, there is no account of a semblance as wide ranging as yours; even the Schnee semblance is pretty straightforward: it's glyphs; it just so happens that the glyphs can be used to accomplish a great many different things. But your power? It's magic, isn't it?"</p><p>Sunset was silent for a moment, and silently, she pondered how she ought to respond to this. It was true that she had already confessed the truth to her own teammates, but Twilight wasn't one of her teammates, and Sunset wasn't as close to any of the four members of RSPT as she was to Ruby, Jaune, and Pyrrha. She could deny it – it wasn't as though Twilight could prove anything, after all – she could deny it and walk away.</p><p>But if she did that, then she wouldn't be able to find out what Twilight knew that would make her say such a thing. And Sunset wanted to find out. She had been a little… lax in delving into some of Remnant's mysteries. Preoccupied with her own uniqueness, it hadn't actually occurred to her to wonder what hidden traditions of magic Remnant might possess; Ruby's silver-eyes had opened Sunset's eyes to the existence of the same, but by that point, she simply hadn't had a lot of time to investigate further. Twilight might be offering her a window into such a world.</p><p>"Yes," she said. "It's magic, what I can do."</p><p>"Oh my goodness!" Twilight let out a little squeal of delight as both her unarmoured hands flew up to cover her face. "Oh my… I knew it! I knew it, I knew it, I knew that it was real! This is incredible! This is the greatest-!"</p><p>"Are you going to start hyperventilating?" Sunset asked.</p><p>"Sorry," Twilight said with a sheepish laugh. "It's just… after all my years of search and research, I never thought that… I mean that I always had faith that one day… but to actually meet… oh my goodness, this is so awesome!"</p><p>"Yes, I am, aren't?" Sunset asked, preening her hair with one hand. "I must say I'm surprised; you're the first person I've ever met to ask me something like this. Even Pyrrha, when she started to think that my semblance was a little overpowered, she never stopped to think that it might be something more than a semblance, let alone pin the name of magic to it."</p><p>"Yeah, well, there aren't that many people who believe or will admit to believing," Twilight explained. "To be honest, I would never mention this in the lab, and even my friends-"</p><p>"Think you're crazy?"</p><p>"They're all far too nice to say that," Twilight said. "But they don't believe… they don't believe, not like I do."</p><p>"And why do you believe?" Sunset asked. "Why do you believe in something that most people would find utterly ridiculous?"</p><p>"Because it's not just a belief," Twilight insisted. "Just because I never met anyone willing to admit that the power they have is magic until right now doesn't mean that I've been holding onto blind faith all this time. There's proof if you're willing to look for it: stories of prophets and saints that are dismissed now as religious propaganda, but if you look at the commonalities across cultural and vast geographic boundaries, it makes just as much sense to say that there is at least some truth to them." She gasped. "Is that you? Are you a saint?"</p><p>Sunset laughed. "I am a lot of things, Twilight Sparkle, but I'm pretty sure that 'saint' isn't one of them. Nor is 'prophet,' for that matter." She paused. "Keep going; all of this is new to me."</p><p>Twilight's eyebrows rose. "You have magic, but the evidence for the existence of magic is all new to you?"</p><p>"I never needed to look for proof of the existence of something that I knew perfectly well that I had," Sunset explained.</p><p>"But now you're curious?"</p><p><em>Now I want to know if you've come across anything about silver eyes. </em>"Humour me," Sunset said. "Please."</p><p>"Well," Twilight began, "after the prophets and saints, you come to the Red Queens: why were there never more than four queens at any one time, how did they rise to power, and how did they maintain it until their deaths? And it's not just ancient history either; there are eyewitness accounts of inexplicable happenings that just… they don't make sense under the current rational schema of the world, but that doesn't mean that those who say they saw it are liars or deluded or clueless. People aren't stupid; they know what they saw, and what they saw – what <em>I</em> saw – was just incredible."</p><p>Sunset leaned forward. "What did you see?"</p><p>Twilight was silent for a moment or two. "I don't remember exactly why we were on the road; I was only a young girl. I only remember that we were driving from Canterlot to Crystal City when suddenly… the grimm. I think my parents were knocked out in the crash – they were fine later, but they… I remember screaming for them as the grimm started to claw their way in, and I remember that they didn't answer. I remember how scared I was, the way I clung to my brother… and I remember <em>her</em>.</p><p>"I don't know who she was. She never stopped to tell us her name. But I remember her. Her hair was as white as the snow that was blowing all around us and as long as she was tall; she was dressed in blue, and her dress, her hair, they both billowed all around her, and she… this may sound crazy, but she was flying. She flew overhead, and the things that she did were just… I've never seen anything like it since. Wind, water, lighting, they were all at her command. It wasn't a semblance; I'd be prepared to bet everything I have on that. I don't know what it was; I just know that she saved all of us… and I know that I want to find out what it was that she did and how she did it." Twilight smiled, as if she was embarrassed. "I suppose I should probably tell you that being saved by this mysterious hero, who defeated the grimm without saying a word, inspired me to become a hero who'd save everyone myself… but that would be a lie. That's Rainbow Dash, that's my friends, that's the people around me who are so much better than me. All I can do is help them, make things they can use, support them with my mind… and find out the truth. Because there's more to this world than we know; I saw that with my own eyes. I know there's more out there, and I'm going to find it someday."</p><p>"I hope you do," Sunset murmured, because as far as she was concerned, only one person benefited from all the secrecy surrounding the magic of this world, and that was someone she didn't particularly care for. The more that was out in the open – within reason – the better. She considered telling Twilight about Ruby's eyes, but that… even telling Twilight that she ought to talk to Ruby might be construed as betraying a secret that wasn't Sunset's to reveal, and while Ruby might not mind, Pyrrha almost certainly would.</p><p><em>And Twilight didn't even mention silver eyes once. </em>That was the most incredible thing about her account, the way that it ignored the one magic native to Remnant that Sunset knew of while hinting at a whole other, different kind of ethereal power, one which seemed much more like the magic that Sunset knew from back in Equestria. Could it be that Sunset was not the first pony to come to this world from her own? The mirror portal had been devised for some purpose, after all. And yet, if all magic bar silver eyes were Equestrian in origin, then how was it being propagated? Intermarriage? It was possible, but what Twilight was describing didn't really fit with descent through bloodlines. It seemed random, or at least to obey rules that Sunset lacked the information to get her arms around at present. "Do you have any books on this that you'd recommend?"</p><p>"Uh, sure," Twilight said. "But what about you? Come on, I asked you here to ask <em>you</em> questions, not the other way around. Have you always had these powers? Is there more you can do with them that you still haven't revealed yet? Is it linked to your aura in any way?"</p><p>Sunset was interrupted before she could answer by a colossal metallic screeching sound, like the whining of some beast in immense pain, coming from further down the train. </p><p>“What in Remnant is that?” Twilight asked.</p><p>Sunset didn’t reply as she got to her feet. She made her way under and around the Paladins until she reached the side door out of the railway car. She pushed the button beside it, and the door slid outwards and across the carriage wall, allowing Sunset to stick her head out and look down the rails. </p><p>Down the rails where she could see most of the rest of the train falling away behind them, as an ever-increasing expanse of empty rail line separated the engine and the front three cars from the rest of the train from which they had been decoupled. </p><p>Sunset and Twilight were borne onwards and southwards, while all the rest of their comrades were left behind. </p><p>“Well, that’s not good.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0025"><h2>25. Sheathing the Sword</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sunset puts it all on the line for victory</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sheathing the Sword</p><p> </p><p>Sunset stepped back inside the car and drew her sword, Soteria. Even in the gloom of the railway carriage, the black blade stood out, not just grey but true black, an ebon death in the right hands. </p><p>
  <em>In worthier hands than mine, I must admit.</em>
</p><p>“Why the sword?” Twilight asked. She held out her arms, outstretched as though she were about to start doing star jumps, and a pair of armoured gauntlets of the same lavender hue as the rest of her – surprisingly – lithe and delicate armour formed around her hands and fingers. With a delicateness that one didn’t associate with powered armour, she took off her spectacles and placed them in a square metal pouch at her left hip, then lifted her long ponytail onto the top of her head and held it there as a rounded helmet formed around her head and face. Twilight Sparkle was gone, rendered invisible beneath her armour. Only her voice remained unchanged, issuing out of her protective metal shell without a trace of mechanical interference. “I mean, why not your gun? Or your magic?”</p><p>“Because my gun wouldn’t work for this, and while magic would, it’s easier just to use the sword,” Sunset explained.</p><p>“'Easier'?” Twilight repeated. “What are you going to do?”</p><p>“I’m going to cut this car off from the two behind,” Sunset said, as though it ought to have been obvious. She started to stride towards the rear door, and the coupling between carriage one and two. </p><p>“You can’t do that!” Twilight cried, following quickly after her.</p><p>“Why not?” Sunset demanded. “We need to do it quick before whoever cut off car three makes their way up here.”</p><p>“Because then, whoever cut off car three will get the Paladins!” Twilight insisted. “We came all this way to <em>stop </em>them from being stolen; we can’t just give them up without a fight because we’ve been cut off from the others.”</p><p>Unfortunately, she had a point there. They were supposed to be huntresses, after all. How would it look to cut and run – or ride away with the railway engine – just because Pyrrha or Ruby weren’t here to have her back? It was hardly the sort of thing that the heroes of Pyrrha’s <em>Mistraliad</em> would have done. In fact, it was the kind of thing that they would have found shameful in themselves and contemptible in others.</p><p>
  <em>And let’s be honest here; I’d find it pretty contemptible in others too, if it wasn’t me considering it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Rainbow will never let me hear the end of it if I run away. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I mean, she’ll never forgive me if I let Twilight get hurt, but she won’t consider that possibility when she’s letting me have it with both barrels for being a chicken. </em>
</p><p>Sunset sheathed Soteria and summoned Sol Invictus into her outstretched hand. “Do you have any drones?” she asked as she reached the door leading out of car one; across the open space that separated the two carriages, she could see the door into car two as open as it had been when she came this way. Inside, the railway carriage was dark and shadowy; the ceiling hatch was open but it let in a very small patch of light, not enough to see anything around it; the other door was shut, and the Paladins loomed in the dark like sleeping monsters, waiting for some demonic signal to summon them to life. </p><p>
  <em>Only if we let the White Fang walk away with them.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The more reason not to cut the cars, I suppose.</em>
</p><p>“Yes,” Twilight said. “I’ve got one.”</p><p>“Send it into car two,” Sunset said as she knelt down in the doorway, one shoulder resting on the metal.</p><p>“Is there someone in there?”</p><p>“If I could see somebody in there, I wouldn’t need you to send the drone,” Sunset snapped. She had activated her night-vision spell on her eyes, but – apart from the fact that the sunlit stretch between the two carriages was getting in the way – there were just too many places to hide in there with all the Atlesian war machines filling up the space. </p><p>“Right, sorry,” Twilight murmured.</p><p>“No, it’s fine,” Sunset muttered. “I just… can you get the drone in there?”</p><p>“Sure,” Twilight said. She waved her right hand over her left arm, and a holographic display appeared above her wrist. She tapped at it deftly with her index finger, and from the depths of the car behind them, a whirring sound arose in answer. Sunset’s ears twitched as the whirring got louder until one of Twilight’s drones, its engines buzzing, flew above her head. </p><p>A miniature gun descended from the rectangular belly of the machine, pivoting from left to right and then back again. </p><p>Twilight reached the door and crouched down on the other side of it from Sunset. She used all of her fingers now, like typing but with no letters visible, but she must have been doing something because the drone moved further forward into the shadowy recesses of the second carriage. </p><p>Sunset looked at Twilight; there was a camera attached to the drone, and its feed was relaying back to the projection above Twilight’s wrist. Sunset dispelled the night-vision spell, it was doing her less good than harm at this point with the sunlight coming in from outside, and her glance switched between the carriage in front of her and the view from the drone being projected to her right. </p><p>The drone advanced, turning left and right, inspecting the gaps between the Paladins; the images it was sending back were green and night-vision-y, showing the thick metal frames of the war walkers as they stood motionless. What it was not showing, yet, was any sign of who had severed car three from the rest of the train. </p><p>“We should call Rainbow Dash,” Twilight said.</p><p>“Do you want to be in the middle of a scroll call when the White Fang attack?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“Good point,” Twilight murmured. “I’m surprised that they’re attacking again so quickly.”</p><p>“I’m surprised they’re being so stealthy, considering how much of a racket they made the last time,” Sunset replied, her voice soft and quiet; they might not be exactly in the presence of the enemy, but it was as well to act as if they were. </p><p>“What do we do if car two is clear?”</p><p>“Move in, secure it, check out car three,” Sunset replied.</p><p>“Right,” Twilight said. “Sunset?”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“Are you nervous?”</p><p>“No,” Sunset said at once. “I’m not nervous at all.” <em>The only reason I’d be nervous is… is if it was him.</em></p><p>Adam’s face appeared in the drone’s camera. It was only for a moment, before there was a flash of red of the holographic screen, and the picture went black. From inside carriage two, there was the sound of something – like a drone that had just been cut in half with a sword – falling to the floor with a clatter. </p><p>Twilight squeaked in alarm. Sunset growled wordlessly. <em>It would have to be him, wouldn’t it?</em></p><p>Adam. Adam Taurus with his SDC brand and his blood red sword. Sunset’s breathing became heavier just thinking about it. </p><p>She didn’t know whether he had intended to catch them alone – she suspected that might be attributing a little too much importance to herself in his eyes – or to steal the Paladins without any interference, but either way, he’d been smarter about this than his soldiers had been. </p><p>There was a bang and a flash of light from inside carriage two, and both Sunset and Twilight flinched back as the shot whizzed past them to strike the leg of a Paladin beyond. Sunset leaned out into the open of the doorway, and Sol Invictus barked twice as she fired twice, half-blind, into the darkness. </p><p>There was no more return fire. Adam didn’t return fire. There was silence from the shadowy carriage where the Paladins lurked. </p><p>
  <em>So, what’s he doing now?</em>
</p><p>If he retreated, Sunset would see him open the door to car three. If he waited in carriage two, then they could wait too. The others would have noticed that the train had been split in two, and Rainbow could catch up to them with her wings. </p><p>Assuming that they weren’t under attack right now. The thought burst into Sunset’s head like an exploding grenade. That would be the ideal plan, of course: to steal the Paladins and prevent pursuit with a holding attack aimed at the rest of the train. Ruby, Pyrrha, Jaune, Blake, the remaining Rosepetals might all be under attack right now and unable to render Sunset or Twilight any aid for quite some time. </p><p>Sunset found herself suddenly, absurdly, glad that Adam was here, with them, instead of facing off against her friends with Sunset herself being carried away and unable to aid them. </p><p>However, it did rather diminish "sit tight and wait" as a viable strategy. </p><p>Sunset looked at Twilight. “Wait here, and if necessary, cut the connection with your energy blade.”</p><p>“What are you going to do?” Twilight demanded, surprise in her voice. </p><p>Sunset rose to her feet. “Wait here,” she repeated as she stepped out of the carriage, leaping across the gap between the two and landing on the other side a little more heavily than she might have liked. </p><p>She considered exchanging gun for sword, but Soteria would be at as much a disadvantage in the tight quarters, hedged in by all those Paladins, as Sol Invictus would be, and at least she could get a shot off with Sol Invictus. </p><p><em>Whether it will do any good or not is another matter,</em> Sunset thought as the memory of that red sword slashed across her mind. </p><p>
  <em>I need to get around him if I can.</em>
</p><p>Her boots tapped upon the metallic floor as she advanced into the railway car. Sol Invictus felt heavy in her hands; the stock felt hard as she tucked it into her shoulder.</p><p>Sunset walked gingerly forwards. As she more fully submerged herself in the dark, she cast the night-vision spell upon her eyes once more, illuminating the gloom so that she could see beyond the point of Sol Invictus' bayonet. She could see Twilight's drone – or the pieces that remained of it – lying on the ground, sliced in two. But she couldn't see Adam. Of their opponent, there was no sign.</p><p>Sunset walked forward, looking left and right. Where was he? The carriage wasn't that big, so where had he-?</p><p>Sunset heard footsteps on the roof of the car above her. She turned in time to see Adam drop down from the roof behind her, standing in the doorway of car two.</p><p>He was smirking as he pushed the button to close the door on her.</p><p>Sunset cursed under her breath. He had probably locked it too; still, while sight to sight was always better, memory would do at a pinch.</p><p>She teleported, appearing with a crack and a flash of green light on the plate beyond the – now locked, probably – carriage door; Adam, as she suspected, wasn't there; he had already moved into carriage one, forcing Twilight back under a furious assault.</p><p>Twilight must have gotten off a couple of shots with the lasers mounted in her gauntlets, because Adam's sword was already glowing ominously, a crimson light amidst the shadows. A blade had emerged from out of the wrist of Twilight's armour on the right, and on her left, her gauntlet was projecting a hard-light shield, but it was clear watching her try and fend off Adam which of the two combatants was a true warrior and which was an amateur.</p><p>But the true warrior had turned his back on Sunset. She raised Sol Invictus to her shoulder once more and fired once, twice, three times.</p><p>Adam turned as swift as thought, his red sword tracing crimson patterns in the air as her first, second, and third rounds were all absorbed by that blade that glowed ever brighter and with an ever more bloody hue; he was still smirking as he turned again, parrying with contemptuous ease the thrust for his back that Twilight had made, beating her shield aside, slashing her once, twice, three times, scoring her aura as his blade glanced off her armour.</p><p>Twilight recoiled, shielding herself with her arms crossed before her face, cringing before his fury; Sunset charged, and as she charged, she extended the bayonet of Sol Invictus, hoping to ram it into his back and knock him off balance. Once more, Adam rounded on her, beating her thrust aside to leave Sunset's guard open.</p><p>She dropped her rifle, letting it clatter to the floor; with the bayonet extended, it was too long for a fight in these conditions.</p><p>Sunset took a step back and drew Soteria; the red glow of Adam's sword was reflected on the ebon blade.</p><p>Adam stared at her for a moment. "You know what they did to me," he said. "You know what her kind do to ours. So why do you fight for her? Why do you fight for them against your own people?"</p><p>"You aren’t my people, they are," Sunset growled.</p><p>"For how long?" Adam demanded.</p><p>"Always," Sunset said.</p><p>Adam might have said more if Twilight hadn't taken the opportunity to try and shoot him in the back. A pair of laser carbines emerged from out of her gauntlets, bursts of lavender-tinted energy bursting forth – to slam, all without exception, into Adam's blade.</p><p>Adam's sword was now as red as fire; his hair, the red of the wilting rose upon his jacket, it was all glowing like a torch, a torch that spread its light across the railway carriage, turning it as red as blood as he rounded on Twilight.</p><p>"Don't," he growled, "interrupt me, you insolent brat."</p><p>Adam did not charge as he had charged at Ruby; Twilight was too close for that as she stood, frozen, paralysed by the fear that emanated from the monster before her. Rather, as Adam advanced, he drew back his sword for a thrust.</p><p>Sunset felt the fear too. She felt the same fear that was freezing Twilight in place, the same fear that had held her frozen at the docks, the fear that had left her helpless before his wrath.</p><p>The fear that had almost cost her Ruby.</p><p>
  <em>Not again.</em>
</p><p>Sunset teleported, throwing herself between Adam and Twilight just as Adam thrust forth his blade.</p><p>The crimson sword, empowered by bullets and lasers alike, shattered Sunset's aura with a single thrust, piercing her cuirass and driving deep into her gut before bursting like a mole from the earth out the other side.</p><p>Sunset gasped. The pain was… it was all she could feel; it was the only part of her body that mattered, the part that was screaming out its mistreatment throughout her mind. Tears pricked at the corners of Sunset's eyes as Soteria dropped from her trembling hands as she fought to keep her head clear, or at least as clear as it could be kept from the pain because this was… this was… perfect.</p><p>Sunset grabbed hold of the sword with one hand. She could barely feel the edge of the blade slicing at her fingers; it didn't register compared with the pain of having the sword through her stomach. Blood coated the sword as Adam tried to twist it and pull it free, but Sunset hung on through the scarring of her hand.</p><p>She grinned, or tried to; it might have come out as a bit more like a bloody grimace. "Gotcha," she said, and with her free hand, she let him have it square in the chest, a beam of magic blasting forth.</p><p>And he had no sword now to intercept it.</p><p>Adam let go of his weapon, leaving it lodged in Sunset's abdomen as he was blasted backwards, hurled by the magic which flowed out of Sunset's hand; she poured it out, unleashing her magic in a torrent that bore back Adam Taurus, hurling him across and out of carriage one and into the door to car two that he had shut in Sunset's face.</p><p>He was held there, driven against the door by the beam of magic. The beam that began to sputter as Sunset's strength, like her blood, began to ebb away.</p><p><em>Not yet</em>, Sunset thought, as she took a staggering step forwards, stumbling. Her magic began to die. <em>Not yet.</em></p><p>She fell, hitting the ground with a thudding impact that she barely felt. Everything began to darken.</p><p>
  <em>Not… yet…</em>
</p><hr/><p>"Sunset? Sunset!" Twilight cried, as she knelt by Sunset's side. This was bad. Sunset was still breathing, but faintly; there was no telling how much longer she had left. And worse, the sword had gone in one side and out the other, so if she removed it, there was no way that Twilight could keep pressure on the wound to keep her from bleeding out.</p><p>If she had the medkit… but that was back on the other half of the train with the others. If Jaune were here… but he was back on the other half of the train with the others too. Even if Twilight called for a medical evac now, would it get here in time? What was she supposed to do? Wouldn't someone tell her how she was supposed to save Sunset?</p><p>A thudding step drew her attention. Twilight gasped as she saw Adam bearing down on her, upon the both of them, upon the helpless Sunset… and upon Twilight, who felt equally helpless but with less excuse for it.</p><p>
  <em>How can he still be standing? How can he still have aura? What is he?</em>
</p><p>Twilight rose to her feet. She wished that she could feel brave, as brave as Rainbow Dash, as brave as Sunset... but she couldn't. She didn't feel brave; she felt scared. She felt very scared.</p><p>But she stepped over Sunset's body nonetheless, raising her fists because Sunset had been willing to… to maybe die for her, even though they were hardly friends at all. How could she do less?</p><p>Twilight raised her arms and fired; once more, lavender beams burst from the miniature cannons built into her gauntlets; Adam ducked, the first flurry of beams passing harmlessly over his head as he rushed her, closing the distance between them before Twilight could adjust her shots. Her blade extended, but by then, Adam had already reached her, his arms around her waist, grappling with her as he hoisted Twilight up into the air and, with a great roar, threw her down upon the floor of the railway car. The armour cushioned Twilight from the impact, but she could see her aura diminish nonetheless through the HUD built into her helmet visor. The visor that Adam began to pound on with his fists, his face set in a snarl as his hands rose and fell like hammers, descending on Twilight's helmet, upon her arms as she tried to shield herself; she slashed at him with her wrist blade, but he simply caught her by the wrist and held her there. His grip was so strong, she couldn't break it; she couldn't resist it.</p><p>"Tell me something," Adam growled. "What makes you worthy to have a faunus die for you?"</p><p>Twilight whimpered wordlessly.</p><p>"Answer me!"</p><p>"I'm not!" Twilight cried. "I'm not, and I didn't ask her to, she just…"</p><p>"No," Adam replied. "You didn't ask. You just took her life for yours as though you were entitled to it. Because you're a human, and that's what humans do." He punched her once more, then released her as he rose to his feet. Twilight didn't move. It didn't feel possible to move, not now, not in his presence. Not even when he turned his back on her and walked towards Sunset. He knelt, and for a moment, he seemed to stare at her face, eyes closed, breathing shallow, strands of her fiery hair lying across it.</p><p>With a hand that Twilight would have called gentle had the circumstances been less creepy, Adam reached out and brushed the hair out of Sunset's face.</p><p>Then he pulled his sword out of her gut, prompting a great spurt of blood to pour out of her and onto the carriage floor.</p><p>"No!" Twilight cried.</p><p>Adam turned, and in his other hand, he raised his scabbard and shot her with it. One, two, three shots rang out, each one slamming into Twilight, each one taking another notch out of her aura until it was in the red – but there was no instructor to stop the match.</p><p>Adam smiled.</p><p>The smile on his face faded as the sound of screeching on the rails behind them rose, a sound like another train hastily coming to a stop.</p><p>
  <em>Another train? But that's impossible? Our train would still be… did they find a way to move it somehow?</em>
</p><p>Adam's expression twisted into a scowl. "How?" he growled, his thoughts clearly a mirror of Twilight's own in that regard, but he seemed to have no doubt as to what it was, or perhaps Sunset had just done so much damage to his aura that he wasn't willing to take the chance, because he turned and fled, darting out of the door leading from the carriage to the engine at the front of the train.</p><p>Twilight felt the car begin to shudder to a halt a moment before she heard Rainbow Dash's voice cry out, "Twilight?!"</p><hr/><p>Pyrrha was knocked sideways as the train came to an abrupt halt, and it was only by good fortune that she didn't slip off her perch and fall to the metallic floor of the railway car.</p><p>"What was that?" Jaune asked. "Are we under attack again?" His voice and face alike proclaimed his nervousness at the prospect, although whether it was the prospect of battle or of killing again that made him so, Pyrrha could not have said.</p><p>"I don't know," Pyrrha replied gently. "We should get up on the roof and-"</p><p>"Does anybody know what just happened?" Rainbow's voice demanded into Pyrrha's ear.</p><p>"Not yet," Pyrrha said. "Is everyone alright?"</p><p>"I'll be fine once I dig myself out," Sun groaned.</p><p>"I'm alright; heading up to check out the situation," Blake said.</p><p>"Functioning at one hundred percent!" Penny declared.</p><p>"I'm okay," Ruby replied. "And so are Rainbow and Ciel."</p><p>There were no other responses.</p><p>"Sunset?" Pyrrha asked. "Sunset, are you okay?"</p><p>"Hey, Twilight, give us a response," Rainbow added. "Twilight?"</p><p>"Uh, guys," Blake said. "We've got a problem. Someone severed car three from four, and now, they're leaving us behind."</p><p>"What?" Pyrrha cried. "I'm on my way."</p><p>"<em>We're</em> on our way," Jaune corrected her, and despite the slight pallor around his face, his voice was firm with conviction.</p><p>Pyrrha hesitated for a moment, but she had promised herself that she would never doubt him; if he thought that he could do something, then she would let him try, for all that she might watch him with an anxious eye while he did so. She nodded. "Right. Let's go."</p><p>They ran through the train, leaping from car to car, manoeuvring around fallen crates and containers of dust, racing past androids until they reached carriage number four. Blake stood in the doorway, silhouetted in the exit from the train, with nothing but open rails and the Forever Fall forest before where there ought have been another carriage and two more beyond that until they reached the engine.</p><p>She could see car three, but only as it grew smaller in the distance, pulling ever further away from them.</p><p>"Gods," Pyrrha murmured, as she rushed to Blake's side. "Did you see who decoupled them?"</p><p>"No, but it wasn't a decoupling," Blake replied. "Take a look for yourself."</p><p>She stepped back, allowing Pyrrha to walk through the door and stand on the plate beyond. Blake was right; the two cars had not been decoupled; rather, the connection between the two had been severed, and by a single stroke too, if Pyrrha was any judge.</p><p>"Does anybody have eyes on Twilight?" Rainbow demanded into their ears.</p><p>"Or Sunset?" Pyrrha added.</p><p>"No," Penny said. "I'm sorry."</p><p>"It's not your fault, Penny," Pyrrha said quickly.</p><p>The sound of footsteps running above caused Pyrrha to look up as Rainbow appeared on the edge of the roof, her eyes wide with concern. "Blake, did you see them?"</p><p>"No," Blake repeated. "But the White Fang – someone from the White Fang – must have decided that they could still get the Paladins even if they couldn't take the whole train."</p><p>"And you think Sunset and Twilight could be…?" Jaune asked from inside the carriage.</p><p>"If they're not anywhere else, and they won't respond then..." Blake said.</p><p>Rainbow growled. "I'm going after them."</p><p>"Wait," Jaune said quickly, before she could take off and leave them behind. "I might have a better idea." He stepped forward so that he was standing in the doorway, closer to Pyrrha. "Pyrrha," he said, "if I boost you, can you move this train?"</p><p>Pyrrha's eyes widened as she comprehended what he was suggesting. "You mean… you want me to push it with my semblance?"</p><p>"The line runs straight at this point, so we don't have to worry about steering," Jaune explained. "And when we get closer, you can… slow it down, and then you, Rainbow, Blake, everyone can leap across. You can get to the engine and stop it. Or just deal with whoever's trying to take it. I don't know, but I do know that this is our best way of getting after that train and sticking together. So can you do it?"</p><p>Pyrrha was silent for a moment. She had never attempted moving anything nearly so large as this before; she had limited the use of her semblance almost completely to small movements of small objects; the biggest thing that she'd ever done with her semblance was move the Bullhead at the docks… but that hadn't taxed her as much as she might have thought; who knew what she might accomplish if she exerted herself?</p><p>And with Jaune's semblance amplifying hers, then she would be capable of even more than that.</p><p>For Sunset, and Twilight, she had no choice but to try.</p><p>"With your help, I can," she promised.</p><p>"Okay," Rainbow said. "Ciel, can you handle watching the prisoners by yourself?"</p><p>"I can," Ciel affirmed.</p><p>"Penny, Ruby, get up to the front of car four," Rainbow instructed. "Any time, Pyrrha."</p><p>Pyrrha turned away from her. She turned away from all of them, facing down the railway line that stretched on south and staring at the carriages with their friends aboard that were pulling rapidly away from them.</p><p>
  <em>But not for long, I hope.</em>
</p><p>She felt Jaune's hand upon her shoulder; it was comforting, reassuring, and then as he began to use his semblance on her, as the golden light of his soul spread over her like an amber shower, she felt so warm, so safe… so powerful.</p><p>She could do this. With Jaune's help, she could do anything.</p><p>Pyrrha reached out, literally spreading her arms out on either side of her, both arms wreathed in black, even as the gold of Jaune's semblance danced across her gloves. Her semblance usually felt like it was another hand, an invisible limb with which she could reach out deftly to prod or to tug, but now, it was so much more than that; it was like a whole array of limbs, like an octopus' tentacles stretching out and away from her, letting her feel the train behind her in all its metallic might and glory.</p><p>She grabbed that metal and began to pull.</p><p>Pyrrha dared to look down, and she could see that the carriage upon the edge of which she stood was wreathed in black as she hauled upon it, willing it to move. It resisted; its weight and that of all the other cars behind her resisted, physics defying her will. Pyrrha stretched forth more of her power; her aura would have been dropping precipitously even now, but with Jaune's help, she had – or felt she had – more aura than ever.</p><p>She had the power; it would obey her.</p><p>Slowly, as if the engine were still attached and just pulling away from the station, the carriage began to move; it began to roll down the rail line, dragging the rest of the carriages behind it. Pyrrha didn't dare stop, didn't dare let friction bring it all to a halt again; rather, she put forth more power, pulled harder, willed the collection of rail cars to go faster, and they did. Pyrrha felt the air rushing past her, kissing her face, then almost slapping it as they sped up until the carriages were racing down the track with their wheels grinding, the thumping sounds of their progress coming faster and faster. Pyrrha felt the emerald drops that hung from her circlet hitting the sides of her face as they were blown this way and that by the speed of their movement, but she ignored them, just as Jaune must be ignoring having Pyrrha's ponytail blown into his face; he didn't let it affect him; he stayed where he was and kept on boosting Pyrrha, giving her the strength to make these railway cars barrel forwards.</p><p>The stolen railway carriages, that once had been receding into the distance, now grew larger and larger, closer and closer until they were going to crash if she didn't stop right now, weren't they?</p><p>Pyrrha slammed on the metaphorical breaks, reversing the direction of her semblance so that it was no longer pulling the train forward but pushing it back, pushing against the momentum of the weighty carriages and all their cargo, pushing to slow it down before they slammed straight into car three. The carriages began to slow, the wheels screeching in pain as they ground against the rails, sparks flying up on either side as they slowed.</p><p>Car three began to slow as well; in fact it stopped dead, forcing Pyrrha to exert all the borrowed power of her amplified semblance to bring their cars to a shuddering halt just a foot away from the car they had pursued.</p><p>Rainbow at once leapt across the gap between the two roofs. "Twilight?!" she yelled.</p><p>The answer came both through the air and into their ears. "Yes. I'm here. I need help; Sunset's badly hurt."</p><p>Pyrrha gasped. She turned to Jaune, worried now that he had used too much of his own aura; his reserves were large but not unlimited, and if he wasn't able to help Sunset... if anything happened to Sunset because Jaune had given too much of a boost to her, Pyrrha wouldn't be able to forgive herself.</p><p>"I'll be fine," Jaune assured her, in spite of the fact that he seemed to have only gotten paler since he had begun to boost her semblance. "Twilight, where are you?"</p><hr/><p>Sunset's ears were greeted by a chorus of gasps and cries even as her eyes opened slowly to be greeted by the sight of Jaune Arc, leaning over her, holding his hands over her stomach.</p><p>"Oh, thank God," he sighed, his body slumping forward a little.</p><p>
  <em>That's right. I was… I was stabbed, wasn't I?</em>
</p><p>"Hey," Sunset murmured. "I suppose I have you to thank for saving my life."</p><p>Jaune shrugged. "You could say that."</p><p>"Thanks," Sunset said, sitting upright with a groan. "You might remember that when you saved Ruby, I gave you a kiss… but you've got a girlfriend now, so I'll just say thank you very much and move on," she added, smiling a little as she patted him on the shoulder. She glanced at Pyrrha, hovering anxiously over Jaune's shoulder, and winked at her.</p><p>Pyrrha shook her head very slightly, while Jaune laughed nervously. "That's fine by me. I'm just glad you're okay."</p><p>"We're all just glad you're okay," Pyrrha added.</p><p>"Really glad," Ruby said, reaching out and taking Sunset's right hand in both of hers. "Team Sapphire… it just wouldn't be the same without you."</p><p>Sunset looked at her. It looked as though she'd been crying – there were tear stains under her eyes – but Sunset didn't want to embarrass her by bringing it up. "Of course not," she said in an easy tone. "Team Sapphire wouldn't be anything without me."</p><p>Ruby snorted, her whole face crinkling up. "Same old Sunset," she said.</p><p>"It'll take more than a little scratch like that to change me," Sunset informed her. Her gaze flickered down to her hand; Jaune's stimulation of her aura had healed the through and through stab wound that would have killed her, but she was left with some pretty nasty looking scars on her hands and fingers. Nothing, thankfully, that would stop her from using said hand and fingers – as she proved to her own satisfaction, curling them up one by one before making a fist – but still a long-lasting reminder of her third encounter with Adam Taurus.</p><p>Speaking of which… "Adam?" she asked.</p><p>"Fled when he heard our approach," Pyrrha said. "He severed the engine from the remaining carriages and rode away. Jaune was needed to save you, and so I couldn't move the cars after him, and it was too risky for Rainbow Dash to pursue by herself."</p><p>Rainbow was standing a little way off, her arms folded across her chest, and at hearing Pyrrha say this, she pouted in annoyance; clearly, she didn't like to be reminded of the fact that she had made a cautious choice.</p><p>So Sunset made sure to remind her of it anyway. "I don't blame you for doing the sensible thing. He's a scary guy."</p><p>Rainbow glanced at her. "To some people, maybe."</p><p>"Yeah, people like you."</p><p>"Sunset," Ruby cried reproachfully. "Can't you stop?"</p><p>"This is the perfect time; she can't get upset at me when I'm recovering from an injury."</p><p>"Yeah, but… come on," Ruby protested.</p><p>"Okay," Sunset conceded. "So, how did you all get here?"</p><p>"Pyrrha used her semblance to pull the train," Ruby said excitedly.</p><p>"It was pretty awesome," Jaune agreed.</p><p>Sunset's eyebrows rose. "Really? I'm sorry to have missed that."</p><p>"I could never have done it without Jaune's help," Pyrrha said modestly. "Which makes two times today that he's been pretty awesome," she added, squeezing his shoulder gently.</p><p>"Do you think you can do that to get us the rest of the way to Vale, or are we stuck?" Sunset asked.</p><p>"General Ironwood is sending us a pick-up," Rainbow explained.</p><p>"Now that we're stuck, you mean?"</p><p>Rainbow shrugged. "Pretty much, yeah. Two Skyrays inbound."</p><p>"Sunset," Twilight said timorously. She was kneeling next to Jaune by Sunset's legs; her helmet had retracted to reveal her face one more. "I… thank you. Without you, I would have… he would have… thank you."</p><p>"Don't mention it," Sunset said.</p><p>"'Don't mention it'?" Twilight repeated incredulously. "You saved my life."</p><p>"No, I just knew that I had to do something drastic to get past his sword and semblance," Sunset informed her. "Saving you was just a happy accident."</p><p>"Why do you have to talk so much crap all the time?" Rainbow demanded. "Everyone sees right through it."</p><p>Sunset looked at her. "Not <em>everyone</em>, I hope."</p><p>Rainbow rolled her eyes. "Everyone in here," she said. She walked around Pyrrha, Jaune, and Twilight to stand by Ruby and offered Sunset a hand up.</p><p>With her own hand, her scarred hand, Sunset took it.</p><p>Rainbow pulled her up onto her feet and into a hug, patting her repeatedly on the back.</p><p>"I owe you for this," Rainbow said into Sunset's ear. "I owe you big time. Next time you're in trouble, whatever you need, I've got your back. Like you had Twilight's."</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0026"><h2>26. The Happy Return</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Team SAPR returns home to an unwelcome discovery; Rainbow offers Jaune the benefit of her wisdom; Cinder offers Sunset her assistance.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Happy Return</p><p> </p><p>Professor Ozpin was waiting for them at the docking bay as the Altesian airships approached the school. A tall, broad-shouldered man in an Atlesian uniform stood beside him, and Jaune wondered – guessed, to be more accurate – that this was General Ironwood; with him were a woman in white who looked like an older Weiss and a large number of Atlesian soldiers with their faces hidden behind the visors of their helmets. </p><p>“Nice to have a welcoming committee,” Torchwick said as the airships descended with open doors. The corners of his lips twitched upwards. “I remember when I was given the freedom of Lower Cairn, the mayor dragged me up in front of the whole town-”</p><p>“Unless he dragged you up in front of the whole town so that you could be pelted with rotten fruit, I don’t believe it,” Sunset snapped. “Nora’s stories are more believable than yours, and they <em>break the laws of physics</em>.”</p><p>“I went to a Mystery Spot once, if that counts,” Torchwick said.</p><p>Sunset rolled her eyes.  </p><p>They had four prisoners: Torchwick, Neo, Billie, and the pilot of the paladin Pyrrha had taken apart, whom Blake didn’t recognise and who wouldn’t give his name. They were all in specially-designed Atlesian handcuffs that suppressed aura… somehow; Twilight had tried to explain how it worked to them, but the only ones who actually seemed to follow what she was saying were Sunset and Ciel. It was kind of creepy that they had tech that could just stop your aura like that, even if he could see why they needed it with prisoners like this Torchwick guy, but still… creepy that they just turn your aura off and leave you vulnerable like… like that poor guy.</p><p>Jaune shook his head. Anyway, the point was that they had four prisoners divided between the two Atlesian airships just like the two teams: Team SAPR had the pleasure of Torchwick and Neo’s company, while Team RSPT and Blake were in the other airship with the two White Fang captives. </p><p>The airships touched down upon the spacious docking pad; it was large enough for much bigger civilian or military airships, so it was certainly big enough for the two craft which had carried them home from the Forever Fall Forest. </p><p>Roman Torchwick was the first one out, leaping down from the airship before Sunset could push him out. Neo followed quickly. Meanwhile, it seemed that Rainbow was having to physically coerce the two White Fang prisoners out onto the docking pad.</p><p>“Get your hands off me, traitor!” Billie growled.</p><p>“Traitor, traitor, always traitor,” Rainbow snapped. “Give it a rest, why don’t you?”</p><p>The two huntsman teams dismounted and either followed or forced their prisoners across the docking pad to where what Torchwick had, not entirely inaccurately, called their welcoming committee was waiting for them. </p><p>“Roman Torchwick,” General Ironwood growled in a voice that was dripping with contempt.</p><p>“General Ironwood himself come down from on high to meet me,” Torchwick replied. “I’m flattered. I don’t suppose this would be a good time to ask for my lawyer? Or maybe my phone call?”</p><p>General Ironwood did not look impressed. He raised his voice so that all four of the prisoners could hear him. “Considering that you’ve already escaped from Valish custody once, I’ve decided to hold you on my flagship for the time being; as a terrorist under military custody, you don’t enjoy the rights afforded to common criminals. I can hold you for as long as I like, in whatever conditions I choose.”</p><p>“You know,” Torchwick said, “I’m pretty sure that my lawyer would have a field day with this… if I actually had a lawyer. Let me guess: cooperate, and I’ll get an easier time of it.”</p><p>“We <em>do</em> have a number of inquiries we were hoping you might help us with,” Professor Ozpin agreed mildly.</p><p>“Well, when you put it like that,” Torchwick said, “I’ll have to think it over.”</p><p>“You’ll have nothing to do <em>but</em> think,” General Ironwood said. “Schnee, escort our new guests to their cells aboard the <em>Valiant</em>.”</p><p>“Yes, sir,” the older Weiss declared, clicking her heels together as she stood to attention. “First Squad, with me!”</p><p>“Get off the airship, get back on the airship,” Torchwick muttered, as he was hustled straight back the way that he and his fellow captives had just come. “Still, it was nice to get the chance to stretch my legs.”</p><p>The general turned his attention to Team RSPT, who all snapped to attention when his gaze fell upon them. Blake stood just a little behind them, looking uncertain as to whether she ought to stand to attention or not. Rainbow Dash saluted, a gesture which the general returned.</p><p>“Good work, Dash,” General Ironwood said. “You’ve dealt a heavy blow to the White Fang’s operations. Depending on what information we can get out of those four, we might be able to follow up with something even heavier.”</p><p>“Thank you, sir,” Rainbow Dash acknowledged. “I’m sorry that we let Adam Taurus get away from us again.”</p><p>“Was aerial reconnaissance able to locate the stolen engine, sir?” Ciel asked.</p><p>“No,” General Ironwood admitted. “The truth is that there are disused and derelict railway lines all over rural Vale, built to serve settlements that fell or were abandoned; the White Fang probably diverted the engine onto one of those, and the overgrown nature of the Forever Fall makes aerial recon difficult. But engines are far less important to me than weapons and war machines,” he went on, in a more robust tone. “You safeguarded all the Atlas Military’s property and took prisoners; you accomplished everything the operation was designed to achieve. And besides, there are worse things than having an enemy flee in terror at your coming. Your performance wasn’t perfect, and I expect your report to outline all of your mistakes and the things you should have done instead, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be proud of what you <em>did</em> achieve.”</p><p>“Yes, sir,” Rainbow said. “But we didn’t do it alone.”</p><p>“Indeed. Welcome back, Miss Shimmer, all of you,” Professor Ozpin said with a genial smile upon his face. “I’m glad to see that you were able to help get the railroad north back up and running.” His smile faded. “I am sorry to hear that you ran into so much trouble on your way back.”</p><p>Sunset’s face gave nothing away. “You did tell us we could return at our own leisure, Professor,” she said.</p><p>“Indeed. Nevertheless, I am sorry to hear about your injury,” Professor Ozpin replied.</p><p>Sunset clenched her scarred hand into a fist. “I’m fine, Professor, thank you,” she said, softly and with a trace of a chill in her voice. </p><p>“I’m sure you are, Miss Shimmer,” Professor Ozpin said mildly. “Mister Arc,” he added, turning his gaze on Jaune. </p><p>Jaune had the uncomfortable impression that he was being seen right through. It was all he could do not to take a step back. “Yes, Professor?”</p><p>“Amongst her many considerable talents, Professor Goodwitch is also a fully qualified therapist,” Professor Ozpin informed him. “And she has the advantage of her services being completely free to all students. I recommend you book some time with her.”</p><p>Jaune glanced at Sunset. Had she told Professor Ozpin already? But she didn’t even trust the Headmaster, and she was already talking to him about what had happened to Jaune? </p><p>“I… thank you, Professor,” Jaune murmured. “I’ll think it over.”</p><p>“Please do, Mister Arc,” Professor Ozpin said gravely. “Some people are fated to suffer alone, but none should voluntarily seek to do so.” He fell silent for a moment. “In any case, I am sure that you are all tired from your mission. In view of what you’ve been through, you needn’t worry about the rest of the week’s classes.”</p><p>“That’s not necessary, Professor,” Sunset said.</p><p>“I decide what is necessary and what isn’t within this school, Miss Shimmer,” Professor Ozpin replied. His voice was mild, but the rebuke was unmistakable. </p><p>Sunset sucked in a sharp intake of breath. “Yes, Professor.”</p><p>“Now then, General,” Professor Ozpin said, turning to General Ironwood, “if you would repair with me to my office, I think that we should inform the First Councillor of Mister Torchwick’s arrest.”</p><p>“Of course, Professor,” General Ironwood said, and the two men turned away and began to walk back down the path towards the school. </p><p>The students, having no desire to follow too hard upon the heels of their teachers, lingered on the docking pad as the airships carrying the prisoners took off, soaring through the sky towards one of the Atlesian cruisers that hovered in the skies over Vale. </p><p>“So,” Penny asked, “does that mean that we get a week off, too?”</p><p>“Yep,” Rainbow replied. She stretched out her arms and clasped them behind her head. “One week of doing whatever we want.”</p><p>“Whether we want it or not,” Blake muttered. </p><p>Rainbow turned her head to look at Blake, still stood behind the line of the Rosepetals, but she said nothing about it.</p><p>“We have a week in which we’re not attending classes,” Pyrrha corrected everyone. “Nothing that Professor Ozpin said indicates that we have to do absolutely nothing. We could take the opportunity to work on our coursework.”</p><p>“Some of you could,” Sunset replied. “My study partner still has to attend class.”</p><p>“Oh,” Pyrrha murmured. “Yes, of course, Cinder. Well, I’m sure that a break will do… some of us a great deal of good.”</p><p>Blake let out a soft harrumph which everyone either didn’t notice or didn’t care to acknowledge; personally, Jaune wasn’t sure what her problem was. A week off didn’t seem so bad, so long as they spent the whole time sleeping in. </p><p>Pyrrha wouldn’t let him do that even if he wanted to.</p><p>He hoped she wouldn’t, anyway. Just because he’d had a bit of a rough time of it with this mission didn’t mean that he wanted to be treated with kid gloves. </p><p>He was still there. He wanted to still be there. If he hadn’t been here, then Sunset and Twilight might – maybe even would – have died at Adam’s hands. Pyrrha wouldn’t have been able to move the train without his semblance powering her up, and without him, it might be that no one would have had the idea to try. </p><p>He wasn’t the big hero like his great-great grandfather had been, but that didn’t mean that this team, these friends, didn’t need him. </p><p>He wanted to be here. He wanted to help them, to stand alongside them, to fight with Pyrrha… except that he also… </p><p>Except that he couldn’t get that guy’s face out of his head. </p><p>“So,” Rainbow said, and she started to walk down the road towards the courtyard, giving the rest of the group little choice but to follow along with her, “does anyone have any ideas as to what they’re going to do for the rest of the day?”</p><p>“I might see if I can get into the last classes before dinner,” Blake said.</p><p>Rainbow snorted. “You think the professors don’t know that you’ve been given the week off? They’re like the first people who will have been told that.”</p><p>“Although I’m not sure Professor Port will notice,” Sunset said.</p><p>“Professor Goodwitch certainly will,” Pyrrha insisted.</p><p>“Unfortunately, as it’s her classes that we need the most,” Sunset declared.</p><p>“Yes, well,” Pyrrha murmured. “Jaune, are you going to go and see Professor Goodwitch?”</p><p>Jaune winced. Just because the question was obvious didn’t mean it wasn’t also unfortunate. “I… I meant what I said to Professor Ozpin: I’m going to think about it.”</p><p>Pyrrha pursed her lips together. He could tell that his answer wasn’t really what she had wanted to hear, but at the same time… it was the only answer that he could give her right now. </p><p>“Well, alright,” she said softly.</p><p>He looked away from her. She was just trying to help, but at the same time, this really wasn’t something that she could help him with. </p><p>It wasn’t something that any of them could help him with, no matter how much they might want to. </p><p>“I… I think I’m going to go down to the farm for a little bit,” he said. “Pyrrha, would you mind taking my stuff back to my room for me?”</p><p>“Um, of course,” Pyrrha said quietly. </p><p>“Do you want me to come with you?” Ruby asked. “We could feed the chickens together?”</p><p>Jaune looked down at her and managed to smile at her a little even, though he didn’t really feel much like smiling. “Thanks, Ruby, but I’d rather be alone right now if that’s okay.”</p><p>The way that her face fell cut him a little, but not enough to alter his resolve. There was nothing they could do to help him with this. </p><p>“Oh,” Ruby said disconsolately. “Well… we’ll see you later, then.”</p><p>Jaune nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Later.”</p><p>He left the rest of them, turning off the path and setting off across the more uneven ground on either side of it towards the farm. He passed the columns that ringed the courtyard; he passed beneath some of the trees that grew in their well-tended beds; he kept far away from the huntsman statue that would have mocked him if he had strayed too close to it, because of course that guy had never suffered any qualms about killing people, Jaune was sure. He walked around the edge of the school grounds, and thanks to classes being in session, he encountered nobody until he reached the farm. </p><p>Even at the farm, there was no one there, unless you counted the chickens themselves, who squawked and clucked and generally made enough noise that it didn’t seem lonely here. But it was a comfortable sort of noise, the kind of noise that didn’t bother him because it wasn’t asking him questions, it wasn’t trying to help him come to terms with anything, it wasn’t telling him that he should go and see Professor Goodwitch. </p><p>They just clucked as they flocked around him, and as Jaune grabbed a bag of chickenfeed from out of the storage shed at the edge of the farm and carried it into the fenced-off enclosure, they flocked all around him, flapping their pointless wings and clucking excitedly at the prospect of food. </p><p>A sigh escaped from Jaune’s lips as he knelt down amongst the flock of birds and reached into the burlap sack, gathering a handful of feed in the palm of his hand and throwing it out amongst the chickens. They scattered excitedly, falling upon the bounty he had spread before them even as he pulled more feed out of his bag to add to it. </p><p>“What should I do, guys?” Jaune asked. “What am I supposed to do next?”</p><p>“Why don’t you ask someone who can answer back?” Rainbow Dash asked.</p><p>Jaune turned around quickly, so quickly that he nearly lost his balance and wobbled unsteadily in place; the leader of Team RSPT stood on the other side of the chickenwire fence, one gloved hand resting upon a wooden post, watching him. </p><p>“Rainbow Dash,” he said. “What are you doing here?”</p><p>“I can appreciate a good farm,” Rainbow informed her. “I’ve spent enough time on Applejack’s farm, after all. And Fluttershy has a chicken coop of her own out back.”</p><p>“Really,” Jaune said, evenly and without much interest.</p><p>Rainbow nodded. “Me and Applejack helped build it for her. Well, Applejack built it; I just fetched wood for her,” she admitted. She paused. “Of course, thanks to Fluttershy’s semblance, the chickens can answer back. I’m not sure that’s true in your case.”</p><p>“You did hear me tell Ruby that I wanted to be alone, right?” Jaune asked.</p><p>“Yeah, I heard,” Rainbow said. “I just ignored you.”</p><p>“Right,” Jaune muttered. “Why?”</p><p>Rainbow straightened up and leapt over the chickenwire fence. Some of the chickens clucked in alarm and retreated away from her a little bit. She didn’t seem to notice. “Some people,” Rainbow said, in a tone that left very little doubt as to who those people were that she was referring to, “are treating this week off as though we’re getting put on the bench. But that’s not true. We’re getting some time off, but the week will end. There’ll be another time. The question is, when that time comes, are you going to be there?”</p><p>Jaune didn’t reply. He looked away from Rainbow Dash and spread out some more chickenfeed across the yard. </p><p>“You’re going to make them fat if you feed them too much,” Rainbow pointed out.</p><p>She was right, unfortunately. Jaune huffed. “What do you want?”</p><p>“I want to talk.”</p><p>“Well, I don’t,” Jaune said sharply. He sighed. “Sorry, I just… I don’t need to be coddled about this.”</p><p>“Who says I’m going to coddle you?”</p><p>“Well, you kind of coddle Twilight,” Jaune pointed out. “A lot.”</p><p>“I do not coddle Twilight,” Rainbow declared in an aggrieved tone, planting her fists upon her hips. </p><p>“Yeah, you do,” Jaune replied.</p><p>“I do not!”</p><p>Jaune stood up. “I grew up with six older sisters, and now I have Pyrrha <em>and</em> Ruby; I know what being coddled looks like when I see it.”</p><p>Rainbow’s eyes bulged a little. “Well… Twilight needs it!” she said loudly. She huffed. “Do you really think so?”</p><p>Jaune nodded.</p><p>“Do you think I ought to do something about it?”</p><p>Jaune shrugged. “Does she have a problem with it?”</p><p>“I don’t know. I didn’t even realise I was doing it.”</p><p>“Maybe you should talk to her about it,” Jaune suggested. “Instead of talking to me.”</p><p>Rainbow laughed. “You’re not getting out of this that easily,” she said. </p><p>“Have you ever killed anyone before?” Jaune asked.</p><p>Rainbow was silent for a moment. “Maybe,” she said.</p><p>“You don’t know?” Jaune demanded incredulously.</p><p>“It was a very confused situation,” Rainbow explained.</p><p>“The, uh, the wedding, right?” Jaune said, more quietly now.</p><p>“Yeah,” Rainbow said, her voice a little hoarse. “The wedding. I got a gun; I started shooting. I mainly wanted to keep their heads down while my friends got to shelter, but… I know I hit some people. Maybe I… I gotta admit, I didn’t ask for sure.”</p><p>“I can see why,” Jaune murmured. He looked down at the chickens milling around his feet. “When I came to Beacon, I wanted…” He hesitated, unsure of how saying this would make him look in front of Rainbow Dash, the experienced warrior. “I wanted to be a hero.”</p><p>“And heroes don’t kill people,” Rainbow finished for him. One corner of her lip twitched. “I get it. Daring Do never kills anyone, and neither do the Power People. It’s just… not what heroes do.”</p><p>“Is this where you tell me that we’re not heroes?” Jaune asked.</p><p>“I’m a hero to a twelve-year-old girl back in Canterlot who thinks I’m the greatest,” Rainbow replied. “And you’re a hero to the Champion of Mistral; isn’t that enough?”</p><p>Jaune laughed self-deprecatingly. “I’m not Pyrrha’s hero.”</p><p>“You could have fooled me,” Rainbow said. “You’ve seen me coddling Twilight; I’ve seen the way she looks at you.”</p><p>Jaune shook his head. “But… but she’s <em>Pyrrha</em>! How can I possibly-?”</p><p>“Because not everyone needs their hero to be Zapp or Millisecond,” Rainbow told him. “Sometimes… sometimes, it’s enough to be there for them when no one else is.”</p><p>“I guess,” Jaune murmured. “But that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I came here.”</p><p>Rainbow snorted. “This is the part where I tell you that there are no heroes. Not like the ones that we read about, anyway.” She paused, looking down at the chickens all around them. “You know why they need a fence?”</p><p>“I grew up on a farm,” Jaune informed her. “I know why they need a fence. It’s to keep the foxes out and stop the chickens from wandering off.”</p><p>Rainbow nodded. “Because they’re helpless if a fox does get in amongst them. Except…”</p><p>Jaune frowned. “Except?”</p><p>“I’ve sometimes wondered what would happen if I took one of these little guys and unlocked its aura,” Rainbow mused. “Fluttershy wouldn’t let me try it, and I suppose I can get why, but at the same time… why not? Wouldn’t it just make them awesome? It might even make them so awesome that they wouldn’t need a chickenwire fence because they could kick the ass of any fox who came around.”</p><p>“Where are you going with this?” demanded Jaune.</p><p>“Isn’t it obvious?” Rainbow asked. “<em>We’re</em> chickens with aura! And it makes us awesome, awesome enough to protect the coop and fight the foxes and keep everyone safe… but it doesn’t make us comic book heroes. Those kinds of heroes don’t make mistakes.”</p><p>“But we do,” Jaune said.</p><p>“All the time,” Rainbow replied. “The point is… the point is… the point is… where was I going with this?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Jaune admitted. “If you were going to tell me not to worry about it-”</p><p>“I know that you can’t just not worry about it; I’m trying to tell you to go see Professor Goodwitch for some therapy,” Rainbow interrupted sharply.</p><p>Jaune frowned. “How were you going to get there from chickens with aura?”</p><p>“Well, when you say it out loud, it sounds stupid,” Rainbow said grumpily. “Why don’t you want to see a therapist?”</p><p>“I… I don’t want to… I don’t want to feel like a failure,” Jaune confessed. “It feels like… I already know that I’m weaker than the three of them; do I have to prove it by needing to talk about my problems?”</p><p>“So instead, you’re going to… what?” Rainbow demanded. “You can’t walk away from them, and you can’t keep them inside you either.”</p><p>“Why not? Isn’t that what everyone else does?” Jaune demanded.</p><p>Rainbow was silent for a moment. She turned away, resting her hands upon the wooden post. “I get it,” she said. “I <em>really</em> get it. After the wedding… Twilight started seeing a therapist. She thought it would be good for me too, but… I was too… too like you, I guess. I thought it would make me look… I thought that I needed to be strong, to be tough. I thought I needed to show General Ironwood that I could handle it. Only, I couldn’t handle it, and I’m not talking about what happened with Blake here, either, although I didn’t handle that great either. I’m talking about… I got jumpy, suspicious; I saw the White Fang everywhere I looked.”</p><p>“So what did you do?” Jaune asked. </p><p>“I started seeing a therapist without telling Twilight about it,” Rainbow answered. “I didn’t want to admit that I was wrong, but… I was wrong.”</p><p>Jaune was silent for a moment. “And you think that I should do the same?”</p><p>“Do you want to stay here?” Rainbow demanded. “Now that you know what this is really like, do you want to stay?”</p><p>“Yes,” Jaune said firmly, emphatically. “Because the missions… they’re not going to stop, are they?”</p><p>Rainbow turned to face him and shook her head. “No. They’ll keep going as long as the grimm exist.”</p><p>Jaune bowed his head. “If… this might sound stupid, but… if Pyrrha or Ruby or Sunset… if one of them… if all of them… if they didn’t come back because I wasn’t with them, then… then I don’t think I could live with myself.”</p><p>“Then go and talk to Professor Goodwitch,” Rainbow urged, “and make sure that you <em>can</em> live with yourself. You don’t have to tell your team about it, but… you need to talk to <em>someone</em>.”</p><p>Jaune closed his eyes, and the face of the dead man flashed before them. “I think… you might be right.”</p><hr/><p>“So, you undertook to hold a Valish citizen aboard an Atlesian warship?” First Councillor Novo demanded, leaning forward so that her face filled even more of the holographic screen. “And now you’re refusing to hand him over to Valish custody?”</p><p>“With respect, Madam Councillor-”</p><p>“Don’t tell me ‘with respect’ when you’re showing me no respect whatsoever, General,” Councillor Novo snapped. “Lately, you’ve shown me <em>and Vale</em> nothing but disrespect.” </p><p>Ironwood stood behind Ozpin’s desk, his hands clasped behind his back. “Roman Torchwick has already escaped from Valish custody once, and in record time. He’ll find getting off an Atlesian man-of-war much more difficult, I assure you.”</p><p>“That may be, General, but the fact remains that he is a Valish criminal; I would have liked the Valish authorities to have gotten at least some credit for apprehending him, but as things stand-”</p><p>“As things stand, Madam Councillor, Beacon’s Team Sapphire was as fully involved in the capture of these fugitives as Atlas’ Team Rosepetal,” Ozpin slid smoothly into the conversation.”</p><p>“Ah, yes, Team Sapphire,” Councillor Novo replied. “The team that is led by an Atlesian and whose star is the Champion of Mistral.”</p><p>“I have it on multiple authorities that Sunset Shimmer is not an Atlesian,” corrected Ironwood. “She merely lived in the kingdom while attending combat school.”</p><p>“A distinction without a difference then,” summarized Novo.</p><p>“Fine credits to Beacon Academy and to the quality of an education here in Vale, nonetheless,” Ozpin said. “Personally, I think it is a great advertisement to our kingdom that so many talented students choose to come from abroad to study here with us.”</p><p>“Not everyone would agree with you, but I take your point,” Councillor Novo conceded. “But the fact remains that I wish that you had consulted with me before you decided to launch this little sting operation.”</p><p>“I’m sure you’ll manage to claim a share of the credit regardless, Madam Councillor,” Ozpin said.</p><p>“Very droll, Ozpin,” Councillor Novo replied in a tone as dry as dust.</p><p>“We were afraid that any leak of our plans might compromise the operation,” Ironwood explained. “Which was why trainees were used instead of regular units; their activities could be disguised under the pretence of training missions.”</p><p>“I hope you’re not suggesting that anyone in my office would leak to the White Fang, General,” Councillor Novo said.</p><p>“I’m suggesting that careless talk costs lives, Madam Councillor,” Ironwood said diplomatically. </p><p>“Hmm,” Councillor Novo murmured. “I don’t suppose you’d be any more amenable to your students participating in a photo op now than you were after the incident at the docks, Ozpin?”</p><p>“Madam Councillor,” Ozpin said carefully, “during the course of this mission my students went through some rather harrowing experiences. I really don’t think that they’ll be in the mood.”</p><p>Councillor Novo frowned. “'Harrowing experiences'?”</p><p>“One of the students nearly died,” Ozpin admitted.</p><p>Councillor Novo’s frown deepened. “Gods,” she murmured. “Do you really think that it was wise of you to use children for an operation like this?”</p><p>Ozpin sighed. “Truth to tell, Madam Councillor, I am not sure. What I am sure of is that the students in question undertook this task of their own free will, with no coaxing or coercion on my part.”</p><p>“Of course they did; they’re children,” Councillor Novo snorted. “You’re supposed to restrain them with the wisdom of an elder. Isn’t that part of your job?”</p><p>“My job is to arm them against the darkness that surrounds us all,” Ozpin said.</p><p>“Not to wield them as weapons before they are tempered!” Councillor Novo declared. </p><p>“I would not have offered this mission if I hadn’t believed that my students were ready,” Ozpin said. “I still believe that they were – and are – ready; after all, although they might have come through the fire, they emerged out the other side victorious.”</p><p>That did not mean, of course, that he did not feel a certain sense of guilt for the way that he had behaved. He feared that Miss Shimmer – whose distrust was not so well hidden in her eyes as she might like to think – was not so wrong about him as he should like. He had dangled a mission before them so that they could go to Cold Harbour and assist Team RSPT; perhaps, as Novo suggested, he should have acted to restrain their enthusiasm rather than enabling it. He had told Glynda that he wished to give them a little more time to be children, without involving themselves in his schemes and his war, but the truth was that he had gotten them involved in that same war, if only on the periphery of it. He had involved them without even the decency of telling them the truth about the war they were engaged in. </p><p>He could mount a defence against these charges, rooted in Miss Belladonna’s reckless enthusiasm and need to act and the commendable willingness of her friends on Team SAPR to support her in that, but at the same time… it all left a somewhat sour taste in his mouth. </p><p>And he had only himself to blame. </p><p>
  <em>Is it my place to stand in the way of their valour?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Is it my place to throw them into the fire before their time?</em>
</p><p>“I see,” Councillor Novo said, her voice quietening. Her expression softened, becoming more concerned than upset. “Do you have any similarly challenging missions lined up for Team Wisteria, may I ask?”</p><p>“Not at present,” Ozpin said. “And probably not ever. Team Wisteria’s training missions will almost certainly be more in line with what one would expect of the name.”</p><p>“I don’t suppose I can persuade you to give them something… low risk?”</p><p>“I would hardly be preparing them for lives as huntsmen if I did that, Madam Councillor.”</p><p>“Do you actually believe that Cardin Winchester is going to spend the rest of his life as a huntsman?” Councillor Novo demanded.</p><p>“I couldn’t say, but it is my duty to teach him as though he will,” Ozpin replied.</p><p>Councillor Novo let out a very soft ‘harrumph’. “My daughter is very fond of him,” she said.</p><p>“Indeed, Madam Councillor,” Ozpin said neutrally.</p><p>“Skystar… doesn’t give much thought to politics; it doesn’t matter to her that he’s a Winchester and that his grandfather is one of my closest allies,” Councillor Novo said. “She’s simply fond of him.” She affixed Ozpin on the end of her glare. “I don’t want her to wear black before she’s worn white.”</p><p>“I sincerely hope that all of my students will live to see graduation, Madam Councillor,” Ozpin declared.</p><p>“And I hope that you can do a little better than hope,” Councillor Novo said. She turned her attention to Ironwood once more. “General, I will consent to you retaining custody of Roman Torchwick without further protest, but if he gives you any leads, I expect you to pass them on the VPD or Professor Ozpin; I can’t have your troops running around the city breaking down doors and gunning people down in the street without reference to our Valish authorities.”</p><p>“Of course, Madam Councillor. I’ll let you know the minute he talks,” Ironwood said.</p><p>“Thank you, General, for finally showing a little of that respect,” Councillor Novo said. “Good day to the both of you and pass my congratulations on to all the students.”</p><hr/><p>There was a White Fang symbol painted on their dorm room door. </p><p>It was their door. Their dorm room door. The door into Team SAPR’s room. </p><p>And someone, some… someone absolutely indescribable in terms that an Equestrian gentlemare ought to know, had painted a White Fang emblem on it. </p><p>“You know,” Ruby ventured. “It’s so badly painted, it’s kind of hard to tell what it is.”</p><p>Sunset sucked in a sharp intake of breath. “Don’t lie, Ruby,” she said in a voice that was sharp and cold for all its quietness. “We all know exactly what that is.”</p><p>Blake looked away. “I’m sorry, you guys.”</p><p>Sunset blinked. “You’re sorry?” she repeated. “You’re <em>sorry</em>?”</p><p>Blake cringed. “I’ll make it up to-”</p><p>“You’re not the one who ought to be sorry!” Sunset roared. “Whoever did this ought to be sorry, and whoever did this is going to be sorry by the time I get my hands on them!” <em>Cardin. I bet it’s Cardin; he couldn’t let it go, could he? </em></p><p>
  <em>He’s going to wish he had by the time I’m done with him.</em>
</p><p>“Sunset, what do you intend to do?” asked Pyrrha nervously.</p><p>Sunset took a deep breath. “I,” she said, “am going to go to Vale and pick up some white paint so that we can cover that up. And by the time I get back, I will either be calmed down, or I will have a plan of revenge, and personally, I kind of hope it’s the latter because nobody deserves to get away with that!”</p><p>The door to the Team YRDN dorm room opened. “Hey, guys!” Nora greeted them. “Welcome back.”</p><p>“Hey, Nora,” Ruby replied, with a wave. “Sorry, did we disturb you?”</p><p>“One of you was rather audible,” Dove called from inside the dorm room, “but it wasn’t you, Ruby.”</p><p>Ruby giggled just a little. “Hey, Dove. So, how did your mission go?”</p><p>Nora’s face fell just a little. “Oh, that? Yeah, it was… a thing. I’d ask how your mission was, but really, I’m here to tell you that you should keep it quiet, get inside your room, and-”</p><p>“Is that Sunset Shimmer yelling out there?” Yang called from somewhere, possibly the bathroom, considering that she didn’t just come to the door and have a look for herself. </p><p>“Uh… no?” Nora suggested. “It’s another very angry faunus who just happens to sound like her.”</p><p>“Nora,” Ruby said. “Why are you-?”</p><p>“Everyone stay right where they are!” Yang yelled from the bathroom. There was the muted sound of a tap running, and then about twenty seconds later, Yang walked out, slamming the bathroom door behind her with a very loud bang. </p><p>“Yang!” Nora cried. “Look who’s here!”</p><p>“Nora,” Yang said, her eyes flashing red. “Get out of the way.”</p><p>“You got it, boss,” Nora said before stepping smartly out of the doorway. </p><p>Yang stomped out. She loomed over Ruby in particular, but her crimson eyes swept over all three of them. </p><p>“So,” she growled. “It seems that some of you didn’t tell me everything about your mission, did you?”</p><p>Ruby winced. “Well, you see, it wasn’t really our mission; we really were assigned to-”</p><p>“Ruby,” Yang cut her off, her tone commanding. “You didn’t tell me that you were going to try and get yourself ambushed by the White Fang on the way back to Vale, did you?”</p><p>Ruby looked away. “No. No, we didn’t.”</p><p>“No,” Yang agreed. “None of you told me that.” She glowered at Sunset. “<em>None</em> of you,” she repeated.</p><p>“Can you blame us?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“Yes, I can blame you. I’m doing it right now!” Yang yelled. </p><p>“Yang,” Ruby ventured, “I’m training to become a huntress; it’s going to be dangerous-”</p><p>“I’m not upset that you were in danger; I’m upset that you didn’t tell me about it first!” Yang cried. “I’m upset that… I’m upset because… because this is exactly what Raven warned us about. Don’t you get that? Don’t any of you get that?”</p><p>“Yes,” Sunset admitted. She reached up and ran one hand through her hair. “The thought had occurred to me, just as it had occurred to you even before you found out the truth: extra training missions, just like she said.”</p><p>“Then why-?” Yang began.</p><p>“Because it suited our purposes,” Sunset said bluntly. “We wanted to help out Blake and Team Rosepetal; Ozpin offered us the means to do that.”</p><p>“At what cost?” Yang demanded.</p><p>“Yang, I understand that we shouldn’t have deceived you,” Pyrrha said mildly, “but don’t you think that you - that both of you - are sounding a little paranoid?”</p><p>“A woman who hasn’t wanted anything to do with me for as long as I can remember thought that this was sufficiently important that she voluntarily came into my life to warn me about it,” Yang insisted. “I think that might be something worth listening to.”</p><p>“But,” Pyrrha hesitated, glancing up and down the corridor as if she were afraid that they were being overheard, “this is Professor Ozpin we’re speaking of, and - I don’t intend any offence, Yang - but your mother-”</p><p>“She’s not my mother,” Yang said sharply.</p><p>“Raven Branwen, then,” Pyrrha corrected herself. “She’s… a deserter, yet we should take her word above a man whose reputation is unparalleled in Remnant?”</p><p>“The man of unparalleled reputation put all four of you into the firing line,” Yang replied. “All five of- where is Jaune, anyway?”</p><p>“He went down to the farm,” Ruby muttered unhappily. “He… wanted to be by himself.”</p><p>“He… this mission was a little hard on him,” Pyrrha added.</p><p>“He killed someone, and he’s taking it badly,” Sunset said bluntly.</p><p>“Sunset!” Pyrrha scolded.</p><p>“Isn’t it better that she should hear it from us than prod Jaune about a sore subject?” Sunset asked. “At least now, she knows not to mention it.”</p><p>Yang looked to be trying to remain calm, or at least stop from getting even less calm. “Did anything <em>else</em> happen on this trip of yours that I should know about?”</p><p>Sunset shrugged. “I got impaled on a sword.”</p><p>Yang’s eyes widened. “And this… this is what I’m talking about. What the hell was Ozpin thinking, giving a job like this to you? Or Team Rosepetal, for that matter? You’re just students!”</p><p>“I know the White Fang,” Blake murmured.</p><p>“You’re still just a kid like us!” Yang shouted. “We had a pro-huntsman on our mission, and it was supposed to be a simple job of watching some guys fix a wall.”</p><p>“'Supposed to be'?” Ruby said. “Yang, did something happen on your mission too?”</p><p>“That isn’t the point-”</p><p>“It is the point if something happened,” Ruby said. “Are you okay?”</p><p>Yang chuckled, and some of the red leeched out of her eyes. “I’m supposed to be the one asking you that, Ruby.”</p><p>“I’m fifteen and a huntress in training, just like you,” Ruby said. “Why can’t we worry about one another?”</p><p>Yang smiled and ruffled Ruby’s hair with one hand. “Because whatever trouble I got into, it was just normal training mission stuff. Things got a little out of hand at the end, but… I wasn’t approached by Professor Ozpin to do something… Ruby, you heard what Raven said. This path got Mom killed.”</p><p>“Mom died because she was a huntress,” Ruby insisted. “And she did what was right, until the very end.”</p><p>“I know,” Yang agreed. “I just… forget it. Let’s just… you’re back, and I’m back, and do you guys want to get some tea or something?”</p><p>“That sounds lovely,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>“Did you guys get time off too?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“Uh-huh.”</p><p>“Then now I <em>know</em> something happened,” Ruby said. “Come on, Yang, spill it.”</p><p>Yang sighed. “I will,” she promised. “But first, tea, okay?”</p><p>“I’ll pass,” Sunset said. “Like I was just telling my team, I need to go get some paint to cover up that welcome home present.” She gestured to the graffiti on their door. “Thank you, by the way, for leaving that for us.”</p><p>“Yeah, things… things have been a little messed up since we got back,” Yang offered in a sort of excuse.</p><p>Going down into Vale, finding a DIY store with all of the supplies that she needed, and then getting back to Beacon took up most of the remains of the day, so that it was dark by the time Sunset returned. The dorm room was empty; her teammates were probably at dinner, but as hungry as she was, Sunset couldn’t just leave this blood red symbol on her door for one minute longer than necessary, and so, she ignored her hunger and got to work on repainting the door, or at least painting over the White Fang symbol.</p><p>“Aren’t there janitors to do that?” the silky voice of Cinder Fall announced her presence.</p><p>“I haven’t seen any around, have you?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Cinder was silent for a moment. “No, that’s an excellent point.”</p><p>Sunset bent down to place the brush in the black plastic tray. She rose again, and only then did she look at Cinder, a smile playing across her face. “Good to see you again.”</p><p>“And you,” Cinder replied.</p><p>“You could have fooled me from how long it took you to come by.”</p><p>“Perhaps I wanted to make you miss me as much as I missed you.”</p><p>“Or perhaps you had class.”</p><p>“Well, if you want to be boring about it,” Cinder muttered. “I must say, I am sorry I missed your reaction to that.”</p><p>“Oh, so you knew about it.”</p><p>“Of course. It was the talk of the whole school when it first appeared on your door.”</p><p>“But you didn’t think to maybe cover it up for us before we got back?”</p><p>“Sunset, please,” Cinder murmured, putting one hand to her heart. “A lady doesn’t sully her hands with such menial labour. I don’t see Pyrrha getting her exquisitely manicured hands dirty, do you?”</p><p>“Are you saying that I’m not a lady?”</p><p>“You’re the one who decided to do menial labour, not me.”</p><p>“Like I said, there aren’t any janitors,” Sunset muttered. “And I don’t want to have to look at this one second longer than necessary.”</p><p>“Is that why you’re skipping dinner?”</p><p>“Yep,” Sunset replied. “What’s your excuse?”</p><p>“I’m not hungry,” Cinder said casually. “And I wanted to see you. How did your mission go?”</p><p>“Not too bad,” Sunset said. “We caught a couple of prisoners. I almost died.”</p><p>“Really?” Cinder asked. “You almost died?”</p><p>“Yep.”</p><p>“How in Remnant did you manage that?”</p><p>“You make it sound like incompetence.”</p><p>“Isn’t it?”</p><p>“In this particular instance, it was strategy.”</p><p>“A strategy that nearly kills you deserves to be called incompetence, in my opinion.”</p><p>“Ha ha,” Sunset growled. “It was the only way to get past his semblance.”</p><p>“He, whoever he is, must have been a dangerous opponent if he forced you to such drastic measures,” Cinder observed.</p><p>“Very,” Sunset agreed. “But I’ll get him back.” She bent down to pick up the paint brush and resumed her painting. “I’ll get them all back.”</p><p>“All of them being-”</p><p>“Whoever painted on my door, once I find out who they are,” Sunset snapped.</p><p>“Can you?” Cinder asked. “Find out who they are, I mean?”</p><p>Sunset was silent for a moment. She let out a sigh. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’d certainly like to – I’d <em>really</em> like to – but although I have suspicions, I don’t know how I’d prove it.”</p><p>“I might be able to help with that,” Cinder offered.</p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose. “How?”</p><p>Cinder smirked. “Although she is sadly deficient as a huntress, Emerald is quite the little sneak; I’m sure that if I asked her to, she could find something out about the culprit behind this little act of vandalism.”</p><p>“Okay, but why?”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Why would you want to bother?” Sunset asked. “What would I owe you in return?”</p><p>“Sunset! I’m hurt,” Cinder cried. “Why would you just assume that I have an ulterior motive?”</p><p>Sunset stared at her. </p><p>“Well, as it happens,” Cinder admitted, “my reason is the same reason I didn’t take that symbol off your door.”</p><p>“Wasn’t that because a lady doesn’t do menial labour?”</p><p>“Alright, the other reason,” Cinder explained. “I was rather hoping to see your reaction.”</p><p>“Oh, really?”</p><p>“Don’t take it personally, Sunset; this school is so dull,” Cinder implored her. “I’m starved of amusement.”</p><p>Sunset shook her head. “You really think you can help me?”</p><p>Cinder’s smile was as bright as pearl and as sharp as a knife. “I’m positively certain of it.”</p><hr/><p>Sunset: <span class="u">…and so, as you can see, my life recently has been far from boring. In fact – I can’t believe that I’m about to say this – I’d almost rather that it had been a bit less interesting recently.</span></p><p>There was a pause on the other end of the magical journal, and Sunset could almost imagine Twilight sitting on the other end of the book reading Sunset’s account and struggling to work out what to make of it all. Although, when Sunset imagined Twilight, that really meant the human Twilight; it was weird, but Sunset couldn’t really conceive of the pony Twilight at all; the Twilight Sparkle she was more familiar with just kept getting in the way of her imagination. </p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">I see what you mean.</span></p><p>Sunset snorted. <em>Probably how I’d react if I was being told all of this instead of living through it. </em>She was sitting in the bathroom, so as not to disturb her sleeping teammates. A ball of pale green magelight hovered above her head, enough to illuminate the book resting on her knees but not bright enough that the light shining under the bathroom door would wake the four people sleeping on the other side. </p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I suppose that I’m to blame for not writing more often; this probably wouldn’t seem so huge if I’d let you know about it as it was going on. But things have been pretty hectic, as you can probably imagine.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">I can, or at least I think I can. You know, whenever I write to you, I’m always left very glad that I live in a world where threats to the security of Equestria never show up more than once every three months or so. </span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Don’t get too comfortable; when I was growing up, we would have called that scarily frequent.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">I won’t pretend that I don’t know what you mean, but all the same, the idea of you calling my troubles ‘frequent’ is a little bizarre. Have you become inured to it?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Can you be more specific?</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">The violence, the things that you call grimm, the danger.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">You can’t bundle them all up together like that. Have I become accustomed to the grimm? Yes, I’d say so, or pretty much, at least. Occasionally, a particularly large or powerful specimen comes along – like the one on the railway line – that still has the power to spook me, but the usual ones, I think I can handle. I’d better be able to handle them, since I’m training to spend my life fighting them and all. Danger?</span></p><p>She sucked on her pen for a moment while she thought. <em>Had</em> she become accustomed to danger? <em>Had</em> she become inured to the peril in which she lived? Was it matter-of-fact to her now?</p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I think it depends on the circumstances, on what kind of danger we’re talking about. The same goes for the violence. If you’d asked me this before we left on our mission, I might have answered you differently, but this business with Jaune has reminded me that there is a lot that is still new to all of us; we’re all very young still.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">I can’t imagine what that must be like for him.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Killing?</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">I wish you wouldn’t write about it like that; it makes you seem so blasé about it. The act of taking a life, even the discussion of the act of taking a life, should be treated with more seriousness than that.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I’m sorry. I don’t disagree with you on that – you can tell Celestia that I haven’t fallen so far from what it means to be an Equestrian-</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">You could always tell her yourself.</span></p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose. Sunset: <span class="u">You’re not in Canterlot that often, are you?</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">No, but I could always send the book to Celestia if you wanted to talk to her.</span></p><p>Sunset hesitated, twirling her pen absently between her fingers as she considered the words that had just appeared on the page before her. Considered how much she really wanted Celestia to know about her life here in Remnant. Celestia already knew a fair amount, but to tell her everything, that was… that was something else altogether.</p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">That’s kind of you, but I don’t think that I’ll take you up on it too often. I don’t think I want Princess Celestia to know everything. I suppose I’m more comfortable talking to you about certain things.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">Why? You don’t know me nearly so well as you know Princess Celestia.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Maybe that’s the point.</span> She paused, hemming and hawing over the next few words. Sunset: <span class="u">If I had to kill somebody, I wouldn’t want Celestia to know about it; even if it was an accident or if I had no other choice to save myself or my friends. I still wouldn’t want Celestia to know that I had done that. I wouldn’t want her to think of me in that way. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want her to think of me in the way that I am; I’d almost rather she remembered me the way I was when I knew her, when I was a kid, before it all fell apart. Does that make any sense?</span> Sunset’s eyes widened. Sunset: <span class="u">You don’t tell her everything that we write about, do you?</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">Of course not. I respect your confidence, and I understand what you’re saying, although I think you’d find that Princess Celestia could be very forgiving even if you did something terrible. Provided that you had no other choice.</span></p><p>Sunset frowned. Sunset: <span class="u">Is that supposed to mean something?</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">Adam.</span></p><p>Sunset scowled. Sunset: <span class="u">That’s completely different.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">Is it? After seeing what taking a life has done to Jaune, are you still willing to embark on this path of revenge?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">This has nothing to do with revenge.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">Then what does it have to do with?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Adam is a mad dog who deserves to be</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">Put down? Really? Is that what you were going to say? Princess Celestia would be disappointed to know that you think like that now.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">It’s not like I feel that way about everybody. Neither of you understand what it’s like, what he is like. Neither of you were there. Neither of you understand how terrifying he is. I had to let him stab me through the gut in order to get over my fear of him. Incidentally, please do not tell Princess Celestia that I almost died.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">I probably should.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Why? You know she’d only fret.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">It makes me fret a little. You nearly died.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">But I didn’t, and I conquered my fear of Adam in the process. He might cut me down, but he won’t scare me while he’s doing it.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">I don’t entirely follow the logic there. I thought he scared you because he might kill you.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">But I was ready to die this time, I didn’t need Ruby to push me out of the way and take the hit for me, I didn’t need Rainbow Dash to save me, and I didn’t leave Twilight to her fate. He couldn’t paralyse me like he did the last time. Let me have this, Twilight. I need a win against this guy, and this is the closest thing I have where Adam is concerned. Which is another reason I need to kill him. I need to put this behind me, once and for all. And I need to do it before he hurts any more of my friends. I mean, come on, Twilight, what’s my alternative here? He’s nearly killed Ruby, he’s nearly killed me, how long until our luck runs out? Am I supposed to stand by and watch while he cuts Jaune down? Am I supposed to carry Pyrrha’s circlet home to her mother and tell her that I watched her daughter die because I was waiting to redeem her killer by the power of kindness?</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">I’ve seen an enemy die, you know.</span></p><p>Sunset didn’t reply immediately. She was stunned, honestly, to read that. It wasn’t what she expected to read from… from someone in Equestria, let alone a Princess of Friendship, still less one who had just been telling her that she shouldn’t try to kill Adam. It was… it just wasn’t what she’d expected.</p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">You killed them?</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">No. No, it wasn’t me.</span></p><p>Sunset frowned. She could sense something coming through in Twilight’s words, but it wasn’t something that made a whole lot of sense. It almost seemed like regret, but regret for what? Regret at the death or regret that Twilight had not done the deed? One seemed false from the context; the other made no sense.</p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I don’t understand.</span></p><p>Twilight took a few moments before she actually replied. Sunset supposed that she could understand why. Twilight: <span class="u">His name was Sombra.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">The old King, the one who took over the Crystal Empire? But the Empire was sealed away, and Sombra with it.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">The Empire returned, and Sombra with it. He tried to retake his throne and re-enslave the crystal ponies. My friends, my brother, my sister-in-law all tried to stop him.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">And you?</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">Yes. And me. I hadn’t become the Princess of Friendship then; this was one of Celestia’s tests to see if I was as ready as she believed me to be. I thought that my test was to save the Crystal Empire and stop Sombra.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">A reasonable assumption in the circumstances. I’d have thought the same thing in your position.</span> <em>I would have seen it as my destiny to defeat the monster and save Equestria from his malice.</em></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">As it turned out, the test was to see if I could take a step back and rely on others to be the hero in my place. I passed. I almost wish I hadn’t.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">What exactly happened?</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">I fell into King Sombra’s trap; since I couldn’t escape, and King Sombra was about to reach the Crystal Faire, Spike had to take the Crystal Heart and reach the faire in my place.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">The dog?</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">What? No, Spike is a dragon; he’s my assistant, my friend; he’s kind of my little brother too. Why would you think he was a dog?</span></p><p>Sunset decided that it was best not to wander off into the weeds of other Twilight and her pet dog, Spike. She wanted to find out where Twilight was going with this. Sunset: <span class="u">Never mind. Go on, I’m sorry for interrupting.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">Spike got the heart to Cadance, and its power restored the heart of the Crystal Ponies, and that power destroyed King Sombra. I saw him torn apart by the crystal magic. It killed him.</span></p><p>Sunset let out a slow exhalation of breath. Sunset: <span class="u">I see. And how does Spike feel about that?</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">He doesn’t know. He won’t ever know. All he knows is that he saved the Crystal Empire; he’s a hero to them. But he’s still just a kid, and I don’t want him to know just how he saved the Empire. I can’t take away what he did, but I can ensure that he isn’t burdened by the knowledge of it.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">That’s fair enough, and I won’t question your decision, but don’t you think that it proves my point instead of yours? Sombra was dangerous, and in the moment, there was nothing to be done but to put an end to his menace by any means.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">And I won’t argue that in extremis – absolute extremis – it wasn’t necessary, but that isn’t what you’re talking about. You’re talking about hunting someone down and killing them to salve your pride.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">This has nothing to do with my pride!</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">I suspect you can’t really believe that.</span></p><p>Sunset huffed. Sunset: <span class="u">He’s dangerous. To Blake, to my team. Am I supposed to ignore that?</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">No, I would never tell you that you shouldn’t defend your friends, but I can ask you, I can beg you, not to seek out that confrontation. I’m not naive. I appreciate that there are monsters out there in the world; I just don’t want you to join them. Look at what Jaune’s going through, based on what you’ve told me. Is that something you want to voluntarily take on yourself?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">It won’t hurt me the way that it’s hurting Jaune.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">How can you be so sure?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Because I don’t care about people the way that he does.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">You might believe that, but I’m not so sure.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Really? And what makes you think you know me better than I know myself?</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">Blake. I have to admit, I’m proud of what you did for her.</span></p><p>Sunset felt her cheeks heat up. Sunset: <span class="u">I owed Blake, that’s all.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">Why is it so hard for you to simply admit that you saw someone in need of compassion and were moved to offer the same? Why is it so hard for you to admit that you like her and want to help her?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Because that’s not who I am, and it never has been!</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">Maybe, but I wasn’t always a great friend either. Sometimes, we don’t know what we’re capable of inside until we find our true friends.</span></p><p>Sunset blinked. Sunset: <span class="u">You think that I was destined to befriend Blake? And Ruby, Pyrrha, and Jaune too?</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">I don’t see why it should be so outlandish an idea. If destiny is real, and I believe that it is, why should it only apply to great events or to love? Why not to friendships too?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I suppose I can see what you mean, although I’d never thought of it that way before. Frankly, at this point, I’m more interested in any advice that you might have about Pyrrha.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">I don’t think it’s your place to interfere, do you?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Her mother doesn’t see it that way; she wants me to try and push for a reconciliation between the two of them.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">It seems as though hearts change more slowly in Remnant than in Equestria; I think you’ll just have to give them some time.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">You think Pyrrha will come around?</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">You’re her friend, the person who knows her; do you think she’ll come around?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Yes, I do. I think I do. I just wish that I could be more certain, you know? And there’s also the issue of her and Jaune. She thinks she’s in love with him.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">You disagree?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I don’t know; he’s the first guy she’s ever met who didn’t treat her like a trophy.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">So? Sometimes these things happen. My brother only ever had a crush on one mare.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Cadance?</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">Exactly. And they really do love each other; anyone can see that. It seems that sometimes, you really can just know; you shouldn’t dismiss it just because you haven’t felt that yourself.</span></p><p><em>I felt it myself. I was just wrong about it.</em> Sunset: <span class="u">Perhaps you’re right. I hope so, for Pyrrha’s sake. She’s putting an awful lot of herself into this, and to be perfectly honest, Pyrrha is a little emotionally fragile. I’m just worried that if things don’t work out, it will break her heart.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">And you’ll be there to pick up the pieces. Do you mind if we call it a night? It’s getting late here, and I’m a little tired.</span></p><p>Sunset smiled. Sunset: <span class="u">Sure. Next time, you can tell me all about your life.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">Since the most interesting thing that’s happened to me lately is having three fillies briefly try to take advantage of my newfound fame, I’m sure you’d be very bored to learn about my life.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I don’t know; it might be cool to hear about that kind of thing. It might make a change, certainly.</span> Sunset yawned. Sunset: <span class="u">But I should probably turn in myself. Goodnight, Twilight.</span></p><p>Twilight: <span class="u">Goodnight, Sunset. Sweet dreams.</span></p><p>Sunset shut the book and tucked it underneath her arm as she got up and walked towards the bathroom door. She yawned again and covered her mouth reflexively before she reached for the door that led out of the bathroom and into the dorm room.</p><p>She had opened it a crack when she heard Jaune letting out some kind of muffled gasp or exclamation on the other side. </p><p>“Nightmares, huh?” The voice belonged to Blake, and though she was speaking softly, every word that she said was nevertheless clear to Sunset’s four ears.</p><p>There was a momentary silence before Jaune replied, “Yeah. I’m sorry if I woke you up.”</p><p>“It’s okay; I’m just a very sensitive sleeper.” Another pause before Blake spoke continued, “It’s rough that this had to happen to you.”</p><p>Sunset found herself lingering on the other side of the door. It wasn’t that she wanted to eavesdrop; it was just… she didn’t want to interrupt either. It felt prurient to stay, but it felt equally wrong to go through the door and reveal herself. And so, she lingered, one hand upon the door handle, and waited, and listened.</p><p>“I think it’s rough that this has to happen to anybody,” Jaune replied.</p><p>Blake sniffed, or at least, that was what it sounded like to Sunset. “You’re right, of course; although not every guy in your position would see it that way.”</p><p>More silence. Jaune said, “I… I went to see Professor Goodwitch this afternoon.” </p><p>Hidden behind the bathroom door, Sunset allowed herself a smile. </p><p>“That’s… that’s good,” Blake said. “Are you planning to see her again?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Jaune said. “She told me… she told me that with help, this would get better, but that it never gets any easier to take a life. Or rather, it shouldn't.”</p><p>“I don’t have the experience to dispute that,” Blake replied. “Or at least, not the right experience. Like I said, it got easier for me, but for all the wrong reasons. Honestly, it feels like this is the kind of thing that the combat schools ought to prepare you for.”</p><p>“Maybe they do,” Jaune said. “I wouldn’t know.”</p><p>“You were… apprenticed? Self-taught?”</p><p>Jaune paused before he answered. “More like not-taught. I… I faked my transcripts to get in here.”</p><p>“Really?” Blake said. For a moment, her voice acquired an edge of amusement. “Don’t tell anybody, but me too.”</p><p>Jaune sounded like he was stifling a snort. “I’m not sure that’s much of a secret any more.”</p><p>“Why did you do it?”</p><p>“Because I thought I could be a hero, like my great-grandfather,” Jaune said. “I suppose you think that sounds pretty stupid.”</p><p>“No, I don’t.”</p><p>“You… you don’t?”</p><p>“Maybe a little naïve for somebody with no combat training,” Blake said. “But the world will never change unless people dare to dream that change is possible, no matter now naïve or even stupid our dreams might seem to outsiders.”</p><p>“Rainbow Dash told me we could never be those kinds of heroes.”</p><p>“Rainbow Dash isn’t nearly as smart as she thinks she is,” Sunset whispered, as she came out of the bathroom with her journal tucked underneath her arm. “Pardon me for overhearing,” she murmured as she stowed the journal underneath her bed. “I couldn’t really help it.”</p><p>Blake shrugged. “You believe in heroes, I take it?”</p><p>“You don’t?” Sunset asked, somewhat surprised.</p><p>“I used to,” Blake said. “I used to believe that Adam was our hero, the one who would strike the chains from off of our people and lead us to true equality. As you can imagine, I became a little more wary of what people who call themselves heroes can do in the name of their cause.”</p><p>“But like you said,” Sunset said, “someone has to be willing to make the first step, to answer ‘no, you can’t’ with ‘yes, I can, and just you watch me do it!’ Someone has to be willing to do what others deem impossible. And yeah, you were wrong about Adam; you were really wrong. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a hero waiting for your people." She gave Blake a meaningful look. "It just means you were mistaken about who it is.”</p><p>Blake stared at Sunset for a moment. “You’re kidding.”</p><p>“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Sunset replied.</p><p>“You think I could be the hero who saves the faunus?”</p><p>“I don’t see why not,” Sunset said. “Isn’t that what you want?”</p><p>Blake hesitated. “I… I’d be happy to support someone else who looked like they were going to do it, but… yes, I suppose you could say that’s what I want.”</p><p>“Then don’t give up on it,” Sunset said. “Either of you. Sure, your dreams are big; sure, they might seem impossible. But I could say the same of Pyrrha’s dream of destroying the grimm completely. All our dreams are big, or they wouldn’t be worth having. But we work towards them, we fight for them, we keep reaching for the stars, and together we’ll make it someday; that’s what… hey, Blake?”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>Sunset smiled slightly. “Would you… would you like to put your initial on the wall, somewhere next to ours? I don’t know where you’ll be ending up, but for a while, you’re here, and you feel like… would you like to put your initial up on the wall, just so people know you were here?”</p><p>She glanced at Jaune, who nodded approvingly.</p><p>Blake smiled. “Yes,” she said. “I think I’d like that.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0027"><h2>27. Holding Up the World</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Rainbow and Twilight have a talk</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Holding Up the World</p><p> </p><p><em>“I grew up with six older sisters, and now, I have Pyrrha </em>and <em>Ruby. I know what being coddled looks like.”</em></p><p>
  <em>Oh, yeah? Well, you don’t know me, and you don’t know Twilight, so keep your opinions to yourself. </em>
</p><p>Except that Jaune’s words rankled with Rainbow Dash nevertheless, because Jaune <em>did</em> know her, and he <em>did </em>know Twilight. Not as well as some people, to be sure, and Rainbow couldn’t quite deny to herself that she had tempted to call up Pinkie or Rarity and ask them if she coddled Twilight. They would, she was sure, have told her of course not, that Jaune was talking absolute nonsense… the only reason she hadn’t called them was the little voice in her head suggesting that perhaps the reason they’d think that was because they did it too. </p><p>Which was ridiculous, but that was the problem when you listened to people like Jaune or people like Gilda: even though they were idiots, even though they were liars, even though they didn’t really know your friends, even though they had no more authority to speak than some drunk mouthing off down the bar, their words had a way of getting under your skin. </p><p>Certainly, Jaune’s tongue cut deeper than his sword could have managed. </p><p>She couldn’t shake the words out of her mind, in the same way that she couldn’t quite shake Gilda’s accusations. </p><p>What Jaune had said wasn’t as bad as the things that Gilda had insinuated about her friends and the way they acted around her – that was the reason she had still given Jaune some good advice instead of laying him out flat on the ground amongst the chickens – but even so, they had gotten under her skin.</p><p>She couldn’t stop thinking about them. She had struggled to get to sleep last night for thinking about them. </p><p>They filled up her mind this morning, and as she faced the prospect of a day off, the idea that she might spend this day – this week – thinking about the idea that she might coddle Twilight was filling her with a sort of low-key dread. </p><p>Albeit, that was partly because she hadn’t yet come up with any ideas of things to do that would take her mind off of it during that week, which she probably would at some point… unless she couldn’t think because she was too busy wondering if she coddled Twilight. </p><p>
  <em>Why couldn’t you have kept your mouth shut, Jaune?</em>
</p><p>“Rainbow Dash?”</p><p>Rainbow looked up. It was Twilight. Of course it was. The light from the window was streaming down upon her, making her look especially soft and warm as the golden motes of light fell all around her, as she stood bathed in the glow of the morning sun. </p><p>
  <em>If you do coddle her, it’s because she manages to look like that so often.</em>
</p><p>Twilight was wearing a plaid skirt of purple and pink and a maroon waistcoat over a light blue blouse; long purple stockings rose to just above her knees, leaving a modest display of leg before the hem of her skirt, while smart shoes adorned with blue crystal on the top encased her feet. Twilight’s hair had foregone its usual ponytail and was instead worn in a high bun. </p><p>“Hey, Twilight,” Rainbow said. “What’s up?”</p><p>“Nothing,” Twilight said. “You were just staring into space, and so I wondered if there was anything up with you.”</p><p>“Not really,” Rainbow lied. “I just… I’ve just been thinking.”</p><p>“About what?” Twilight asked, sitting down on the bed opposite Rainbow. </p><p>Rainbow hesitated for a moment. Her magenta eyes darted around the room. “Where are Ciel and Penny?”</p><p>“They went to breakfast,” Twilight said. She turned her head a little so that she could glance at Rainbow out of the side of her eyes. “Didn’t you notice them leaving?”</p><p>“I guess not.”</p><p>“Okay, what’s up?” Twilight demanded.</p><p>“What makes you think-?“</p><p>“The fact that you didn’t notice Ciel and Penny leaving for breakfast,” Twilight pointed. “Ciel might be able to sneak past you under normal circumstances but Penny… 'stealthy' is not the word that comes to mind.”</p><p>Rainbow was unable to suppress a snort; her mouth crinkled with a smile. “No, it isn’t, is it?” she asked. She hesitated. “You look nice; going out anywhere special?”</p><p>“I don’t know; does Vale count as special?” Twilight asked. </p><p>“Be careful,” Rainbow said. “Those streets aren’t going to get less mean overnight just because Torchwick’s in a cell on the <em>Valiant</em>.”</p><p>
  <em>It’s stuff like that, isn’t it?</em>
</p><p>“Okay, do you really want to know what the problem is?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>“Of course,” Twilight declared earnestly. “If you’ve got a problem, then it’s my problem too.”</p><p>Rainbow smiled thinly. “Thanks, Twilight.” She took a deep breath. “Twilight… do I… do you think that I coddle you?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>Rainbow’s eyebrows rose. “Well, you could have been nicer about it!”</p><p>Twilight giggled, covering her mouth with one hand. “I’m sorry, did you <em>not</em> realise that was what you were doing?”</p><p>“No,” Rainbow said firmly. “I thought I was just-“</p><p>“Promising to protect me while I was sitting right there?”</p><p>“I only did that after Applejack asked!” Rainbow squawked.</p><p>Twilight’s smile flashed brightly. “Applejack does the same thing. So does Rarity. Pinkie… it’s harder to tell with Pinkie. Fluttershy doesn’t, but that’s because you all coddle Fluttershy just as much.”</p><p>Rainbow’s mouth hung open. She wasn’t sure exactly what she’d expected, but it wasn’t this frank and brutally honest assessment of her behaviour. “We… I’m just trying to look out for you,” she said feebly. “You get that, right? I just… come on, Twilight; Chrysalis was screaming about how she was going to take her revenge on you as they led her away to prison; before that, you were nearly abducted by the White Fang; when I first met you, you were getting mugged. And now you’re out of the lab and out in the field. Am I not supposed to worry about that? About you?” Rainbow slumped forwards, resting her elbows upon her knees. “We want to take care of you because we care about you, you get that, right? If we lost you, then… I don’t know what would happen to the rest of us, but I know that it wouldn’t be pretty. We care about you.” In light of the subject of their conversation, Rainbow fought against the urge to reach out and stroke Twilight’s face. “I care about you.”</p><p>Twilight nodded. “I know. I’ve always known.”</p><p>Rainbow smiled, if only for a brief moment. “But all the same… if you felt this way, then why didn’t you say something? If you didn’t like it, then you could have-“</p><p>“What makes you think,” Twilight said, “that I didn’t like it?”</p><p>For the second time in a very brief amount of time, Twilight managed to stun Rainbow into silence. “You… Twilight, what are you saying here? I ask you if you think that I coddle you, and you say yes. Then you say that Applejack and Rarity do it too, but now you say that you… don’t mind? Isn’t coddling supposed to be a bad thing?”</p><p>Twilight pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Rainbow… why are you asking this all of a sudden?”</p><p>Rainbow sighed. “When I went to talk to Jaune, he said that you coddle me.”</p><p>Twilight chuckled. “Jaune wants to be big and strong, and so he doesn’t like it when Ruby and Pyrrha remind him that he isn’t, even with the best of intentions.”</p><p>Rainbow’s brow furrowed a little. “And you?”</p><p>Twilight’s smile broadened. “What makes you think that I’ve ever wanted to be big and strong?”</p><p>Rainbow was silent for a moment. “Well… uh… you did go to Combat School?”</p><p>“Because having aura training is a plus when it comes to being selected for the best assignments,” Twilight reminded her. “And I wanted to be selected for my skills, not because – not <em>just</em> because – I’m General Ironwood’s goddaughter. Yeah, okay, it kind of bugs me when I have to hide in the cockpit of a Paladin when the White Fang attack, but what bothers me isn’t you telling me to secure myself in the cockpit of a Paladin; what bothers me is that you don’t have a fourth teammate who can stand alongside you and have your back. What bothers me is that Sunset had to let herself get stabbed by Adam because she was essentially fighting alone. </p><p>“It doesn’t bother me that I’m weak, because I know what I am, and I know my limits and my capabilities, and even though I was asking Pyrrha for a few pointers-“</p><p>“Why would you ask Pyrrha for a few pointers when I’m right here?” Rainbow asked, her tone becoming slightly aggrieved.</p><p>“Because Pyrrha fights with a bladed weapon,” Twilight pointed.</p><p>Rainbow considered that for a moment. “Fair enough, I guess,” she admitted.</p><p>“Besides, you already tried to teach me how to throw a punch, remember?” Twilight pointed out. “Emphasis on 'tried.'”</p><p>Rainbow laughed nervously. “Yeah, that was, uh… that was… yeah.”</p><p>Twilight chuckled. “Exactly my point. You know… you know that Applejack doesn’t really want to be a huntress, right?”</p><p>“I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I didn’t,” Rainbow replied. “I told her when we graduated Canterlot, I said, ‘Applejack, if this isn’t what you want to do, then don’t do it.’ But you know what Applejack’s like.”</p><p>Twilight grinned, her voice slipping into an approximation of Applejack’s distinctive drawl. “Sugarcube, there’s a lot of work needs to be done to keep this kingdom safe, and one thing you can say about me is that Ah always get the work done. Now, Ah may not care much for it, but so long as needs someone to watch over her-“</p><p>“Applejack is gonna be right here,” Rainbow joined her, the two of them speaking in unison. </p><p>“Yeah,” Rainbow said softly. “That… that’s Applejack all over, isn’t it?”</p><p>“It really is,” Twilight murmured. “Faithful and strong. She sees a need, and so, she can’t turn away. But the fact that Rarity did turn away doesn’t make her any less than Applejack, does it?”</p><p>“No,” Rainbow said immediately. “Of course not. If everyone was a huntress out here fighting, then-“</p><p>“Then what would we be fighting to protect?” Twilight finished for her.</p><p>“Exactly.”</p><p>“Then why should it bother me that you give me a little coddling?” Twilight asked. “It’s not as if I’m the only one. You coddle Fluttershy, you coddle Pinkie, you coddle Scootaloo. You coddle everyone who needs it.” She paused for a moment. “Pop quiz.”</p><p>Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Come on, Twi, this is supposed to be our week off.”</p><p>“Why did Alsius change its name to Atlas?” Twilight asked.</p><p>“Ah, I know this one,” Rainbow said. She fell silent. “No, wait, no I don’t.”</p><p>“It’s from an old myth,” Twilight explained, probably not for the first time. “Atlas was a giant of immense strength who held up the sky on his back. And so, when Atlas was first lifted into the sky, it took the name as a statement of intent, that Atlas would support the world on its shoulders, just like its namesake of old had supported the heavens.”</p><p>“And we do,” Rainbow declared. “We do hold up the world, with our fleets and armies, with our-“</p><p>“With people like you,” Twilight said; she spoke softly, but loudly enough to cut off Rainbow Dash. “But not people like me. I know what I am, and I know what I’m not, and honestly, I’m fine with that. Applejack is a huntress, and Rarity isn’t, and that’s fine too, and do you know why?”</p><p>“Because… because…” Rainbow licked her lips. “I get it, in here,” she said, tapping her chest with one hand. “But you’ll have to lay out for me in words, because I don’t have them.”</p><p>“Because death isn’t Rarity’s gift to the world,” Twilight said, as though it was the most obvious thing in Remnant to put it that way. “We each have many skills, some of us have more skills than others, some of us have what you might call superior skills, but we each have only one single gift to give to Remnant; at least, I believe we do. It isn’t even the thing that we’re most skilled with, necessarily, rather… the way I see it, it’s the thing that you can give that nobody else can, at least not in the same way. Rarity’s semblance might be creating barriers, but her gift to the world is not making shields or even protecting people, and it certainly isn’t stabbing things with an epee. Rarity’s gift is beauty; it’s making people, making Remnant a more beautiful, bright, and shining place than it was when she found it.”</p><p>Rainbow nodded. "And Pinkie's gift, well, that's joy. She's a great baker, sure, but her gift? That's not making cakes; that's putting a smile on the face of everyone she meets."</p><p>"We all have something that will help us make Atlas – make Remnant – an even better place," Twilight agreed. "With our strength, with our hearts, or with our minds. We all have something to give, but we don't all have the same gift. Not everyone can be you – I can't be you."</p><p>"And who'd want that if you could?" Rainbow said. "Imagine that: a whole Atlas full of clones of me."</p><p>Twilight sniggered. "You'd drive yourself crazy with your own ego within a week."</p><p>Rainbow snorted. "Yeah, probably, but, even if I could learn to live with myself, even if I could get over having so many people who were exactly as awesome as I am… what kind of Atlas would that be, huh? A society full of warrior idiots who don't make anything, who can't even cook for themselves?"</p><p>"You're not an idiot," Twilight told her. "You're smart; you're just not intellectual."</p><p>Rainbow wasn't so sure about that, but it was kind of Twilight to put it that way, and so, she let it go for now. "So… you don't mind that I, uh, that I kind of treat you like you're made of glass sometimes?"</p><p>Twilight shook her head. "It's your gift," she said. "You protect everyone who needs to shelter behind you. You're like Atlas, holding up the world on your shoulders."</p><p>Rainbow looked away. "Stop it, Twi; you're going to make me blush."</p><p>"It's true!" Twilight insisted. "I'm sometimes afraid for you, having to carry me, but I'm never afraid for myself when you're around."</p><p>"Maybe my real gift is convincing you not to be scared?" Rainbow suggested.</p><p>"Maybe," Twilight conceded, a touch of amusement in her voice. "Either way, I know that it's not something I can match. My gift-"</p><p>"Is your smarts," Rainbow said.</p><p>"Maybe," Twilight said, more softly now and a little more reluctantly. It was her turn to look away from Rainbow Dash as she pushed her glasses up her nose. "Although, for a while now, I've started to think that maybe… maybe my gift to Atlas is you."</p><p>Rainbow's eyes narrowed. "I'm not sure that I fit with how you originally described this," she murmured.</p><p>"Perhaps not," Twilight admitted. "But I'm not sure how I could make Atlas better than by giving it you."</p><p>Rainbow stared at her, eyes wide. "You… you always know how to take the words out of my mouth, you know that? You always know how to leave me… what am I supposed to say to that?"</p><p>Twilight chuckled. "Don't say anything. And don't do anything either. Don't listen to Jaune; if I had any problems with the way you act, I've had plenty of chances to let you know before now."</p><p>Rainbow didn't bother to hide the sigh of relief. "That… that is great to hear, Twilight; like you noticed this has been on my mind since yesterday."</p><p>Twilight nodded. "Jaune probably – hopefully – wouldn't have said it if he'd known how you take some things to heart. So how are you doing? Apart from that, I mean?"</p><p>"I'm fine," Rainbow said. "Now that that's out of the way-"</p><p>"Really?" Twilight asked, and now, she looked Rainbow square in the face, straight into the eyes. "Are you sure about that?"</p><p>Rainbow held her ground for all of three seconds. "I… no," she admitted. "I… during the mission, I… I ran into an old friend."</p><p>Twilight frowned. "You mean… at the base, you didn't… oh."</p><p>"'Oh' is right," Rainbow said. "She's in the White Fang now, and right here in Vale as well."</p><p>Twilight blinked rapidly behind her spectacles. "Who is she?"</p><p>"Her name's Gilda," Rainbow said. "We grew up together. I even lived with her for a little while after my folks moved to Menagerie." Rainbow's parents had been happy to pack in their blue collar existence in the perpetual night underneath Atlas and move to the tropical paradise where all faunus could breathe free, but Rainbow… it had felt like giving up, to her. Even before she met Twilight, she had harboured dreams – albeit dreams which seemed impossible on bad days, and most days were at least a little bad before she met Twilight – of making it up into the sky and making something of herself. So she had waved her parents goodbye, promised to write to them once she made it big in the floating city, and moved in with Gilda and her folks, until a chance encounter with a certain bespectacled bookwork had opened up whole new vistas of possibility for her.</p><p>"Gilda," Twilight repeated, running her tongue experimentally over the word. "You've never mentioned her before."</p><p>Rainbow shrugged. "I don't talk about growing up much."</p><p>"I've noticed," Twilight said. "The way you talk, your life might as well have started when you met me."</p><p>"My life <em>did</em> start when I met you," Rainbow declared.</p><p>"Except that it didn't, did it?" Twilight replied. "Because there's Gilda."</p><p>"Right, Gilda," Rainbow muttered. "I, uh, well, I kind of lost touch with her after I moved in with you. But you know when I used to go home for the holidays during the first couple of years at Canterlot?"</p><p>Twilight nodded. "I remember."</p><p>"I was going to her home, to stay with her folks," Rainbow said. "My parents had moved to Menagerie by then."</p><p>"And then Gilda's parents moved to Menagerie later, didn't they?" Twilight asked. "They won the lottery you mentioned."</p><p>"Right," Rainbow said. "That was a little before… before the wedding. I'd already lost touch with Gilda by then." She knew that Gilda hadn't gone to Menagerie with her parents, because Rainbow's parents had written to her telling her that the Swiftwings had moved in next door to them and it was just like old times – only with a beach view and no reason not to sit on the porch drinking margaritas at ten in the morning. Gilda, apparently, had gotten a job in construction; that was obviously a lie, but then, Rainbow had told her parents that she was just an average Atlas student with bad grades, so she didn't have much room to talk.</p><p>"Why did you lose touch?" Twilight asked.</p><p>
  <em>Because she was on her way to joining the White Fang, and now I feel like an idiot for not seeing this coming.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Because she said something I couldn't forgive.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Because she said something I was afraid was right, and it was easier for me to walk away from my friend than deal with it.</em>
</p><p>"I don't want to talk about it," Rainbow muttered.</p><p>Twilight nodded. "Okay," she agreed. "But what about now? What are you going to do? About Gilda? Is she…? I mean, did you-"</p><p>"She got away from me," Rainbow said, which was kind of a lie but at the same time not quite. Or maybe it was. Close enough.</p><p>"I see," Twilight murmured. "So… what are you going to do?"</p><p>"I don't know," Rainbow confessed. "I don't want to kill her, I don't even want to throw her in prison… but I'm worried she might not give me much choice."</p><p>"I… I wish that I could… I don't know what to say," Twilight whispered. "But… I don't."</p><p>"You don't have to. I don't expect you to be able to solve something like this," Rainbow assured her. "I just… Gilda, and…"</p><p>"And what?"</p><p>Rainbow frowned, if only slightly and only for a moment, as she got up off her bed and walked around the bed that Twilight was sitting on to stand in front of the window. The grounds of Beacon stretched out before her, filled with students from all four academies hurrying on their way to class. "When I fought Adam the second time, in front of the bookshop," she said, "I knocked his mask off his face. I saw his face." She leaned on the windowsill, her head bowed. "They'd burned it."</p><p>"Who had?"</p><p>"The SDC," Rainbow replied. "They'd branded it, like he was a longhorn steer."</p><p>Twilight gasped. "But… but that's-"</p><p>"Illegal?" Rainbow suggested. "Yeah, it is. I checked."</p><p>"So that… that's why you were so… I knew you were out of sorts that night!" Twilight cried. "Why didn't you tell me?"</p><p>"Tell you want?" Rainbow demanded. "That I was worried the same thing would have happened to me?"</p><p>"We wouldn't let that happen," Twilight cried, rising to her feet. "I wouldn't let that happen."</p><p>Rainbow looked at her, a slight smile upon her face. "Cadance told me the same thing."</p><p>"You spoke to Cadance?"</p><p>Rainbow nodded. "I asked her to… to look into it."</p><p>"That… was probably the right thing to do," Twilight murmured. She sat down once more, turned around so that she was facing Rainbow Dash. "You don't… you didn't really think that we'd let that happen to you, did you?"</p><p>Rainbow sighed, her breath misting the widow slightly. "No," she said quietly. "But it wasn't great to think that I was your friendship away from…"</p><p>"You're not Adam Taurus," Twilight said.</p><p>"Neither is Gilda, but she's still in the White Fang," Rainbow replied. "If I hadn't met you, if you hadn't introduced me to the General, then I… who knows where I would have ended up? Dead in a mine, the letters SDC burned onto my face, a terrorist? Tell me something, Twilight, if Atlas is holding up the world, then how come we let so many people fall off the edge?"</p><p>"You sound like Blake," Twilight pointed.</p><p>Rainbow grinned. "Maybe she's growing on me as much I'd hoped to grow on her."</p><p>"Or maybe she had a point," Twilight suggested.</p><p>"Let's not go nuts," Rainbow said.</p><p>"Okay," Twilight agreed. She paused for a moment. "I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that the path you're on is the right one. Once you're in charge, you can pull on all the levers of power to make sure that there are no more Adams and no more Gildas. You'll have to make Atlas… an even better place."</p><p>"You really think it will be that simple?"</p><p>"Maybe not <em>that</em> simple," Twilight said, "but you're not the first person to have this idea. It was…" she trailed off. "You should come with me, into Vale; there are a couple of books I want to get for Sunset-"</p><p>"Can't Sunset get her own books?"</p><p>"She doesn't know what she's looking for in this case," Twilight explained. "And there's something for Blake that I think you might appreciate too."</p><p>"So you want me to go bookshopping?"</p><p>"With me," Twilight pointed out.</p><p>"That does make a big difference," Rainbow agreed. "Okay, sure, let's go… after I talk to Blake and Sunset."</p><p>"Talk to them about what?" Twilight asked.</p><p>"Let's just say that I've got an idea about how they're going to be spending their free time," said Rainbow Dash.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0028"><h2>28. The Warriors in the Woods</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sunset and Blake deal with their issues in a very healthy fashion</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Warriors in the Woods</p><p> </p><p>The beowolf snuffled as it crept along the ground, its snout pressed to the forest floor. </p><p>Sunset’s hand closed around the hilt of Soteria. </p><p>The beowolf raised its head, tentatively sniffing the air.</p><p>Sunset sprang out of hiding behind the tree that she had been using for cover, charging towards the grimm with a great shout that startled birds from the trees around them.</p><p>The beowolf’s head jerked up, a growl forming in its bony mouth.</p><p>A growl that was cut short as Sunset sliced off the grimm’s head with a single stroke of her black blade.</p><p>She exhaled through her teeth, grimacing as the deceased monster began to turn to ash before her eyes. </p><p>It wasn’t who or what she wanted to kill, but it was better than nothing. </p><p>She might have been banned from attending any classes, but there was no rule that said she couldn’t creep – or teleport – down into the Emerald Forest to get a piece of the action. </p><p>Actually, there was a rule, but with all of the teachers, you know, teaching, there shouldn’t be anyone to actually catch her in the act. </p><p>And nobody even knew to look for her.</p><p>Although when she phrased it like that, it started to sound a little stupid to have come down here without telling Ruby or Pyrrha where she was going. But on the other hand, if she’d told them where she was going, then they would have tried to talk her out of it, and Sunset was in no mood to be dissuaded right now. </p><p>She needed to keep training. She needed to get stronger.</p><p>She needed to kick some ass and kill some monsters. </p><p>Monsters like the beowolves she could hear drawing near, their growls and howls growing louder. Perhaps they were all psychically linked and could sense the death of their scout. </p><p>Or perhaps they could smell her. </p><p>It didn’t really matter, the same way it didn’t really matter how many of them there were. One or twenty or two hundred, she’d take them on. </p><p>Soteria was in her hand, but Sol Invictus was slung across her back with the chambers unloaded to discourage her from using it. That was part of the rule that she had set herself when she came down here. Shooting Adam didn’t get you anywhere – she had ample proof of that by now – so she wouldn’t shoot; at the last resort, she would use her bayonet or just club grimm with the stock, but she wouldn’t shoot. She would use her sword and her magic and her brain, and hopefully, while she was slaughtering the grimm, she would come up with a way of getting Adam too. </p><p>A way that didn’t involve getting herself stabbed a second time. </p><p>Unconsciously, Sunset’s hand – her scarred hand, scabbed and marked from where she had caught his blade – drifted to her stomach, above the wound that he had dealt her. He had left her a mark there too. Jaune's aura had been too ragged from that impressive stunt with Pyrrha and the train to heal her so completely that she was beyond scars. </p><p>She would carry the marks of Adam’s esteem for the rest of her days. There was a hole in her cuirass too, where his blade had penetrated her armour, but she didn’t mean to get it repaired until she’d killed him. </p><p>The howling of the beowolves drew closer, ever closer; they were so close now that the undergrowth was rustling as they drew near, the bushes waving as though a sudden wind were blowing through the forest. </p><p>Sunset turned side on to face the approaching creatures of the dark, thrusting out her scarred hand towards them; the scars were obscured by the green glow of magic that gathered above her palm.</p><p>A score of magical spears, each as long as Pyrrha’s Miló and tapering to a sharp point, appeared in ranks like an honour guard in front of Sunset, points slightly downwards. </p><p>Adam was fast, sure, but he couldn’t point that sword in every which way at once; so long as she forced him to take one blow – a blow from the front – then she could hit him from the sides and rear, just like she was prepping for the grimm right now. </p><p>Mind you, Adam wasn’t likely to give her such time to prep. </p><p>The beowolves burst out of the thicket, their eyes blazing, their masks pale as they bared their teeth at Sunset, opening their mouths to let loose a roar that still had the power to make Sunset shiver. </p><p>No matter how good she got at killing these things, they would always be able to unnerve her a little. </p><p>Because no matter how good she got at killing these things, she would only ever be one mistake away. </p><p>
  <em>And as much as I’d love to say I never make mistakes…</em>
</p><p>The beowolves charged out of the bushes and straight into the killing ground that Sunset had prepared for them. </p><p>A pulse of magic burst from Sunset’s hand. The alpha beowolf, towering above his subordinates, raised forearms covered in plates of bone thicker than the toughest armour, crossing them before his face to take the blow. </p><p>And as he did, Sunset unleashed her spears of magic which fell like rain upon him and the rest of his pack. </p><p>The roaring and the howling of the beowolves were turned to cries of pain as the magical missiles burst upon and amongst them in a shower of explosions. The dust from the blast choked the air, obscuring the beowolves – the surviving beowolves – from view, but Sunset didn’t wait for the chance to observe the results of her handiwork. She was too static when she fought; she stood in one place far too much.  She needed to be more like Rainbow Dash, more like Blake; she needed to be moving all the time, especially against someone like Adam. </p><p>She ran to the left, and with her free hand, she shot small blasts of magic from her fingertips into the dust cloud; against Adam, she probably wouldn’t take the risk, but she ought to be okay against beowolves. </p><p>And she was rewarded by a howl of pain, so that was worth it. </p><p>The first beowolves began to emerge from out of the smoke, leaping out of the cover that Sunset had provided them to fall upon where Sunset had been just a moment before. Two pulses of magic leapt from Sunset’s palm in quick succession to strike them down. </p><p>Sunset kept moving. She ran forwards now, leaping over a knot of tangled tree roots as she tried to create more magical spears, in a ring now, surrounding the location of the pack. She had to be able to do it quickly, to do it on the fly; it was the only way that she could hope for it to be of any use in battle. </p><p>The smoke and dust began to clear, beginning to reveal the beowolves huddled together, facing in all directions, seeming to be themselves waiting to see where she was now. </p><p>Sunset wasn’t going to give them the chance to react. She unleashed her spears, though they were only half formed, and as they fell, she formed some more, pushing her magic to conjure up the missiles and hurl them like thunderbolts from heaven down upon ground and grimm alike. They were incomplete, they were underpowered, but that didn’t matter; if she kept them coming from all sides, then she’d wear him down for sure. </p><p>And so, she cast her spears and supplemented them with blasts of magic from the palm of her hand for good measure, and as weak as they were, they were nevertheless numerous enough that they tore apart the surviving grimm until only the alpha remained.</p><p>He alone withstood the storm, being so old and so well-armoured by his bony plates and sharp spines that he withstood the assaults of Sunset’s magic; at least, they didn’t kill him, although they seemed to be hurting him. </p><p>Sunset teleported, appearing behind the alpha and level with his neck, hovering in mid-air for a moment as she drew back Soteria for the coup de grâce. </p><p>The alpha stretched out one hand to grab her by the neck, turning its bleached bone head to roar into her face. </p><p>Blake burst out of cover, crossing the clearing in a blur of motion; her wild black hair flew out behind her as she ran, shots snapping from Gambol Shroud’s pistol configuration to slam into the alpha’s flank. The beowolf roared, and as Blake closed the distance between them, it swiped at her with a paw almost as large as she was. The stroke connected, and Blake’s clone dissipated like smoke as the real Blake appeared above, her ribbon swirling around her as she descended, spinning in mid-air, to slice through the alpha’s paw with blade and cleaver alike. </p><p>She didn’t give the grimm time to howl in pain before she leapt up, jumping off the remainder of the alpha’s arm to cut off its head in a single stroke of her cleaver scabbard. </p><p>Sunset managed to land on her feet as the dissolving grimm relaxed its grip around her neck. “Blake? What are you doing here?”</p><p>Blake landed nimbly in front of her, her blade and cleaver held loosely in each hand. “You’re welcome,” she observed dryly. </p><p>“I didn’t ask for your help; I asked what you were doing here,” Sunset snapped. </p><p>Blake stared at her, her golden eyes flat. “You’re still welcome,” she observed.</p><p>“I’m still not going to ask,” Sunset muttered. “If I can’t beat a pack of beowolves how am I supposed to…?”</p><p>“Supposed to what?”</p><p>“It doesn’t matter,” Sunset growled, turning away from Blake as her ears flattened on top of her head. She was more annoyed at herself than at Blake, but she couldn’t very well snap and shout and growl at herself, could she?</p><p>Blake’s voice was grim and lost all hint of humour. “It’s him, isn’t it?”</p><p>Sunset said nothing. Her chest rose and fell beneath her cuirass, and her scarred hand twitched, her fingers starting to clench into a fist as the memory of that red sword, of a world turned red as blood and black as nothingness, flashed before her eyes. </p><p>“So the answer to your question,” Blake went on, “is the same as you. Since we can’t go to class, I came here: the best place to get in some training.”</p><p>“Why?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Blake’s eyes narrowed. She cocked her head very slightly to one side. “Didn’t I just tell you that?”</p><p>“You’re here because you’re not strong enough to beat him yet,” Sunset said flatly.</p><p>“Exactly-” Blake began.</p><p>“So?” Sunset demanded. “Just let Rainbow Dash take care of it.”</p><p>Now it was the turn of Blake’s ears to flatten against the top of her head, disappearing in the midst of her wild tangle of black hair. “This isn’t Rainbow Dash’s fight; it’s mine!”</p><p>“No, Adam is <em>mine</em>,” Sunset snarled into her face. “Mine to kill, mine to avenge myself and Ruby on.”</p><p>Blake was silent for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was softer now, tender and imploring. “Sunset, don’t,” she said, and her voice cracked. “Please don’t.” She shook her head. “Revenge… it’s a poison. What do you think made Adam the way he is? Do you think that brand on his face made no difference to him at all?”</p><p>“I don’t care what made him the way he is,” Sunset growled.</p><p>“Then what <em>do</em> you care about?”</p><p>“I care about the fact that he beat me!” Sunset roared, turning from Blake once more to exclaim it upwards into the sky. “I care about the fact that he nearly killed Ruby; I care about the fact that he nearly killed me, and both times, I couldn’t do a damn thing about it!” She paused for breath. “I care about the fact that I took a hit from him so that I could get hit on him in turn, but he walked away from my best shot, while I ended seconds away from death! I care about the fact that Ruby was seconds away from death. I care about the fact that he scared the crap out of me, and even when I wasn’t scared, it didn’t make any difference!” Spittle flew from her mouth. “That’s why I have to kill him. That’s why… I have to prove that I’m stronger than he is.”</p><p>“You sound like him when you talk like that,” Blake whispered.</p><p>“Do I?” Sunset grunted. Her tail swept back and forth as she shuffled her feet, crushing the grass beneath her boots. “Maybe that’s why I have to kill him,” she said softly.</p><p>“It won’t kill that part of yourself,” Blake replied, her voice trembling. “Giving into it… will only make it stronger.”</p><p>“Can you deny that he deserves to die?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“It always starts with someone who deserves to die,” Blake said. “It starts with a monster, and everybody cheers, and then-”</p><p>“Oh, don’t start with the slippery slope fallacy; we’re both smarter than that,” Sunset snapped. “Just because I put down a rabid dog doesn’t mean that I’m going to become a serial killer.”</p><p>“If you’re so sure of that, then why do you feel like you have to kill Adam?” Blake demanded. “If you’re so sure, then why are you so afraid?”</p><p>“I’m not afraid of him,” Sunset snapped.</p><p>“No, you’re afraid of yourself,” Blake declared. </p><p>Sunset was silent for a moment, her breathing heavy. She looked at Blake. “What would you have me do?” she asked. “Should he be allowed to roam free? Should I trust that everyone will be as lucky as me or Ruby?”</p><p>“Of course not; it’s not a binary choice between you staining your hands or…” Blake trailed off. “I…”</p><p>“Want it for yourself?”</p><p>“No!” Blake exclaimed. “That… Adam’s life is… the last thing I want. But I was there. I was one of those who cheered him on when he struck down monsters. I was one of those who called him the Sword of our people, our Lord of Battles. I was beside him when we knelt at the feet of Sienna Khan and learned from her what it was to fight and lead and rouse others to follow us into the fight. Adam… Adam is my responsibility.”</p><p>“Just because you and he were… he hasn’t tried to kill your… he hasn’t tried to kill you.”</p><p>“I think he has, actually,” Blake pointed out.</p><p>Sunset waved her hand dismissively. “You know what I mean.”</p><p>“No,” Blake said. “I don’t.” She glanced down at her feet. “You’re not the only one he made to feel powerless.”</p><p>Sunset was silent for a moment, taking in the sickening implications of what Blake had just said. “I thought you said-”</p><p>“I said the world had made him cruel,” Blake pointed out. “I never said that his cruelty had only been directed out towards the world.”</p><p>Sunset’s mouth hung open for a moment. She… she had no idea what to say. It was too far beyond her frame of reference, too far from her experience. She had no idea what to say, and hence, she said nothing. </p><p>Blake’s head was bowed. “You’re a kind person, Sunset,” she murmured. “I think so, anyway. I… I’d rather that you didn’t prove me wrong, like he did.”</p><p>“I’d rather not prove you wrong either,” Sunset replied. “But if I don’t do this… if I can’t beat him, if I hide from him, if I… what are you doing out here?”</p><p>Blake looked up at her. “Well, I <em>was</em> out here looking to train.”</p><p>“Exactly, because you don’t think that this fight is over,” Sunset said.</p><p>“Of course it’s not over!” Blake cried. “Just because Torchwick’s in jail... Adam’s still out there-”</p><p>“And there’s a good chance we’ll have to face him again,” Sunset finished, quietly but sharply. “Which, being the case, I think that I should prepare to face him. If I don’t… what else should I do? Hide from him? Leave it to Pyrrha?”</p><p>“You advise me to leave it to Rainbow Dash,” Blake pointed.</p><p>“Rainbow’s the team leader; it’s her job to be out in front.”</p><p>“Technically, it’s a team leader’s job to give the directions,” Rainbow broke in, as she descended towards them from out of the sky, the jets of her wingpack burning with a soft hum as they lowered her at a steady rate down to the ground. She kept her metal wings unfurled, spread out on either side of her so that they were nearly touching the trees on either side as the tips of her toes touched the ground. “I just stay out in front because I’m the toughest on my team, not counting the… we’ll talk about that later,” she said. “The point is: you are both idiots.”</p><p>Sunset scoffed. “That’s a bit rich coming from you, don’t you think?”</p><p>“I may not have read as many books as you, but I knew better than to come down into the Emerald Forest by myself,” Rainbow pointed out.</p><p>“I don’t see Ciel or Penny or Twilight with you,” Sunset replied.</p><p>“Twilight’s up on the clifftop, and you know what I meant, smartass,” Rainbow said. “I talked to Pyrrha, Ruby, and Jaune, and none of them knew where you were. Either of you.”</p><p>Sunset winced, while Blake asked, “Then how did you find us?”</p><p>“I had a hunch,” Rainbow replied. “So, you both came out here to kill grimm.”</p><p>“It’s the next best thing to fighting men,” Sunset said stubbornly.</p><p>“It’s a quick way to burn yourself out,” Rainbow insisted. “You got a week off for a reason.”</p><p>“I got a week off because I almost died!” Sunset snarled. “I got a week off because I was weak! I got a week off because-”</p><p>“Because you’re in this kind of mood,” Rainbow remarked.</p><p>“Shut up,” Sunset snapped. “You… you wouldn’t understand.” She turned away, swinging her sword in the air. “General Ironwood’s protégé, private lessons, access to all the latest fancy toys straight from the lab, you’ve never had to worry that you weren’t strong enough-”</p><p>“I worry all the damn time that I’m not strong enough!” Rainbow shouted. Her voice dropped as her wings folded up onto her back. “That never goes away; no matter how strong you get, you’ll always worry that it’s not enough. I have so much to protect and just two hands to do it with, and I… I get it.”</p><p>“Get what?” Sunset demanded.</p><p>“Why you want Adam Taurus so badly,” Rainbow answered.</p><p>“I thought you said we were idiots for that?” Blake reminded her.</p><p>“You’re idiots for coming out here like this without telling anyone,” Rainbow said. “You’re idiots for not taking the rest that you need. But I get it. I get you, anyway.” She nodded her head towards Sunset. </p><p>“She’s afraid of him,” Blake said.</p><p>“I’m not afraid. I took a hit from him-”</p><p>“That doesn’t mean that he stopped scaring you.”</p><p>“You’ll see-”</p><p>“It’s not that fear,” Rainbow said. “Well, I guess it could be, a little, but that’s not why you want him, is it?” she asked. “It’s not why I want him.”</p><p>Sunset shook her head. “You’re nothing like me, Rainbow Dash.”</p><p>Rainbow was silent for a moment. “Twilight told me once that, deep in the depths of the ocean, there are these fish, these really ugly fish. They live in the dark, you see, they… they never see the sun because the light doesn’t go down that far. They swim around in the dark, and they’ve got no eyes, and they’re just the ugliest things that you’ve ever seen in your life. But, maybe… do you think that it’s possible that if one of those fish could fly, could swim I mean, up out of the darkness, if it could feel the light on its face, if it could see the sun, do you think that, do you think it’s possible that one of those ugly little monsters could become something beautiful?”</p><p>“No,” Blake said flatly.</p><p>Rainbow’s eyebrows rose. “Thanks for that,” she muttered.</p><p>“People don’t change, not like that,” Blake declared. “I used to think that… when Adam started to become… I thought that I could save him. I thought that it was my job to save him. I thought that… I thought that the love of a purehearted maiden could turn the beast into a handsome prince. I thought that if I was kind and gentle and patient, then I could gentle his fierce temper. I thought that-”</p><p>“Are you going to list off every romance cliché or just your favourites?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Blake scowled… before the briefest hint of a smile crossed her face. “I admit, I wasn’t without influences in that regard,” she admitted. “But my point is that it was all lies, all of it nonsense, all of it… I let him… I endured because I thought that I was supposed to endure; I thought that by enduring, I would… reach him, somehow. I thought that it was my fault that I wasn’t changing him. But the truth is that people don’t change, not like that. Adam was changed by the world that he lived in, and the love of one stupid girl wasn’t enough to overcome that. That’s not how life or people work.”</p><p>“I disagree,” Sunset said. “And I guess that Rainbow does too, or she wouldn’t have brought it up, although I’m not sure why she bothered.”</p><p>“You’ve only known me after I swam up towards the light,” Rainbow told her. “Before I met Twilight-“</p><p>“You’re not Adam,” Blake said. “Neither of you are.”</p><p>“But we could have been,” Rainbow said, quietly and with surprising – Sunset was surprised, at least – earnestness, “if the dice had fallen a different way. If we hadn’t met the right people. If we hadn’t met the right people.” She glanced at Sunset. “The truth is that I always expected you to join the White Fang.”</p><p>“Oh, really?”</p><p>“Why not?” Rainbow asked. “You’re strong, arrogant, you have a chip on your shoulder-”</p><p>“Yes, thank you, I wasn’t actually looking for a list,” Sunset said quickly before she could go on. “Besides, strong and arrogant describes every top Atlas student, including you.”</p><p>“But I don’t have a chip on my shoulder to go along with it,” Rainbow said.</p><p>“Neither do I, now,” Sunset said firmly, and almost sincerely.</p><p>“Now,” Rainbow repeated. </p><p>“Now,” Blake said, her tone dull and dispirited. “Now that you’ve met Ruby and Pyrrha and…”</p><p>Sunset frowned. “Blake?”</p><p>Blake’s golden eyes flickered between the two of them. “Do you really think that you could have become like him?”</p><p>“My best friend from when I was growing up is in the White Fang,” Rainbow admitted. “I found that out during the attack on the train. We grew up in the same neighbourhood, but I fight for Atlas, and she fights to bring it down. It all comes down to… luck. And the fact that I was rescued. That we were rescued.”</p><p>“Then why couldn’t I rescue Adam?” Blake demanded, her voice cracking. “If one person is really all it takes, if love and compassion are enough to pull someone out of the darkness, then why couldn’t I reach his heart? If Twilight and Ruby can do so much, then why am I so-?”</p><p>“You’re not,” Sunset said.</p><p>“I couldn’t save him no matter how much I tried-”</p><p>“That’s not your fault.”</p><p>“Isn’t it?” Blake cried, her whole body trembling. “How is it not my fault? Whose fault is it? Why… why wasn’t I… why?”</p><p>“Because he was too far gone?” Sunset suggested. “Because he didn’t want to be saved? I don’t know, but what I do know is that it isn’t your fault.”</p><p>Blake looked into Sunset’s eyes. “How can you be so sure?”</p><p>“Because the wisest, noblest, most compassionate person I’ve ever known tried to change me once, and they couldn’t manage it,” Sunset revealed. “But Ruby could. Sometimes… that’s just how it goes. Sometimes, things just happen, and you can’t explain them, and you can’t blame yourself for them.” She ventured the slightest trace of a smile. “Although, of course, you will, because that’s the kind of person you are.”</p><p>Blake didn’t appear to find that amusing, but at the same time at least, she didn’t seem to be taking offence at it either. </p><p>“We all want that guy gone,” Rainbow declared. “We all want him out of the way. We all want to prove that… that we’re better than he is, that the path we’ve chosen is better than the one he’s walking down. And we will get him, together.” She put one hand on Sunset’s shoulder and another hand on Blake. “But not if you wear yourselves out or work yourselves into a frenzy when there’s nobody even around.”</p><p>Sunset glanced at her. “So what are we supposed to do instead? Sit around doing nothing?”</p><p>“Relax, yeah, for a little while,” Rainbow declared. “Why don’t you come into Vale with me and Twilight? She wants to go book shopping, so you’ll enjoy it more than I will.”</p><p>That was a little tempting, somewhat more tempting than sticking around here and looking for more grimm. </p><p>And… as much as Sunset might not like to admit it, Rainbow Dash made a good point. </p><p>It was always annoying when that happened. </p><p>“Together?” she asked.</p><p>“Together,” Rainbow repeated.</p><p>Blake hesitated, her eyes flickering between the two of them. “Together,” said, more quietly than the other two, and more slowly, but she said it nonetheless. </p><p>Rainbow nodded. “Great,” she said. “Now, let’s-”</p><p>She was cut off, or at least interrupted, by the sound of something growling close by. </p><p>Rainbow sighed. “Of course, you two have drawn in the grimm.”</p><p>“Us?” Sunset squawked. “What about you, Miss Ugly Fish?”</p><p>“Why don’t we leave the question of whose fault it was?” Blake suggested. “Unless we want to attract even more grimm?”</p><p>“Good point,” Rainbow said, pulling her submachine guns out of her holsters. The three of them stood back to back as the beowolves began to slink out of the bushes. “Okay, people, time to go to work.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0029"><h2>29. Bad Influence</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ruby, Penny and Ciel head to the movies.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Bad Influence</p><p> </p><p>“I am not convinced that this is the sort of film that Penny should be seeing,” Ciel declared. </p><p>“What?” Ruby exclaimed. “Why not? What’s wrong with <em>Grimm 3</em>?”</p><p>“This synopsis makes it sound rather dubious,” Ciel said, holding up her scroll on which she had brought up a synopsis of the film in question. Ruby, Ciel, and Penny were currently sitting on the front row of a Skybus taking them down from Beacon to Vale. Penny sat in between Ruby and Ciel, bouncing up and down upon her seat slightly as the airship carried them down to Vale. </p><p>“What’s the matter, Ciel?” Penny asked. “Ruby said it was part of an acclaimed series.”</p><p>“It is,” Ruby confirmed. </p><p>“Hmm,” Ciel murmured. “It is also, apparently, a certificate Seventeen.”</p><p>Ruby blinked, “So?”</p><p>Ciel leaned forwards to look past Penny. “You are only fifteen,” she reminded Ruby.</p><p>“Ah, but that’s where my fake ID comes in!” Ruby declared triumphantly. “Yang made it for me so that we could watch movies together.”</p><p>Ciel stared at Ruby, silently but with an expression of frigid disapproval clear upon her face. </p><p>“What?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“There are times,” Ciel declared magisterially, “when I worry that you are a bad influence.” </p><p>“What?” Ruby cried. “That’s… I’m not a bad influence.”</p><p>“You are certainly not going to see a Seventeen,” Ciel said.</p><p>“Why not, Ciel?” Penny asked. “I don’t understand what the problem is?”</p><p>“And therein lies the problem,” Ciel said firmly, addressing Ruby as much as Penny. “Rules exist to be observed, Penny, not to be flouted at our own convenience whenever it makes our lives easier.”</p><p>Penny was silent for a moment. “But if Ruby thinks-”</p><p>“Ruby thinks that she should be able to disregard the rules on this occasion,” Ciel interrupted Penny. “No doubt, Roman Torchwick felt that he should be allowed to disregard the laws against theft and murder during his career of criminality, but that didn’t prevent us from locking him up in a cell aboard the <em>Valiant</em>.”</p><p>Ruby sputtered. “That’s just…! I’m not a criminal!”</p><p>“Technically you are, if you have used that fake ID,” Ciel observed. “Certainly, you will not involve Penny in any rule-breaking, I forbid it.”</p><p>“You can’t just forbid it like you’re her father,” Ruby replied. “Penny’s her own person, and she can make her own choices!”</p><p>“Maybe Ciel’s right, Ruby,” Penny said softly. “I don’t really want to break any rules.”</p><p>“Penny, you won’t be a criminal just because you go see a movie that I’m too young to see.”</p><p>“I know,” Penny said, “but you will, and I don’t want you to do something bad for my sake.”</p><p>Over Penny’s shoulder, Ruby could get a glimpse of Ciel, whose restrained smile nevertheless radiated triumphant smugness. </p><p>Ruby herself pouted as she crossed her legs and folded her arms. “Okay,” she conceded with ill grace. It wasn’t like it was a big deal! She didn’t know what Ciel was making such a fuss about, big killjoy. </p><p>
  <em>I knew I should have asked Yang to go and see the movie with me.</em>
</p><p>“Isn’t there another movie that we could see?” Penny suggested. </p><p>“I don’t know,” Ruby muttered. Somewhat reluctantly, she got out her scroll and brought up the listings for the PictureWorld nearest the skydock. “Oh, Ciel, you’re <em>bound</em> to like this one.”</p><p>“Go on?” Ciel said a little warily.</p><p>“<em>Real Atlesian Hero: Retaliation</em>,” Ruby said. “Starring The Boulder, Spruce Willis, and Ruby Roundhouse.”</p><p>Penny gasped. “Ruby Roundhouse! That sounds wonderful.”</p><p>Ruby’s eyebrows rose. “You’re a fan of Ruby Roundhouse?”</p><p>“Of course!” Penny said. “She’s so strong and graceful, and she always looks so pretty, even after she’s finished beating up bad guys or grimm.” Her legs bounced up and down. “I used to think that she was even cooler than Pyrrha before Ciel explained that Pyrrha does it all without the benefit of a fight choreographer.”</p><p>“Yeah, that’s always an advantage in the movies,” Ruby remarked. “That and special effects, I guess. But it still looks pretty cool, doesn’t it?”</p><p>“Very cool,” Penny agreed. “Can we go and see the Ruby Roundhouse movie, Ciel? Can we?”</p><p>“Let me see,” Ciel murmured. “The title sounds promising, I must admit. <em>Real Atlesian Hero: Retaliation. </em>Miss Roundhouse is only the third billed, but I suppose that’s to be expected at this stage in her career relative to Mister Willis and… The Boulder. Now, let’s see… the sinister organisation KOBRA have killed the Atlas Council and taken over the kingdom; now a small band of Atlesian specialists must join forces with the legendary General Joseph Colton – they do realise that he’s been dead for the last seventy years?”</p><p>“It’s a movie,” Ruby replied exasperatedly.</p><p>“It does sound like reasonable hokum,” Ciel agreed, “and despite the ridiculousness of his name, The Boulder is one of the finest actors of his generation. Yes, this should be enjoyable.”</p><p>“Yes!” Penny cried, throwing her arms up into the air. </p><p>Ruby couldn’t help but smile. It was impossible to feel disappointed about not getting to go and see her first choice of movie when Penny looked this excited about the second choice. Personally, she hadn’t thought too much of the first <em>Real Atlesian Hero</em> movie, but that might be because she wasn’t familiar with the comics or the toys. </p><p>Or maybe she just wasn’t impressed by all the ‘Go Atlas’ stuff; still, the fights were pretty awesome, and Penny looked like she’d enjoy it, and with all of the ‘Go Atlas’ stuff, even Ciel might have a good time.</p><p>She could probably do with it. </p><p>“But the first showing isn’t for another hour,” Ruby said, checking the times. “So, do you want to go for lu-…? No, wait, we, um…”</p><p>Penny looked at her, her green eyes intense as she leaned closer to Ruby. “Ruby? Is something wrong?”</p><p>“Penny,” Ciel said. “Give her some space.”</p><p>“Oh, sorry,” Penny gasped, hastily leaning back again so that she wasn’t so up in Ruby’s face.</p><p>Ruby laughed. “It’s fine, Penny; it’s just that… you know… how do you…? I’ve seen you eating, but…” Now it was her turn to lean forwards, so that she could whisper conspiratorially. “How does that work with the whole robot thing?”</p><p>“Oh,” Penny replied. “I have a bag in my throat that collects all of the food I eat, and then at the end of the day – usually, obviously not when we’re on mission – Twilight opens up my chest and replaces the bag with a clean one.”</p><p>Ruby couldn’t help but wince a little. “That sounds…”</p><p>“A little disgusting,” Penny agreed. “But my father thought that it was best that I should be able to eat and drink to help me pass for human. The only real difficulty is that if I talk with my mouth full, I could end up clogging up my vibrators, and then I wouldn’t be able to talk until Twilight had cleaned them out.”</p><p>Ruby shrugged. “At least you know you won’t choke.”</p><p>“No, but cleaning the vibrators really <em>would</em> be disgusting, and I don’t want to put Twilight to that much trouble,” Penny said.</p><p>“That’s really nice of you, Penny,” Ruby said.</p><p>“All of which is to say that if you wanted to go to lunch before the movie, that would be fine by me,” Penny declared.</p><p>“Thanks, Penny, but I don’t want to make you sit there pretending to eat.”</p><p>“And I don’t want you going hungry, Ruby,” Penny insisted. “Did you know that if the human body doesn’t get enough food to eat, your vital organs will stop functioning? Why, if that happened to you because of me-”</p><p>“I don’t think my body’s going to shut down because I skipped lunch one time, Penny,” Ruby assured her.</p><p>“As Twilight explained to you, starvation is a <em>slow-acting</em> process, Penny,” Ciel said forcefully. “But, if you have no objection to lunch-”</p><p>“I don’t,” Penny said. “After all, we can still talk while we eat, right?”</p><p>“So long as you don’t clog up your vibrators.”</p><p>Penny chuckled. “I’ll be sure not to,” she promised.</p><p>Ruby grinned. She leaned back in her seat, the smile remaining upon her face. “Hey, Penny?”</p><p>“Yes, Ruby?”</p><p>“Would you like me to make you a dress for the dance coming up in a few weeks?” Ruby asked. After all, she had already decided to make dresses for Sunset and Pyrrha – she probably ought to speak to them about that before they bought dresses from somewhere else – then why not Penny, too? </p><p>Penny stared at Ruby, her eyes widening even more than usual. “You… you want to make me a dress? For the dance?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Ruby said softly. “I mean, only if you want me to.”</p><p>Penny was silent. “Did you meet Rainbow Dash’s friend Rarity when she came to visit Rainbow Dash?”</p><p>Ruby nodded. “She said some nice things about my outfit and told me that I should become a fashionista if the huntress thing didn’t work out.” She laughed. “I hope it won’t come to that.”</p><p>“She’s making dresses for Rainbow Dash and Twilight,” Penny said, “because she’s their dear friend, one of their best friends in the whole world.”</p><p>“I’m not too surprised,” Ruby said. But she <em>was</em> surprised when Penny suddenly grabbed her in a headlock and pressed her close against Penny’s chest.</p><p>“Thank you, Ruby!” Penny cried. “This… this means so much to me, I can’t tell you!”</p><p>“Penny,” Ciel instructed. “Let her go.”</p><p>“Oh!” Penny gasped, releasing Ruby immediately. “Ruby, I’m sorry, I-”</p><p>“It’s fine, Penny,” Ruby said, even as she rubbed some feeling back into her neck. “I don’t see why you’re so… oh,” she murmured. “Penny,” she added reproachfully. “Did I have to offer to make you a dress to prove that you’re one of my best friends?”</p><p>“Um… should I have known already?” Penny asked. “It’s one of the only things I know that best friends do for one another.”</p><p>Ruby smiled as she reached out and took Penny’s hands in her own. “Penny, being someone’s best friend isn’t a question of what they do for you or what you do for them; it’s just… it’s something that you feel.”</p><p>“I feel like you’re my best friend, Ruby,” Penny said. “But… how could I know that you felt the same way? I can’t know what you feel, only what you do? Although I suppose you have already done a lot. I’m sorry, can you-?”</p><p>“You don’t need to apologise,” Ruby said quickly. “It’s fine. But you do like the idea, right? Of the dress?”</p><p>“I do,” Penny declared. “I really do.”</p><p>Ciel leaned forwards and past Penny. “There are times,” she said, a slight smile playing upon her face, “when you remind me that you are a very good influence.”</p><p>“I try my best,” Ruby replied. She hesitated for a moment. “Ciel, I know that we’re not best friends… or even friends at all, but would you like a dress-?”</p><p>“Please, save your generosity for those whom your heart truly cares for,” Ciel instructed her. “It is kind of you to offer, but you shouldn’t waste the treasure of your time upon mere acquaintances. We wouldn’t want you to neglect your studies because you have suddenly become dressmaker to half the school. In any case, I already have a dress for the dance.” She flicked her finger over her scroll, opening up what appeared to be a photo album, through which she continued to flick until she found a picture which she showed to Ruby. “There, that’s what I’ll be wearing. </p><p>Ruby stared at the picture. It was not what she had been expecting, to be perfectly honest; the gown was a pale blue, so pale, in fact, that when she first saw it, Ruby thought that it was white, with a long, floor-length skirt that pouffed outwards in an A-line shape. The neckline fell off the shoulders and was ruffled with white and a deeper shade of blue, the colour of Ciel’s eyes. That same shade was visible in the sash that was tied around the waist into what looked from the front to be a bow at the back. A cape of so fine a weave that it was practically transparent fell down the back of the dress, fastened to the shoulders by a pair of sparkling white gemstones. </p><p>“Plus, I will be wearing gloves,” Ciel said.</p><p>Ruby looked up from the picture. “Gloves?” she repeated. “Like opera gloves? Really?”</p><p>“Actually, they’re below-elbow length, but why not?” Ciel asked. “Pyrrha wears them all the time.”</p><p>“Pyrrha wears them to fight,” Ruby countered.</p><p>“Some might say that is stranger than wearing them to dance,” Ciel pointed out.</p><p>“All the same, I don’t know if anyone else is planning to wear gloves,” Ruby said.</p><p>“A lady is never embarrassed by being too well-dressed,” Ciel declared.</p><p>Ruby’s eyes narrowed. “Are you sure about that?”</p><p>“I will have the chance to find out first-hand, apparently,” Ciel said.</p><p>Ruby snorted. “It <em>is</em> a pretty nice dress,” she admitted. It might look a little old-fashioned, but she wore a cape almost every day, so who was she to talk? </p><p>“I am aware that it would look rather modest at a true high society gathering,” Ciel continued, taking back her scroll from Ruby’s unprotesting hands, “but this is not a high society gathering.”</p><p>“What happened to a lady never being embarrassed by being too well-dressed?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“At a certain point,” Ciel allowed, “wearing a ballgown becomes counterproductive if everyone around you considers it too odd to ask you to dance.”</p><p>“Makes sense,” Ruby said. “Do you already have your partner lined up, too?”</p><p>“No,” Ciel said. “In fact, I was… ahem, hoping that I might pick your brains about that.” She hesitated for a moment. “How well do you know Dove Bronzewing?”</p><p>“Dove?” Ruby repeated. “You want to ask Dove to the dance?”</p><p>“Ideally, he would ask me,” Ciel replied. “But, yes, if need be, I am prepared to make the first move. It is the current year, after all, as they say.”</p><p> “I…” Ruby hesitated. The truth was that, despite having eaten lunch opposite him nearly every day for several months, she couldn’t really say that she knew Dove that well. He’d been nice to her, he’d given her his copy of <em>The Song of Olivia</em> to make up for something that he almost certainly hadn’t actually done, and he’d done that in order to protect Lyra and Bon Bon; she knew that he spent time with Lyra, training her, a bit like Pyrrha spent time training Jaune. That made Ruby wonder if perhaps he felt about Lyra the same way that Pyrrha felt about Jaune… but then, Sunset seemed to think that Lyra wouldn’t be interested in Dove, and she’d known Lyra since Combat School, which meant that there was still a chance for Ciel if she was interested. Overall, Ruby thought that Dove was a nice, decent guy, and Yang could have done a lot worse as far as a partner was concerned… but she didn’t really <em>know</em> him. They hadn’t had a single deep conversation that Ruby could remember. </p><p>Or even a single conversation. </p><p>He was… a little bit uptight, but then, the same thing could be said about Ciel, so that wouldn’t be a problem. </p><p>“I think you could do worse,” Ruby said, “but I don’t really know him well enough to help you.”</p><p>“That is a pity,” Ciel said. “He seems gallant and courteous, but I confess I was hoping that you might have some deeper insights.”</p><p>“Sorry.”</p><p>“Is there anyone that you’d like to ask to the dance, Ruby?” Penny asked eagerly.</p><p>“Uh, no, Penny, no, there isn’t,” Ruby said, a slightly wistful tone entering her voice as she imagined what might have been. “You?”</p><p>For a moment, Penny looked as though she wanted to say something, but then she shook her head very rapidly and quite emphatically, keeping her mouth closed and saying nothing. </p><p>“That’s okay,” Ruby told her. “There’s still plenty of time left anyway, for both of us. So, what kind of dress would you like?”</p><p>Penny hesitated. “I… I don’t know,” she admitted. “Isn’t that for you to decide?”</p><p>“It’s your dress, Penny,” Ruby reminded her. “You have to like it enough to wear it.”</p><p>“I’ll be glad of anything you give me, Ruby.”</p><p>“Don’t say that; it sounds like I’m going to give you a sack or something!” Ruby cried. “I’m actually pretty good at this. Do you know I made this outfit myself?”</p><p>Penny gasped. “Really?”</p><p>“Yeah, that’s why Rarity said I should think about going into fashion,” Ruby informed her. “Do you have any idea of what you might like?”</p><p>“None at all!” Penny said, with more enthusiasm that was called for. </p><p>“After the movie, we could go take a look at some dresses,” Ciel suggested. “To give you an idea of what you might like.”</p><p>“Really?” Penny asked. “That sounds wonderful!”</p><p>“Yes, it really does,” Ruby agreed. “Great idea, Ciel.”</p><p>“This day,” Penny said, “is going to be-”</p><p>“So much fun!” she and Ruby said in unison. </p><p>Their laughter rang out in the airship as it carried them to Vale.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0030"><h2>30. Under the Shade of the Trees</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Jaune has a talk with Pyrrha before running into an old friend</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Under the Shade of the Trees</p><p> </p><p>Jaune sat under one of the trees that grew just beyond the main courtyard, down the path that led towards the docking pads, and strummed lightly upon his guitar. The trees were broad-leaved, and at this time, with summer approaching and the days getting longer, they were engulfed with green which offered shade from the sun. And so he sat, his back resting upon the uneven bark of the tree trunk, and rested his guitar upon his knees as he plucked lightly at the strings. </p><p>A slight frown creased his brow. He didn’t really hear the sounds that he was producing with the instrument; his fingers were moving on instinct. He wasn’t playing anything; he was just making noise. </p><p>Making noise while his thoughts whirled. </p><p>“Jaune?”</p><p>Jaune’s fingers stopped moving, the soft strumming sounds of his guitar quietening as he looked up to see that Pyrrha had stolen up on him without him knowing… or perhaps he had simply been so lost in thought that he hadn’t heard her approach, though she moved with all the volume of an Atlesian regiment on the march. Either way, she stood over him now, her shadow joining the shadows of the leaves in falling upon him. She stood just beyond the shade of the tree, so that the sunlight gleamed upon her gilded armour, while her red sash and ponytail almost as red both waved slightly in the gentle breeze. </p><p>“Pyrrha,” Jaune murmured. “Hey.”</p><p>“Hey,” Pyrrha replied, a slight and slightly concerned smile upon her face. “May I join you?”</p><p>“Sure,” Jaune said. “Of course.”</p><p>“You don’t have to say that,” Pyrrha assured him “If you’d rather be alone, then I can go-”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Jaune replied. “I’d love to have you here.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Pyrrha said, her voice barely audible as she sat down beside him, tucking her sash beneath her as a kind of blanket for her skirt. The distance between them was small, but at the same time, it seemed to be much greater. What he had done, the fact that Pyrrha couldn’t help him with it, it was like it had put up a pane of glass between the two of them, so that they could hear one another, see each other, but not touch each other in any way. </p><p>And not speak to one another either, judging by the silence that stretched out between the two of them. </p><p>“You play very well,” Pyrrha said, after a short time had passed without anything passing between them.</p><p>Jaune looked away from her. “I wasn’t really playing,” he said.</p><p>“I know,” Pyrrha murmured. “But on the train… you play very well.”</p><p>“Thanks.”</p><p>“When did you learn how to play? Back home?”</p><p>Jaune nodded. “My sister Kendal taught me.” Thinking about Kendal made him feel guilty, although not as guilty as thinking about some of his other sisters would have done; Kendal hadn’t been home when he left, so it didn’t feel as though he’d snuck out on her the way that he’d snuck out on the rest of the family; the difference might be kind of thin, but it mattered to him, if only because it lessened the weight just a little tiny bit. “We didn’t have a TV at home, so we had to make our own entertainment.”</p><p>“Really?” Pyrrha asked, surprise evident in her voice.</p><p>“Really,” Jaune replied. “How do you think I manage to make it so far without knowing about aura, or the Vytal Festival, or… anything?”</p><p>“I suppose I hadn’t really thought about it,” Pyrrha said softly. “May I ask why?”</p><p>“I don’t know if I could say; we just didn’t, and I don’t know anyone who did,” Jaune explained. “The bookstore was the only real contact we had with the wider world; well, that and the rail line and that was mainly for loading produce on to sell to Vale. I guess I really was a hayseed with no clue what the rest of the world was like.”</p><p>Pyrrha didn’t reply to that. He didn’t blame her. He wasn’t sure what she could have said. He wasn’t sure why he’d said it like that. What did he want her to say? Did he want her to say anything? Why had he said that he’d like her to sit with him if he was just going to leave her speechless?</p><p>He wanted her here; he didn’t want Pyrrha to go. But he didn’t know what he ought to say to her. He didn’t know how to break the glass between them. </p><p>Pyrrha reached out for him, but stopped short of laying a hand upon his shoulder. Rather, she drew back her hand again and, with both hands, gripped the scarlet sash around her waist. She looked down at her hands, and then away towards the docking pad. “How… how are you?”</p><p>“I’m okay,” Jaune said reflexively, drawing a look from Pyrrha. “Okay, that’s not really accurate,” he conceded. “But I… I went to see Professor Goodwitch yesterday.”</p><p>“Oh,” Pyrrha said, her voice so soft, he couldn’t really tell what she thought about it. “I… I’m glad,” she whispered. “I wasn’t sure you would.”</p><p>“Rainbow Dash convinced me that I couldn’t be… macho about it,” Jaune said. “That I needed to do what was best for me, instead of worrying about how it looked.”</p><p>“I see,” Pyrrha sighed. “Rainbow Dash.” She fell silent for a moment. “I’m sorry, Jaune.”</p><p>Jaune blinked in surprise. “You’re sorry? For what?”</p><p>“I don’t know!” Pyrrha confessed, her voice rising. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do or what I’m doing wrong. I just know that I’m your girlfriend, and I love you, but I can’t help you! Sunset can see what it is you need, Blake can reach you after what happened to you, Rainbow Dash can make you see that you need help, but I can’t help you at all, and I don’t know why except that I… I must be a terrible girlfriend, a terrible friend. I’m sorry.”</p><p>Jaune stared at her, his blue eyes wide. “Pyrrha… that’s not your fault.”</p><p>“It certainly isn’t your fault!” Pyrrha declared. “You’ve been in such pain, and I haven’t been able to do a thing about it!”</p><p>“I know,” Jaune said, using a gentle tone to try and assuage some of the bluntness of his words. “But that still doesn’t make it your fault. You’re a great friend, and there’s nobody that I’d rather try the boyfriend-girlfriend thing with than you, even if we haven’t really gotten the chance to try it yet. And I think… I think that might be why you can’t help me with this.”</p><p>Pyrrha looked up at him, confusion in her beautiful emerald eyes. “I… don’t understand.”</p><p>“Blake and I aren’t friends, not really,” Jaune explained. “We hang around sometimes, but I don’t really know her, and she doesn’t know me either. The same goes for Rainbow Dash; I know her, and she’s okay, but we’re not close. And so they can talk to me the way that you can’t, or even Ruby. Rainbow can talk to me in ways that she could never talk to Twilight because she’s too close to her, the way that you and I are. If you want to know why you couldn’t reach me but they could, I think that’s the best answer as to why: because they don’t know me like you do. Because… because they don’t care about my feelings the way you do.”</p><p>Pyrrha was quiet for a moment. “Are you… are you saying that I’m… too nice to you?”</p><p>“I’m saying… I’m saying that you always want to take care of me,” Jaune said. “But sometimes, you can’t help someone by taking care of them, if that makes any sense.”</p><p>“I’ve tried not to smother you,” Pyrrha protested. “To let you fight your own battles, when I thought that you could… that doesn’t sound very good, does it?”</p><p>“I know what you mean,” Jaune assured her.</p><p>“You can’t expect me to simply stand by when I think – when I know – that it’s a fight you can’t win,” Pyrrha told him. “You can’t expect me not to go to your aid. You can’t expect me to watch you die or be hurt in the name of letting you try your strength.”</p><p>“I’m not saying that.”</p><p>“Then, please… I’m afraid you’ll have to explain to me what you are saying, because I don’t understand,” Pyrrha implored. “I care about you; is that a bad thing?”</p><p>“Of course not,” Jaune said. “I care about you too, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”</p><p>“Then what are you saying?” Pyrrha asked.</p><p>Jaune stared into her vivid green eyes. “I’m saying… I’m saying that you don’t have to feel as though you can help me with all of my problems,” he told her. “Sometimes, other people can help me more than you can, and it doesn’t make you a bad girlfriend… any more than it makes me a bad boyfriend that Sunset can help you with your problems more than I can. At least, I hope it doesn’t.”</p><p>Pyrrha’s brow furrowed beneath her circlet. “You think Sunset helps me with my problems more than you do?”</p><p>“I mean, she seems to get your mother more than I do.”</p><p>“That’s true,” Pyrrha muttered. “But that means that she takes my mother’s side more than I perhaps might like. Sunset… Sunset gets my mother, but you get me.”</p><p>The corner of Jaune’s lip twitched upwards. “I try my best.”</p><p>“Your best is very good,” Pyrrha told him. She smiled, but only briefly before it faded from her face. “I’m still sorry that I haven’t been able to help you when you needed help.”</p><p>“It hasn’t happened to you,”</p><p>“Yet,” Pyrrha said, softly and with a hint of melancholy in her voice. </p><p>Jaune was silent for a moment. “You think it will.”</p><p>“I hadn’t really thought about it,” Pyrrha admitted. “But now… it happened to you; what are the odds that it won’t happen to the rest of us? It seems that fighting enemies besides the grimm lies in our future.”</p><p>“I hope it doesn’t,” Jaune said. “Happen to you, I mean. Or Ruby. God, I hope it doesn’t happen to Ruby.”</p><p>“A part of me… I think that Ruby might bear it the best of all of us,” Pyrrha said. “She has… beneath her sweetness and her kind heart, there is a core of steel within her soul; I can practically feel it through my semblance. She is committed to the ideals of a true huntress, and woe betide any villain who would stand against them.”</p><p>“I know,” Jaune said, sighing. “I… I feel the same way. But that still doesn’t mean that I have to want it to happen to her.”</p><p>“Nor I,” Pyrrha agreed. “And yet… it seems more inevitable now than it did before we set out on our most recent mission.” She fell silent for a moment or two. “Are you going to see Professor Goodwitch again?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Jaune replied at once. “One session… she told me that we were only just getting started. I’m going to see her tomorrow, and then… however often she thinks I need.”</p><p>“I see,” Pyrrha said. “I’m glad.” She pursed her lips together. “I know that I don’t understand what you’re going through, and I know that I perhaps can’t say things to you that someone more detached might be able to, but… please don’t forget that you can tell me anything you wish.”</p><p>“I won’t,” Jaune promised. He leaned down and kissed her gently on the forehead, making her giggle just a little. “I’m-”</p><p>“Don’t,” Pyrrha said quickly, cutting him off before he could finish. “You don’t need to apologise, not for what you’re going through.”</p><p>“Maybe not,” Jaune admitted. He plucked idly at a string on his guitar. “No,” he said, more firmly this time, as he plucked a couple more strings. “But that doesn’t mean that I have to let it own me, let it be the be all and end all of me. If I’m going to stay here, then… then I have to live with it, and not just by going to see Professor Goodwitch but by living.” He stood up, stepping out into the light of the sun as he turned to face Pyrrha, holding out his hand to her. “Come with me,” he said.</p><p>“Jaune?”</p><p>“I mean, we talked about going on a date when we got back from the mission, right?”</p><p>“Yes, but-”</p><p>“So, let’s go!” Jaune cried. “I mean… if you still want to.”</p><p>Pyrrha’s eyes – her whole face – was illuminated by her radiant smile as she extended one gloved hand to him, placing her fingers into the palm of his hand and letting his grip enfold them as she got to her feet. “I would love to,” she declared. </p><p>Jaune let out a sigh of relief. “Then that… that’s <em>partly</em> settled, because I have no idea where we’re actually going.”</p><p>Pyrrha covered her mouth up with her free hand as she giggled. “I’m sure we’ll manage to think of something once we get to Vale… I hope we will, anyway, and if we don’t, then perhaps we can have a… a sightseeing date?”</p><p>“You mean where we wander round all the streets waiting to make up our minds but never actually do?” Jaune asked.</p><p>“Yes, that’s exactly what I meant,” Pyrrha admitted, another titter of laughter escaping her lips. “I mean, we <em>are</em> going to Vale, aren’t we?”</p><p>“Well, a part of me thought about a beach in Vacuo for our first date, but Vale is probably a safer choice,” Jaune said, and was glad to see that the abysmal joke had landed. He started to head towards the docking pads before he remembered that he was still holding his guitar in his other hand. “I should probably put this back in our room first.”</p><p>“You could take it with you,” Pyrrha suggested.</p><p>“I think that might disqualify us from going into a lot of places,” Jaune replied. “Unless you want our first date to be you watching me try and busk on some street corner.”</p><p>The smile on Pyrrha’s face suggested that she found the idea at least somewhat intriguing. “You do play very well.”</p><p>“Thanks, but I don’t know how romantic singing for spare lien is,” Jaune said. He paused for a moment. “Unless this is a very subtle way of saying that you need the money, in which case, I can probably come up with a better idea than-”</p><p>“No, I don’t need the money,” Pyrrha said, as together – hand in hand – they began to walk back down the path towards the courtyard and the school beyond. “Although… it sometimes occurs to me that perhaps I should.”</p><p>Jaune frowned at that. “You think that you should need money? As in… you should have more expensive tastes?”</p><p>“My tastes are probably expensive enough,” Pyrrha said with a shake of her head. “If you look at the shampoo I use compared to Sunset’s… I confess that I’ve become used to having access to the very best.”</p><p>“It makes sense,” Jaune said. “Sunset’s not using cheap shampoo because she’s humble; if she could afford the luxury brands, I bet she’d buy them.”</p><p>“I’m sure,” Pyrrha said softly. “It’s just that, well… how can I… I stormed out of the house because I wasn’t prepared to tolerate my mother’s… influence, so isn’t it hypocrisy to keep on spending her money?”</p><p>Jaune was quiet for a moment. “Isn’t it your family money?”</p><p>“And my mother is the head of the family, so that strikes me as a rather fine distinction.”</p><p>“What I mean is, your mother didn’t <em>earn</em> that money,” Jaune said. “She got it from… where does the money come from?”</p><p>“Our income comes from land, chiefly,” Pyrrha said. “Though there are also stocks and shares and an interest in some mines – metal, not dust – in the east of Anima.”</p><p>“So she just sat behind a desk and let the money roll in.”</p><p>“My mother does manage the portfolio.”</p><p>“Okay, but it’s still your family’s land,” Jaune said. “You’re not taking from your mother; you're spending money that is as much yours as it is hers. And what about your tournaments, did you make any money from winning?”</p><p>“There were cash prizes,” Pyrrha said. “As well as sponsorships and the like.”</p><p>“And where did that money go?”</p><p>“Into… into the family accounts,” Pyrrha replied.</p><p>“You see? It’s your money you're spending, and you’re not taking it from anyone else,” Jaune declared. “And besides, what good would it do if you did just decide to stop spending the money? Suppose that Miló needed to have some work done and you couldn’t afford it any more? Suppose that it broke? You could get… you could get into serious trouble in the field, and in spite of everything that’s going on between you and your mom, I can’t believe she’d want that. <em>I</em> don’t want that, not so you can prove a point.” It wasn’t even as if she could get a job to make ends meet, because Beacon forbade its students to work part-time – or any time – jobs when school was in session. It was in the rules right above ‘don’t fake your transcripts.’</p><p>“You sound like Sunset,” Pyrrha said. “She wants me to keep taking the money, too.”</p><p>“Sunset is pretty smart.”</p><p>“But sometimes rather self-interested.”</p><p>“If caring about you is self-interested, then call me selfish,” Jaune said. “Your mother hasn’t tried to cut you off, has she?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“And she could if she wanted to, couldn’t she?”</p><p>“Yes, but-”</p><p>“Then she doesn’t care, so why should you?”</p><p>“Because I… I’d like her to understand that I’m serious about this,” Pyrrha explained. “That I’m serious about you.”</p><p>Jaune squeezed her hand reassuringly. “It doesn’t matter if she understands that yet; we’ll make her understand, together. We’ll make her see that we’re…”</p><p>Pyrrha waited for him to finish, only beginning to look a little puzzled when he did not. “Jaune? Is everything alright?”</p><p>“Did… did you say that you love me? Back there, under the tree.”</p><p>Pyrrha stared at him, and as she stared, her face began to grow red. “I… I, um, I, uh… that is to say, I… it’s a bit too soon to say things like that, isn’t it?”</p><p>Jaune hesitated. “Maybe a little bit.”</p><p>“I’m sorry!” Pyrrha cried, cringing apologetically, turning her face away from him. “I don’t suppose there’s any way that you could forget about that.”</p><p>“I’m not sure,” Jaune admitted, “but I could pretend that I have, if that would make you feel better.”</p><p>“I’m not certain it would, if only because I wouldn’t believe you,” Pyrrha lamented in a panic. “But… it would be very kind if you could try.”</p><p>“Then… what were we talking about just now?” Jaune asked.</p><p>Pyrrha’s face remained as red as the sash around her waist, but she was able to muster the traces of a smile. “Thank you,” she breathed, albeit she sounded a little wistful as she said it. Was that the right word? Like, sad, but not sad, exactly, not melancholy, but… 'wistful' had to be the right word, if only because he didn’t know another word to describe it.</p><p>Was it because he hadn’t said that he loved her? But, well, they hadn’t even gone out on a date yet; how was he supposed to know that he loved her? How did she know that she loved him? <em>Did </em>she love him, or had she simply misspoken? </p><p>
  <em>How can she possibly be in love with me? I mean, I’m not in love with her. She’s beautiful, she’s kind, she’s the person I trust most in all of Remnant, but I’m not…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Or am I?</em>
</p><p>He tried to imagine himself here with Weiss, about to go on a date once he’d put his guitar away, and… he couldn’t. It would have been his fondest dream when he first came to Beacon, but now, he just couldn’t conceive of it. Pyrrha was the only person he could imagine standing here with. </p><p>
  <em>So… does that mean…?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Why does this have to be so complicated?</em>
</p><p>“So,” Pyrrha said, sounding a little desperate to change the subject. “Have you had any ideas on where we could go for, uh, for our date?”</p><p>“Still not a clue.”</p><p>They still had not a clue by the time the Skybus dropped them off at the skydock, and they stayed clueless through the streets of Vale. Pyrrha didn’t seem to find his lack of ideas to be at all off-putting, and Jaune found that, as they wandered, he became less and less inclined to beat himself up over it. There was something to be said for just walking through the midst of Vale with Pyrrha by his side, hand in hand with the sweetest girl that he had ever met. There was something to be said for the fact that Pyrrha just wanted to be by his side, and he… he just wanted to be by her side too. They didn’t need a grand date, at least not right now; at some point, Jaune knew that he would have to come up with something impressive and romantic and worthy of Pyrrha, but right now… right now, they had one another, and that was enough. </p><p>For now. </p><p>Eventually, though, wandering around became just a little tiring, and Jaune began to look around for somewhere they could sit and talk some more and hopefully get something nice to eat as well. His gaze fell upon an offbeat ice-cream cafe in the middle of the street down which they walked, with a sign shaped like a cow with the letters <span class="u">A &amp; P</span> upon it. Another sign, shaped like a hand with one finger pointing downwards, gestured towards the door. </p><p>“Would you like some ice cream?” Jaune asked, looking towards Pyrrha.</p><p>Pyrrha smiled, making her eyes and indeed her entire face light up in the process. “That sounds lovely,” she said. </p><p>A homeless man, a threadbare blanket draped over his legs and a little mongrel dog lying by his side, sat not far from the cafe window. “Spare some change, please gents?” he called. “Spare any change so I can get a bed for the night?”</p><p>“Here,” Jaune said, stopping for a moment and fishing in his pocket; he pulled out a small-value lien card and dropped it into the man’s outstretched, worn, and weathered hands. “Here you go.”</p><p>“Thank you, sir, and god bless. Have a nice day.”</p><p>They walked past the man and pushed open the door, half glass and half blue-painted wood, to step into the cafe. Cows dominated the far wall, which was painted with a mural of flying cows or cows lying on their backs on clouds, all of which Jaune had to admit he found a little bit weird, but then, this place seemed a little bit obsessed with the source of its product: the boards with the prices of the various offerings written in chalk upon them were also shaped like cows, and the cardboard cartons for the ice cream were white with black stripes, with a cow face on them. Only the wall on their left as they came in – opposite the counter on the right – was not bovine-themed at all, boasting rather a silhouette of Vale’s skyscape painted against a soft, late-afternoon sunglow. </p><p>A set of stairs led down into a basement, where there must have been more tables and chairs, because up here, it was a rather narrow space, with only a single row of tables along the wall on the left and one table at each window. The right-hand side of the store – Jaune and Pyrrha’s right as they came in – was wholly taken up with the counter, with ice cream in a score or more of different varieties sitting in a refrigerator under glass, along with pies and cakes on display. Tea, coffee, and ice cream machines sat on a wooden top against the wall, joined by glass jars filled with various treats and confections. </p><p>And behind the counter worked a startlingly familiar face. </p><p>“Miranda?!” Jaune asked.</p><p>She looked up, and Jaune had no doubt at all that this was indeed Miranda Wells, from back home in Alba Longa. She was not tall, although she wasn’t quite as short as Ruby or Nora either, being about as tall as Penny or Blake; she was slender, with lithe arms and small, pale hands that she had managed to keep small and pale and smooth all through growing up in a farming town. Her hair was brown and pinned up at the back of her head out of the way, while her eyes were a watery blue and currently very wide. </p><p>“Jaune?!” she gasped. “Jaune Arc?”</p><p>“Uh, yeah,” Jaune said. Meeting someone from home – someone from home working behind the counter of an ice cream cafe, no less – it was… it was not what he had expected when he came out into Vale today. He hadn’t expected it… ever, to be honest, although now that he thought about it, if he was going to run into anyone from Alba Longa in Vale, it would be Miranda Wells, the person who had wanted to get away as much as he did. Still, he hadn’t thought that she… that was to say, he hadn’t expected to run into her, and now that he had… he wasn’t quite sure that he wanted to. They’d been friends when they were younger, but as they got older, well…</p><p>
  <em>“I don’t want anything to do with you, Jaune Arc, and no one ever will!”</em>
</p><p>“What,” he said, hoping that Pyrrha didn’t notice the tremble in his voice, “what are you doing here?”</p><p>“What am <em>I</em> doing here?” Miranda repeated. “What are <em>you</em> doing here?”</p><p>“I,” Jaune said, “am a Beacon. I mean I’m at Beacon!” he corrected himself. “I’m a Beacon student. I’m a huntsman in training.”</p><p>Miranda’s eyes grew even wider. “A Beacon… you did it? You really left? You actually left and went to Beacon just like you said you would?” Her mouth formed an O of surprise. “I never thought you’d actually-”</p><p>“Jaune,” Pyrrha said, and whether she had intended to interrupt Miranda before she could finish the sentence ‘I never thought you’d actually do it,’ he found himself grateful for the fact that she had interrupted, “aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”</p><p>“Right, sorry,” Jaune said. “Pyrrha, this is Miranda Wells from back home; Miranda, this is Pyrrha Nikos, my… my girlfriend.” That word came out very badly – he put all the emphasis in all the wrong places so that the word rolled like waves off of his tongue – but all the same, it felt very, very good to say it. </p><p>If Miranda’s eyes had gotten any wider, then she would have had to fish amongst the ice cream for them as she took in Pyrrha in all her statuesque loveliness. “Wow,” she repeated. “I mean… wow. Wow! The fact that you even have a girlfriend, but wow! How did you get so lucky?”</p><p>“Personally,” Pyrrha said, her tone touched by a sudden frost as she wrapped both hands around Jaune’s arm, “I think I’m the lucky one.”</p><p>Miranda stared at them both, falling silent for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was noticeably quieter. “I just came across as a complete bitch, didn’t I?”</p><p>“Somewhat obnoxious, yes,” Pyrrha agreed quietly. </p><p>“Sorry,” Miranda said. “I really am sorry. I just… ever since we were kids and we used to hang out in the bookstore together, Jaune would always talk about how he was going to get out of that little village and go to Beacon and become a hero, and I just… I guess I never thought you really would. I didn’t think you had it in you to defy your parents and your sisters like that. But clearly, I shouldn’t have doubted you, because you did just that. Congratulations! Congratulations, and I’m sorry for what I said. For all of the things that I said.” Her eyes narrowed. “Now, did you really not know that I was here, or did you deliberately come so you could rub your super hot girlfriend in my face?”</p><p>“I had no idea you were here,” Jaune assured her. “And I would never do that to you,” he assured Pyrrha.</p><p>Pyrrha chuckled. “Jaune, I know that; you don’t need to say it.”</p><p>“But what about you?” Jaune asked Miranda. “What are you doing here? I mean, you’re working here, but-”</p><p>“I work here to help with my expenses, since I’m not getting any money from home,” Miranda replied. “I’m studying Literature at King’s College.”</p><p>“Good for you!” Jaune said. “You always loved books.”</p><p>“And you always wanted to be a hero,” Miranda said. “It seems like both our dreams are coming true.”</p><p>“Well… maybe,” Jaune murmured.</p><p>Miranda frowned but didn’t press the subject; instead, she turned to Pyrrha. “So, Pyrrha, are you a Beacon student too? I mean, the outfit says yes, but I feel as though I’ve made enough assumptions today.”</p><p>“I am, yes,” Pyrrha said. “Jaune and I are partners in battle as well as… well, you know.”</p><p>Miranda chuckled. “Right,” she said. “You know, I feel as though I’ve seen you somewhere before.”</p><p><em>Pumpkin Pete’s</em>, Jaune thought but didn’t say because he didn’t want to embarrass Pyrrha by bringing it up.</p><p>Even without him saying anything, Pyrrha’s cheeks began to redden a little. “I, uh, perhaps I just have one of those faces?”</p><p>“No,” Miranda said. “No, you really don’t, trust me. I know, it’ll come to me. But in the meantime, I know that we’re not busy right now, and I would love to stay and chat, but there’s always the off-chance my boss might stop by to see how things are, not to mention, I guess, you came in here because you were hungry, so you should probably order something.”</p><p>“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea,” Jaune agreed. “What’s good here?”</p><p>“<em>Everything</em> is good here, Jaune; this is where I work,” Miranda informed him with a smirk. “But, if you want to know what I think is <em>really</em> good, I recommend the milkshakes.”</p><p>“Hmm, I think I’d rather have something hot,” Jaune said.</p><p>“Two hot chocolates with all the trimmings?” Miranda suggested.</p><p>Jaune glanced at Pyrrha. Her lips twitched into a smile. “I can indulge myself just once,” she said.</p><p>“You won’t regret it,” Miranda assured them. “And to eat, why don’t you try the sundaes?”</p><p>“Are you recommending the most expensive items on the menu?” Pyrrha suggested.</p><p>“Jaune doesn’t want to be a cheap date, do you Jaune?” Miranda asked.</p><p>Pyrrha smiled. “I’ll take a slice of the apple pie, with one scoop of strawberry ice cream and one of vanilla.”</p><p>“I’ll take the same, but make my ice cream chocolate,” Jaune said.</p><p>“Coming right up,” Miranda said as she took their lien before turning away and busying herself with their orders. </p><p>All the trimmings on the hot chocolates turned out to be a scoop of vanilla ice cream floating in the cup, slowly melting alongside the marshmallows and the chocolate bomb that Miranda had already put in there, all of it covered under a layer of whipped cream. No wonder Pyrrha had referred to this as a one-off treat; it was the kind of thing that would probably ruin her tournament chances if she had it too often, but at the same time,  it really did look delicious. So did the pie, for that matter, and the slices of ice cream that sat beside it. </p><p>Jaune carried the tray over to the table beside the window; perhaps there were some other patrons down in the basement, but they had the pick of the upstairs all to themselves. </p><p>Pyrrha had a slight smile playing across her face as they sat down. “So,” she said, “that’s the girl you almost married.”</p><p>Jaune laughed nervously. “That’s the girl my parents <em>wanted</em> me to marry,” he corrected her. “I never… she never… we never wanted anything like that.” He took a sip from his hot chocolate, or tried to; mostly, he succeeded in getting whipped cream all around his mouth. “We both had other dreams.”</p><p>Pyrrha nodded. “I hope I didn’t come across as too forward; it’s just that when she started talking about you like that… I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing.”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Jaune assured her.</p><p>“No, it’s not,” Pyrrha replied. “You… deserve better.”</p><p>“She was just surprised to see me, that’s all,” Jaune said. “When we were kids, we were close. Closer than anyone else I knew back home. Like she told you, we used to hang out in the bookstore together; everyone else thought we were kind of weird for spending so much time there, but for us, it was a place where we could escape, where we could spend time in worlds that were different from the place we lived. Better than the place we lived. Places where we could be whatever we wanted to be, and nobody could tell us 'no' or 'you can’t.'</p><p>“We used to talk all the time about how we’d go away, the things that we’d do, the places we’d see. I guess… I guess Miranda stopped believing that I’d ever actually do it.”</p><p>“Then she didn’t actually know you that well,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>Jaune laughed self-deprecatingly. “You didn’t know what I was like back then.”</p><p>“I know what you’ve done,” Pyrrha told him. “Someone… the kind of person who could do those things didn’t come out of nowhere when you arrived at Beacon. He was always there, waiting for the chance to shine. That’s why I…” She hesitated for a moment. “You didn’t answer her, when she said that you were both living your dreams.”</p><p>Jaune took the opportunity to avoid answering for a little bit by eating some of his pie and ice cream. Pyrrha watched him, as though she were taking in his every chew. “My dreams… they didn’t include some of the things that have happened lately.”</p><p>"I'm sorry for that," Pyrrha said, reaching out to place her hand upon his arm.</p><p>"It's fine," Jaune said.</p><p>"Jaune," Pyrrha replied reproachfully, a touch of the mildest offence entering her green eyes at the thought that he thought she would believe that.</p><p>Jaune sighed. "I mean, obviously, it's not <em>fine</em>, but… I suppose I just… you know that I didn't have the most… I was kind of naïve, and you knew that already. I didn't get what being a huntsman would really involve, what it would be like. But it's just kept hitting me, one thing after another, like… this isn't like a comic book, is it?"</p><p>"No," Pyrrha murmured, her voice soft and gentle and filled with regret. "I'm afraid not." She hesitated for a moment, glancing down at her ice cream where it was starting to melt.</p><p>"You should probably eat that," Jaune suggested. "Unless you want to wet your pie with it."</p><p>Pyrrha let out the very mildest of chuckles as she dug her spoon into the pie and placed both pie and ice cream into her mouth. "Mmm!" she exclaimed. "It's very good."</p><p>"It is, isn't it?" Jaune said. "We were lucky to find this place."</p><p>"Absolutely," Pyrrha agreed. Her voice became more solemn again. "Jaune… is this… this is still what you want, isn't it? To be at Beacon, to train to be a huntsman, to be with us. That is what you want?"</p><p>Jaune ate a little more of his ice cream and drank some of his hot chocolate. It was still very hot; it scorched his tongue. He ate some ice cream. He wasn't delaying, exactly, he was just… taking his time. "I'm not going to leave," he said quietly. "I'm not going to leave you."</p><p>Pyrrha's brow crinkled a little beneath her gleaming circlet, but she said nothing, letting him finish.</p><p>"Professor Goodwitch asked me if I wanted to go," he admitted. "She said that not everyone… that some people find they're not cut out for this and that there's no shame in that. And there'd be no shame if I decided that this wasn't for me."</p><p>Pyrrha stared into Jaune's eyes, and yet still, she held her peace, letting him say everything that he had to say.</p><p>"But I… I just keep thinking of that wall at Benni Havens', you know?" Jaune said. "How… how many of the faces up on that wall aren't around anymore? And the thought of that happening to you or Ruby or even Sunset, I just… I know that I'm not as good in a fight as either of you three, and I know it's probably insanely arrogant of me to talk like I could protect you – protect any of you – but if anything happened to you, and I wasn't there, I just… it would eat me up inside until there was nothing left, I just know it."</p><p>"And that's why you're staying?" Pyrrha demanded, her voice laced with an undercurrent of disapproval. "Out of obligation to me, to us?"</p><p>"You don't think it's enough," Jaune murmured.</p><p>"It's not for me to say whether your reasons are enough or not; so long as they're enough for you, then that's all that matters," Pyrrha said, "but I don't want to be the reason why… you say that if something happened to me, but how do you think I would feel if something happened to you, and the only reason you were in danger was because you felt bound to me, and I had pulled you into peril?"</p><p>"I… I guess I hadn't really thought about that," Jaune replied. "When you put it like that… it does seem a little selfish of me."</p><p>"No, it doesn't, especially because it wasn't meant to be," Pyrrha corrected him. "In some ways, it's the most selfless thing in the world, but… I want you to fight with us because you want to fight, not because you feel like it's what you ought to do. And I'm sure that Ruby and… I'm sure that Ruby would say the same. No, that's very unfair to Sunset; she'd say the same too, I'm sure."</p><p>"But aren't you here because you feel like you ought to be?" Jaune asked. "As the heir to the House of Nikos, the pride of Mistral? Aren't you here because it's what you think you should do?"</p><p>Pyrrha stared at him for a moment. "Touché, Mister Arc," she conceded, a little playfulness in her voice. "But not the whole story. It is true that I am born to this, obligated to it by my birth as much as by my skill, but… but that is a lie, and a rather proud lie upon my part at that. The monarchy fell generations ago, the age of heroes vanished long before that, the Mistralian values of which I spoke to you that night in the palace are honoured as much in the breach as in the observance, maybe more so. No one would care if I devoted my whole life entirely to vainglorious tournament fighting; no one would care if I did nothing at all but attend high society functions and live off the inherited wealth of my family and the incomes of our land. In fact, some people would probably prefer it if I did either of those things, particularly the latter; it would lower my public profile quite considerably. The Mistral that would demand my service in exchange for all the privileges of my birth has not existed since the Great War, if it existed then, and though I would see the glory of Mistral renewed… when I speak of these things as the motivations for choosing, it is because I choose to give them claim on me, I choose to live by such ancient ways in this. I choose to offer up my life in the cause of humanity just as I choose to give my heart to you. Were I not bound by tradition only when I wish to be, I would obey my mother as a god and have promised my hand to Turnus Rutulus by now.</p><p>"But I am not. I am with you, and I am here because… because I choose to be. Because I choose to do something that matters. Because I choose to do something that will make a difference to this whole world of Remnant." She smiled and laughed self-deprecatingly. "Now you see why I prefer to speak of obligation than to seem quite so big-headed."</p><p>Jaune grinned. "I can see how it might seem to people who didn't know you so well," he admitted, "but I also know that you only mean it for the good of Remnant and everyone who lives in it. And I get what you're saying, that you've chosen this because it's what you want: for you and no one else."</p><p>"Precisely," Pyrrha said. "So… what is that you want, Jaune?"</p><p>"I want you," he said.</p><p>"And that's delightful to hear," Pyrrha replied, her cheeks reddening just a little, "but you know what I meant."</p><p>Jaune didn't reply. He didn't have an easy answer to give to Pyrrha. What did he want? Not to be a hero, not anymore. That dream seemed childish now, naïve, the dream of someone who hadn't understood what the world outside of Alba Longa – and the life of a huntsman – was really like. But at the same time… wasn't that also Sunset's dream, who was or seemed so much worldlier than he was; what was the difference between her dream and his, except that she couched it in language that was a little more self-absorbed? For that matter, what about Ruby, what was the difference there except that she went the other way and talked about it in a way that made it seem so much more selfless? Ruby talked about saving people, but that was what he had wanted too. So maybe it was okay to want that, so long as he understood what it really meant and entailed and what it might ask of him.</p><p>"Do you remember Professor Goodwitch's speech on the flight over?" he asked.</p><p>"Yes," Pyrrha replied. "Although… I wasn't sure if… Ruby said that-"</p><p>"I didn't start having issues until after she started talking," Jaune informed her. "I heard… well, I heard the bit about an era of peace. Is it me, or is that really weird to think of now? Is it that the world suddenly got more dangerous, or is it that the era of peace was never that peaceful to begin with?"</p><p>"The peace was always upheld by huntsmen and huntresses," Pyrrha murmured, "but I think the days have grown a little darker all the same."</p><p>Jaune nodded. That sounded about right. "I want to help," he said. "Even if I can't do as much as I once thought I could, I want to do whatever I can. Is that enough?"</p><p>Pyrrha nodded, smiling. "I think that's plenty," she said.</p><p>They lapsed into a comfortable, companionable silence while they ate, both paying as much attention to the delicious food in front of them as to each other, if only to finish off the ice cream before it all melted into just liquid on the plate. But as they were finishing eating, with some of their hot chocolate left, Pyrrha suddenly asked him, "Jaune, do you think you could teach me how to cook?"</p><p>Jaune blinked in surprise. "'To cook'? Why?"</p><p>"I'd like to learn."</p><p>"Sure, but why?"</p><p>"Because I think I should be able to do these things for myself if I want to," Pyrrha explained. "And because…" she hesitated, tracing a circle on the table with one finger. "And because I'd like to learn, from you. That is, if you don't mind."</p><p>"Not at all," Jaune declared. "I was just surprised, that's all, but sure." He grinned. "It'll be nice to be able to teach you something for a change."</p><p>Pyrrha covered her mouth with one hand while she laughed.</p><p>"So," Jaune continued. "What do you want to learn?"</p><p>"I'm not sure; where do you think I should start?"</p><p>They discussed the issue as they finished off their hot chocolate and were still talking about it as they got up to leave, but as they headed towards the door, they were interrupted by Miranda calling out, "Pyrrha, can I talk to you for a second?"</p><hr/><p>"Pyrrha, can I talk to you for a second?"</p><p>Pyrrha stopped. Jaune was almost at the door, one hand reaching for the wooden bar attached to the cold metal handle, and he stopped too, half turning back towards the… person he had known from his hometown.</p><p>Pyrrha wasn't yet comfortable referring to her, even in her own head, as Jaune's friend. She still hadn't made up her mind to like Miranda Wells; Jaune might dismiss what she had been about to say, and whatever else she had said to him in the past, but Pyrrha found she would not be quite ready to be so generous. It was no wonder that Jaune's confidence was shot to pieces if that was the kind of attitude that he'd had to put up with from everyone around him growing up. No wonder he found it so hard to believe in himself and his potential. It was a miracle that he had made it to Beacon at all, let alone managed to become such a fine young man. And he <em>was</em> a fine young man, worthy to become a huntsman, with so much to give to Remnant, and if Miranda Wells – or anyone else for that matter – couldn't see it, then she was a fool.</p><p>Nevertheless, in spite of however she might feel about Miss Wells, it wouldn't do for her to make a scene when Jaune had not; she didn't want to embarrass Jaune or for any stories to get back home that he was associating with the wrong kind of people, and so, Pyrrha walked briskly, if a little stiffly, across the café to where Miranda stood behind the counter, not far from the stairs.</p><p>Miranda looked Pyrrha in the eyes for a moment before she said, "You don't like me very much, do you?"</p><p>"I don't know you," Pyrrha replied, which had the virtue of being honest.</p><p>Miranda gave her a knowing smile. "But you do care about Jaune, don't you?"</p><p>"Very much so, yes," Pyrrha informed her.</p><p>"Good," Miranda said. "He needs… he deserves someone who cares about him." She paused. "I was a little worried that you didn't," she admitted. "I thought that this might be some kind of a prank, you know? You would pretend to like him, pretend to go out with him, and then… it all turns out to be a trick, and your friends… beat him up or laugh at him or something."</p><p>Pyrrha's tone chilled noticeably. "I don't know any girl who would be so cruel," she said. "Certainly I would not, and certainly not to Jaune."</p><p>"I know," Miranda said. "As I said, I worried about it, because who knows what you foreign girls might do-"</p><p>"How did you know I wasn't from Vale?" Pyrrha asked.</p><p>"Oh, foreigners can be from Vale too," Miranda explained. "Anyone from outside of home is foreign. So my Pa said, anyway. But the point is, I was worried at first because you're, well, because-"</p><p>"Because you don't think that someone like me would want to go out with Jaune?" Pyrrha asked, her voice becoming colder by the moment. "You're mistaken."</p><p>Miranda managed to smile, if only somewhat. "The fact that you clearly want to do me an injury right now is how I knew that you weren't faking it; you wouldn't get so upset if you didn't care about him."</p><p>"I do care, a great deal," Pyrrha said, verging on snapping. "What is it to you, in any case?"</p><p>"Listen, I'm really sorry about before," Miranda said. "A Literature student should understand the importance of words, and I chose mine badly. It's just… I care about Jaune too, even if it seemed like I didn't. I just… is he okay, up there at that school? My classmates say it's hardcore up there."</p><p>"We are training to become the defenders of humanity against the demons and the dark," Pyrrha declared. "Our training is as rigorous as that heavy duty demands."</p><p>Miranda frowned. "I didn't think he'd make it," she confessed. "And I got tired of hearing him talk about dreams that would never come true."</p><p>"You underestimated him," Pyrrha informed her. "He has more courage than you knew."</p><p>"His courage wasn't the issue," Miranda replied. "It was more… he was always a sweet kid, kind and friendly… even though people were tough on him or mean to him, he never lost that. I suppose I thought that a huntsman would have to be a little less sweet and a little more… macho."</p><p>Pyrrha shook her head. "Personally, I think that a huntsman can do much worse than to be kind and to be driven by kindness to help and protect others."</p><p>Miranda's smile became very knowing. "You really like him, don't you?"</p><p>Pyrrha hesitated for a moment. "I love him," she whispered.</p><p>Miranda's eyebrows rose. "Already?"</p><p>"You don't believe that our whole lives can change in the blink of an eye?"</p><p>"In books, sure, but not in real life," Miranda said. "How is he doing?"</p><p>Pyrrha blinked. "He… our last mission was a little wearing on him."</p><p>"Are you going to help him through it?"</p><p>"If I can," Pyrrha said. "If he'll let me."</p><p>Miranda nodded. "And you believe he can do it?"</p><p>"I do," Pyrrha said. "Without a doubt."</p><p>"You might be the first person who does," Miranda muttered. "He's lucky to have you."</p><p>"I'm lucky to have him."</p><p>"Yeah," Miranda replied. "Yeah, you are." She nodded affably. "I suppose he told you that our folks…"</p><p>"Yes," Pyrrha said softly. "Yes, he mentioned it, in passing. Were you… are you-?"</p><p>"Am I jealous? No," Miranda said quickly. "Do you have to worry about me? Also no. When you spend as much time reading books as I have, you find that real men… are a little disappointing by comparison."</p><p>"Might I suggest that the problem is that you haven't met the right kind of men?" said Pyrrha.</p><p>"Maybe," Miranda conceded. "At the time… I thought Jaune was all talk. I thought that he'd end up spending his whole life back home like everyone wanted him to, and on top of all that, I didn't even think he'd be very good at it, so he'd be a doubly terrible choice. But having moved out to the big city, I've come to realise that he…" She trailed off, saying instead, "Take care of him, okay?"</p><p>Pyrrha glanced at Jaune, waiting patiently for her to finish, before she returned her attention to Miranda. "We take care of each other."</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0031"><h2>31. The Climb</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Blake is offered a choice.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Climb</p><p> </p><p>“Sunset!” Skystar waved one hand in the air as she approached down the street, her heels clicking on the paving stones. “Sunset!” she cried again, a bright smile upon her face as she drew near. “Fancy running into you here!”</p><p>“It’s a smaller city than it seems, I suppose,” Sunset replied.</p><p>Skystar laughed more than the comment warranted. “I’m so glad to run into you here; it means that I get to give you this myself.” She held out a flier from a box of fliers tucked under her arm. </p><p>Sunset glanced over Skystar’s shoulder; she could see that the street was filled with people handing out such fliers to anyone who was passing in the street, or at least trying to; not everyone took one, but most people did, and most even glanced at them before stuffing them into their pockets or bags. </p><p>Sunset did likewise, taking the flier out of Skystar’s hand and looking down to see what it said. “Shakstspur in the Park?”</p><p>Skystar nodded eagerly. “The Vytal Festival is a celebration of culture, and since Vale is hosting, I thought, well, what could be better than celebrating the greatest writer in Valish history? So we’re reviving the Second Richardiad right here in Winchester Park, the way they used to do theatre in the old days. You should come! You should bring your team! I’ve sat in on a couple of the rehearsals, and while I don’t understand all of the language, some of it is hilarious, and other times, it’s-” Skystar’s words abruptly stopped tumbling out of her mouth as she caught sight of Blake, standing at the back of the quartet of young huntresses – and Twilight – just visible between Rainbow and Twilight who were, in turn, standing just a little behind Sunset. </p><p>The smile faded from Skystar’s face, replaced by a look that was very like fear. No, there was no ‘very like’ about it; she <em>was</em> afraid. </p><p>And it didn’t take a genius to work out what she was afraid of. </p><p>“So, um,” Skystar stammered. “I, um, I should go. Have a nice day.” She turned on her high heels and began to walk away as fast as they would carry her – she wasn’t as nimble in them as Pyrrha, to say the least. </p><p>Blake sighed and half-turned away from the others, clutching at the metal band around her left arm with her right hand as her head bowed towards the ground. </p><p>Sunset exhaled from out between her teeth. “Skystar, wait!” she called out, running after the First Councillor’s daughter. She supposed that it didn’t really matter whether or not Skystar Aris held any ill will towards Blake or not, but it stuck in her craw that Skystar should consider Cardin Winchester to be a paragon of morality and the epitome of all that a huntsman should be while regarding Blake as some sort of depraved and dangerous criminal. It might not be strictly speaking backwards, but it was wrong, wrong enough that she was going to get an itch on the scars on her palm unless she did something about it. </p><p>The flier crumpled in Sunset’s hand as she dashed down the street. </p><p>Thankfully, as unsteadily as Skystar was moving, it didn’t take Sunset long to catch up with her. “Skystar!” she repeated. </p><p>Skystar’s lip trembled with uncertainty, and although she seemed to be trying her best to ignore Sunset as the latter jogged by her side, she couldn’t help but keep glancing Sunset’s way. </p><p>Sunset quickened her pace, getting out in front of Skystar and planting herself squarely in the path of the Amity Princess. Skystar stopped, a squeaking sound passing between her lips, as she clutched at her box of fliers as though they would protect her. </p><p>She was wearing seashell bracelets on her wrists, Sunset noted idly and somewhat absurdly in the circumstances; it didn’t matter, but it was weird. Couldn’t the First Councillor’s daughter afford real jewels?</p><p>Couldn’t her boyfriend afford some real jewels?</p><p>“Skystar,” she said, for the third or fourth time. “Blake isn’t an enemy, and she isn’t dangerous. “She’s-”</p><p>“I know what she is,” Skystar said quickly. “My mother told me… the truth, not what they told the news. She told me what she really is. She told me to stay away from her.”</p><p>Sunset sighed. “Of course she did,” she murmured. “Your mother,” she added, maintaining a calm tone of voice through some little effort of will, “is just trying to keep you safe, but Blake doesn’t deserve to be treated like a pariah.”</p><p>“But she… she’s-"</p><p>“A brave and devoted huntress,” Sunset finished, “who has done more than anyone else to keep Vale safe from the White Fang.”</p><p>Skystar stared at her warily. “Mother says she’s dangerous.”</p><p>“What’s your mother doing to protect Vale?” Sunset snapped. “Beyond inviting an Atlesian fleet to do the job that she can’t? Blake has just done more to protect Vale than all the cops in this town, which isn’t that surprising, because most of them are on the take!” <em>That reminds me, I should check if Blake has told anybody about that.</em> In the immediate aftermath of the fight with Adam – in the aftermath of seeing that brand upon his face – the words that had passed between Adam and Torchwick had been driven out of her mind by other, seemingly more important concerns, but her anger at Skystar’s attitude had recalled them to the forefront of her mind. </p><p>
  <em>If Blake hasn’t done it already, we really need to let… somebody know what Torchwick said about that. </em>
</p><p>“That… that was her?” Skystar asked. “Is she the one who caught Torchwick?”</p><p>“<em>We </em>caught Torchwick,” Sunset corrected her. “But Blake was there.”</p><p>Skystar blinked. “The news last night didn’t mention that.”</p><p>“No, I’ll bet they didn’t,” Sunset replied.</p><p>“But why would a terrorist-”</p><p>“She’s not a terrorist,” Sunset insisted. “She… she was, I’ll admit, and so would she; but she’s not one any more. She’s not that person anymore. She’s not perfect, believe me, but she’s not someone that you should be afraid of.” She ventured a smile. “Not unless she asks you for a favour, then get ready to be plunged into a <em>world</em> of trouble.”</p><p>“Then why does Mother think she’s dangerous?” Skystar demanded. “Why does Cardy say that she shouldn’t be allowed at Beacon?”</p><p>“Really?” Sunset replied. “Cardy says that? Does Cardy say that he’s done anything about that?” <em>Maybe I won’t need Cinder’s help to find out who graffitied our door after all.</em></p><p>“What do you mean?”</p><p>“I mean… don’t worry about it,” Sunset said, because getting into the issue of what sort of man Cardin Winchester really was would distract from the real issue. “The point is that Blake… Blake isn’t perfect, but she is worth far more than those who hiss at her the loudest.”</p><p>“Then why…?” Skystar hesitated. “I don’t know.”</p><p>Sunset snorted and stepped out of the way. “All I ask,” she said, “is that when your plays go off without a hitch, and everything else, you ask yourself who is responsible for that. I guarantee that Blake will be amongst them.” <em>She won’t let herself not be involved.</em></p><p>Skystar stood still, and for a moment, Sunset thought that she might say something, but she didn’t; she hastened away, glancing at Sunset and looking over her shoulder as she went, but going all the same. </p><p>Sunset watched her go, her back to the others as they joined her. </p><p>“How did that go?” Twilight asked. </p><p>Sunset shrugged. “Who can say, really?”</p><p>“You didn’t have to do that,” Blake murmured. “It doesn’t really matter what she thinks of me.”</p><p>“Yes,” Sunset declared, rounding on her. “It does.”</p><p>Blake didn’t meet Sunset’s eyes. “I don’t do this for recognition,” she said. “Or for the good opinions of those I protect.”</p><p>“But you do protect them,” Rainbow said, a touch of sharpness in her voice. “So they should appreciate you for it.”</p><p>Blake managed to raise a slight smirk upon her face. “'I turned up at the theatre, as sober as can be,'” she murmured. “'They found a drunk civilian room, but not a seat for me.'”</p><p>“'I next went to a public house, to get a pint of beer,'” Twilight said. “'The barman looked at me and said, "We serve no soldiers here."'” She paused. “I’m a little surprised you know Bramley, given the… the, um-”</p><p>“The fact that he was egregiously racist?” Blake suggested.</p><p>Twilight winced. “In the context of his time-”</p><p>“He was still a racist,” Blake insisted. “And treating the people of the past like they were an indivisible mass of bigotry does a disservice to those who fought against prejudice and oppression.”</p><p>“Yeah, well, you’d know all about judging people as one big blob, wouldn’t you?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>Blake’s cheeks reddened a little with embarrassment, and she did not reply; what could she have said, even if she had wished to reply?</p><p>“Anyway,” Rainbow went on, folding her arms across her chest, “are you two going to stand there making me feel stupid because I don’t read as many books as you, or are you going to explain?”</p><p>“It’s a poem,” Sunset answered. “Part of one, at last; an old Atlesian-”</p><p>“Mantle,” Twilight corrected. “Bramley was writing not long after the Great War, before Atlas had supplanted Mantle as the heart of the kingdom.”</p><p>“That particular poem is about soldiers,” Blake said, “and the treatment shown to them back home. The ill-treatment. Or are you going to tell me that Atlas has moved on since then?”</p><p>“Yes,” Rainbow said at once. Then she hesitated, squirming for a moment. “Well, some of the time. Mantle… yeah, okay, I can see that happening in Mantle today because Mantle sucks.”</p><p>“That’s a bit of a sweeping generalisation, don’t you think?” Twilight asked.</p><p>“Can you think of someone getting thrown out of a bar for being in uniform anywhere <em>but</em> Mantle?” Rainbow replied.</p><p>“Well…” Twilight trailed off, at least for a few seconds. “I think it varies across the kingdom, really. Mantle… a lot of people resent the military because they resent Atlas and the way that Mantle has declined, as they see it, under Atlesian rule. On the other hand, you’ve got Canterlot, which is very heavily associated with the Combat School, and Crystal City, where the R&amp;D test beds are, and I think in both places, you’d find soldiers are pretty popular.”</p><p>“And in Atlas?” Blake asked.</p><p>“In Atlas, everyone knows someone in the service or knows someone who does,” Rainbow declared. “In Atlas, they know who keeps them safe. People round here should do the same.”</p><p>“It’s not like I’m wearing a Defence Force uniform,” Blake murmured.</p><p>“No, you’ve actually accomplished something,” Sunset pointed.</p><p>“Sunset!” Twilight squawked reproachfully.</p><p>“What?” Sunset cried. “We’ve accomplished more than the cops or the soldiers.”</p><p>“Than the Valish soldiers,” Rainbow corrected.</p><p>“Whatever,” Sunset said dismissively. “The point is that Blake deserves a little respect. We all deserve some respect.”</p><p>Rainbow nodded. “No argument here.”</p><p>“Well, this isn’t Atlas,” Blake replied. “It’s not the idealised Atlas that exists in your heads-”</p><p>“I don’t have an idealised version of Atlas in my head.” Sunset protested.</p><p>“Then you’re the only one here who doesn’t,” Blake said quickly. “This isn’t even the real Atlas. This is Vale, and I’m-”</p><p>“An Atlesian soldier,” Rainbow finished for her.</p><p>Blake raised one eyebrow. “That’s not exactly how I would describe my position.”</p><p>“Oh, come on!” Rainbow said. “Haven’t you had fun working with us?”</p><p>“I’m not sure ‘fun’ is quite the word I’d use,” Blake said softly.</p><p>“Then what would you call it?”</p><p>Blake was silent for a moment. “Twilight, where are we going? There’s no point us just standing here all day.”</p><p>“Right,” Twilight said, a touch of nervous laughter in her voice. “Now, um, where is it? Um.” She got out her scroll, her fingers fumbling just a little bit as she opened the device, bringing up a map of Vale. She typed a name into the search bar on the top right-hand corner. “Ah! Here we are!” she cried, as a point on the map became marked with a red dot. “Bibliophiles’ Paradise.”</p><p>“Not exactly a humble name,” Sunset observed.</p><p>A sigh fell from Blake’s lips. “These booksellers just can’t help themselves, I suppose. They have to make grandiose claims for themselves.”</p><p>Sunset’s brow furrowed. “You’re thinking about Tukson?”</p><p>Blake nodded solemnly. “I haven’t been to see him.”</p><p>“You’ve been pretty busy,” Sunset pointed out.</p><p>“I should have made time.”</p><p>“We’ve got time now,” Rainbow pointed out. “Twi, can we put off the bookshop until after we’ve swung by the hospital?”</p><p>“Of course,” Twilight said brightly. “Do you know which hospital it is?”</p><p>“Lancaster Memorial,” Blake answered.</p><p>“He might have been discharged,” Rainbow suggested, as Twilight typed the name into her search bar. “It <em>has</em> been a while.”</p><p>“I suppose,” Blake conceded. “But if he isn’t there, they might know where he went.”</p><p>“Why don’t you just call him?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Blake looked at Sunset, and her ears pricked up with embarrassment as her face froze in a look of wide-eyed mortification. Blake continued to stare. </p><p>Sunset felt a smile spread across her face. “You hadn’t thought of that, had you?”</p><p>“I…” Blake faltered, turning away from Sunset as she got her scroll out. She said nothing to anyone as she started to thumb through her contacts. </p><p>Sunset exchanged a glance with Rainbow over Blake’s shoulder.</p><p>“Don’t sweat it,” Rainbow told her. “Twilight forgets the obvious stuff sometimes, too.”</p><p>“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight squeaked.</p><p>“It’s one of the many reasons why I love you,” Rainbow assured her with a pat on the shoulder.</p><p>“Huh,” Blake muttered.</p><p>Sunset took a step closer to her. “What?”</p><p>“Tukson’s number has been disconnected,” Blake whispered. “But… why?”</p><p>None of the other three girls said anything. </p><p>“Well, we won’t get any answers here,” Twilight said with a touch of faux cheer entering into her voice. “We might as well swing by the hospital. I know where to go; it’s this way.”</p><p>She led the way, a pace or two out in front of the others, giving them someone to follow, even if they weren’t following any great distance. Rainbow and Sunset both hung back with Blake, whose steps dragged just a little bit as she followed Twilight with a subdued, shuffling gait. </p><p>“If anything had happened to him, they would have told you,” Sunset assured her. </p><p>“Would they?” Blake replied, glancing up at the girl on her right. “I’m not his family; I’m just… an old comrade from a past that he keeps secret and for good reason. Why would anybody bother to tell me anything?”</p><p>“The General would have told you,” Rainbow insisted.</p><p>“Would General Ironwood even bother to find out?”</p><p>“General Ironwood assigned the guards to protect the guy in hospital; they’d tell him if he… if he died there,” Rainbow replied. “And he’d pass that on. He wouldn’t sit on it and leave you in the dark.”</p><p>Blake was quiet for a moment. “I suppose he’d want to give me cause and motivation to fight back against the White Fang.”</p><p>“As if you don’t have that already,” Sunset muttered.</p><p>“He’d tell you because it’s the right thing to do,” Rainbow corrected Blake. </p><p>“And Atlas always does the right thing?”</p><p>“Once they’ve tried everything else,” Sunset said.</p><p>“Very funny,” Rainbow said. “We may not always do the right thing, but we don’t ever try and do the wrong thing. We just… make mistakes, like everyone else.” Rainbow put her arm around Blake’s shoulder. “But if you come to Atlas with me, you’ll get it.”</p><p>Blake glanced at the huntress to her left. She snorted.</p><p>“What?” Rainbow demanded. “You think I’m joking? I’m serious! Once we’ve saved Vale from the White Fang and given Skystar the breathing space to hold a totally awesome Vytal Festival, then-”</p><p>“The terms of my agreement with Atlas will be complete,” Blake said. “I’ll be free.” She looked at Rainbow again. “Unless you mean to change the agreement on me?”</p><p>“Of course not,” Rainbow replied, her tone rising to mild outrage. “That’s not how Atlas does things; that’s not how <em>I</em> do things. I gave you my word that we were going to keep you in until this White Fang thing was done, and then we’d let you go, and I never, <em>ever </em>go back on my word.” She was quiet for a moment. “What I’m saying is, that when all that is done, we’ll be shipping back to Atlas, and I think you should come with us.”</p><p>Blake stared at her.</p><p>Rainbow blinked. “What?”</p><p>“I’m waiting for the punchline,” Blake said dryly.</p><p>Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Come on, Blake, there is no punchline!”</p><p>“You’re serious?” Blake demanded. “You’re not kidding?”</p><p>“Of course I’m not kidding; why would I be kidding about this?” Rainbow asked. </p><p>“Because it’s Atlas?” Blake suggested.</p><p>“Because Blake already has a spot here at Beacon,” Sunset added. “Why would she need to transfer?”</p><p>“Because you’d fit right in at Atlas,” Rainbow insisted. “You’re smart, serious, committed; if you could learn to do as you’re told, you’d be the model Atlas student. You’re much more of a model student than I am.” She paused. “And besides, what are you going to do here at Beacon? Are you going to steal Sunset’s bed for the next four years? Are you going to be the fifth wheel for Team Sapphire the entire time you’re here at Beacon?”</p><p>“You’re welcome to stay for as long as you want,” Sunset told her. “No one minds having an honorary member.”</p><p>Blake’s brow furrowed. “Perhaps, with a little more time, my team will-”</p><p>“What?” Rainbow demanded. “Are you hoping that they’ll come round? Forgive you? You could do so much better than them! Lyra has no business being a huntress, Bon Bon isn’t much better, and Sky Lark is a sack of flour; transfer to Atlas, repeat your first year, get yourself a cool red aiguillette on your uniform and get yourself three tough northern flowers to have your back.”</p><p>“'Northern flowers'?” Sunset repeated incredulously.</p><p>Rainbow shrugged. “It’s something Ciel says. Flowers of the North is what we are, if you listen to her for long enough.”</p><p>“'Up, through snow and cold and heart of winter,'” Blake whispered. “'Rise up, and bloom in glory.'”</p><p>“Exactly,” Rainbow said. “The point is that we’re tough; we can survive the winter, so we can survive anything. And I think that you could survive it too. I guarantee you’ll make team leader there too; in fact, I’ll mentor you to make sure you do.”</p><p>“You’ll mentor me?” Blake repeated.</p><p>“Okay, that sounds a little formal; I just mean I’ll teach you what General Ironwood looks for in a leader,” Rainbow explained. “Although you’ve probably got it all already; you just need to show that you can step up to the responsibility.”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Blake murmured. “I wasn’t such a great leader last time.”</p><p>“You were lying to your teammates the last time; that won’t be a problem in Atlas,” Rainbow declared. “Come on! I’m talking about access to all the most advanced toys; I’m talking about high-tech training facilities; in fact, I’m talking about high-tech <em>everything</em> facilities at the best-funded school in Remnant; I’m talking about air support on tap. What’s not to love?”</p><p>“I’m a faunus,” Blake pointed out.</p><p>“And what am I?”</p><p>“An ugly fish,” Sunset answered.</p><p>“You’re different,” Blake said, ignoring Sunset.</p><p>“Oh, yes, let’s go back to the days of you thinking that I’m a sellout for serving Atlas,” Rainbow muttered.</p><p>Blake’s cheeks reddened. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant… you have connections to General Ironwood; you’re protected from what it’s really like in Atlas for ordinary faunus.”</p><p>“Neon doesn’t have pull with the General, and she makes it work,” Rainbow said. “And she’s not the only one either. Besides, you could have pull if you wanted.”</p><p>Blake frowned. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“I mean, we’re working directly for General Ironwood himself,” Rainbow explained patiently. “He reads my reports, and I’m going to write good things about you tonight after we’re done. I think he’s going to like what he reads. General Ironwood recognises talent when he sees it, and… and when he sees talent worth nurturing, he doesn’t give a damn whether they’re a faunus or not.”</p><p>“Neither does Beacon,” Sunset insisted. “You could ask Ruby or Pyrrha or Jaune, and they’d all tell you that none of them mind you rooming with us; none of them would mind you staying on as a member of our team; you’ve even got your name on the wall now.” She paused. “Did you actually want to come to Beacon for a reason, or was it just that you were in Vale at the time?”</p><p>“I…” Blake trailed off for a moment. “I wanted to train as… I wanted to… it sounds stupid.”</p><p>“Maybe,” Sunset allowed, with some idea of what she was about to say, “but you have to say it anyway.”</p><p>Blake snorted. “I wanted to see if it was possible for someone like me to become a hero, at the school that produces heroes.”</p><p>“You think Atlas doesn’t turn out heroes?” Rainbow demanded.</p><p>“Not of the same calibre,” Sunset informed her in a tone whose blitheness was entirely feigned. “Listen, Blake, I know that things at Beacon aren’t going entirely as you planned when you came here, but they’re going okay, aren’t they?”</p><p>“At Atlas, you’ll have a place to belong.”</p><p>“You have a place to belong right here at Beacon, with Team Sapphire.”</p><p>“Teams are four members, and you’ll be <em>leader</em> of a team if you stick with me and come to Atlas.”</p><p>“At Atlas, you’ll be pushed into a mold-”</p><p>“Oh, come on, even you can’t actually believe that!” Rainbow snapped.</p><p>“At Beacon, you’re free to become whoever you want to be.”</p><p>“That’s true of Atlas too, but we’ve got airships as well.”</p><p>“Oh, for goodness sake!” Twilight cried, rounding on all three of them. “Blake isn’t a toy for you to fight over or a prize for one of you to claim from the other.”</p><p>“That isn’t why we’re arguing,” Rainbow said defensively.</p><p>“Although it would be nice to win,” Sunset muttered.</p><p>Twilight glared at her.</p><p>“I’m kidding!” Sunset cried. “I’m… ninety percent kidding.”</p><p>Twilight folded her arms. “Don’t you think that Blake should be free to make this decision for herself?”</p><p>“I’m just letting her know that she’s got options,” Rainbow insisted. “And maybe offering some encouragement one way.”</p><p>“Just like I was just encouraging her to go a different way,” Sunset said.</p><p>“I think you’ve both encouraged Blake quite enough,” Twilight declared. “Don’t you agree, Blake?”</p><p>“I, uh, thanks, Twilight,” Blake murmured. She looked at Rainbow Dash. “Why does this matter so much to you? Why do you want this?”</p><p>Rainbow stared blankly back at her. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“I mean why are you trying to… to recruit me?” Blake asked. “Why does it matter whether I come back to Atlas or not? Maybe I would like it there, maybe… I’ll admit that you’ve been nicer than I was expecting you to be. Maybe I’d even fit in there. But why do you want it? Why don’t you just fly away and leave me behind?”</p><p>Rainbow didn’t say anything for a moment or two. “Because… because I like you,” she said. “And because… because you don’t want to be a hero. Not like that statue in the courtyard, anyway; Atlas makes heroes too, but it’s a different kind of hero, and I think that’s the kind of hero that you want to be: a part of something bigger than yourself, something more than just you standing out in the field alone. I think… I think you’re made of the right stuff. I think you could have the Mettle, if you came to Atlas and saw what we’re all about.”</p><p>“The Mettle?” Blake repeated.</p><p>“It’s… how do I explain it?” Rainbow asked. “It’s a… it’s like a semblance that we all share, but it’s not like a power or anything-”</p><p>“So it’s nothing like a semblance?” Sunset mocked.</p><p>“Shut up. I’m trying my best,” Rainbow snapped. “The Mettle of the North is our fighting spirit: it binds the forces of Atlas together; it’s our will to defend the kingdom and keep our people safe; it gives us the determination to keep fighting and see things through to the end, no matter the odds. More than the guns and the bombs and the ships, the Mettle is why we win.” She scratched the back of her head. “Ciel explains it better than I can; even the General can put it into better words than me.”</p><p>“It sounds… to be perfectly honest, it sounds appealing, although I’m not entirely sure how it differs from ordinary courage or determination,” Blake murmured.</p><p>“Our own courage can falter,” Rainbow said. “Our determination can reach its limit, but the Mettle never runs out.”</p><p>“Do you really believe that?” Blake asked.</p><p>Rainbow took a few seconds to reply. “It helps to be able to tell yourself that, when it feels as though you’ve got no courage left,” she said softly.</p><p>Blake’s ears drooped. “I… I see.” She looked away from Rainbow Dash. “I never would have thought about coming to Atlas if you hadn’t mentioned the idea,” she confessed, “but now that you have mentioned it… I don’t know. Sunset’s right; I wanted to come to Beacon for a reason, but… I can see that in Atlas… I don’t know.”</p><p>“You should tell her the other reason,” Twilight said.</p><p>“I thought you said I’d encouraged her enough?” Rainbow replied.</p><p>“You have,” Twilight told her, “but you might as well be completely honest.”</p><p>“Honest?” Blake repeated. “Honest about what?”</p><p>Rainbow licked her lips. “It would be nice,” she admitted, “to have more faunus working their way up in Atlas. We’re not going to change things by holding rallies like your parents; we’re not going to change things by setting off bombs like the White Fang; the way we’re going to change things is if faunus like you and me can climb our way to the top of places like the military. Once we get our hands on the levers of power, then we can pull on them.”</p><p>“That’s generally what you do with levers,” Blake observed.</p><p>“Exactly,” Rainbow said. “And when we pull, things can really change for the faunus! That’s my plan, anyway, and Twilight says that it’s a good one.”</p><p>“I think it’s the best possible choice,” Twilight said, “and, please, believe me when I say that I’m not just saying that as a human anxious to preserve my own privileges. Although you won’t have to take my word for it, because I’m going to show you at some point today.”</p><p>“I’ll do it alone if I have to,” Rainbow said, “but it would be better with company.”</p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose. She was genuinely surprised to hear Rainbow talking that way. “In all the years that I knew you at Combat School,” she said, “you never once gave any sign that you thought this way.”</p><p>“I never made any secret that I wanted to climb all the way to the top.”</p><p>“I thought that was because you had a huge ego.”</p><p>Rainbow grinned. “Well, there’s that too. But I can have selfless motives as well. Besides, it’s not like we were close back then, so why is it so surprising that you didn’t know my secrets?”</p><p>“It’s surprising that you were able to keep it secret,” Sunset commented.</p><p>“Why did you have to keep it secret?” Blake asked.</p><p>“You know,” Rainbow said, with a shrug of her shoulder. “Some people… they might not like the sound of it. It might sound like infiltration or something.”</p><p>“Don’t you think the fact that you have to think that way is a possible indicator that… that something isn’t right in Atlas?” Blake suggested. “That there are powerful forces, entrenched interests that are opposed to granting us real equality?”</p><p>“There are powerful forces opposed to humans being alive,” Rainbow said. “Just because a battle’s hard doesn’t mean it isn’t worth fighting.”</p><p>“There are some who wouldn’t see what you’re planning to do as fighting.”</p><p>“Yeah, but the people who would say that are the ones who go around hurting kids, so they can bite me,” Rainbow replied sharply.</p><p>“All the same… ” Blake murmured. </p><p>“It seems a little naïve,” Sunset said. “How do you know that they’ll even let you get to the top, let alone change anything once you get there?”</p><p>“I don’t know they will,” Rainbow conceded, “but I don’t know they won’t either. And while I think I can, I have to try.” She pumped her fist. “And if anyone tries to stop me, I’ll smash all obstacles in my path and do it anyway!”</p><p>Blake chuckled. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Maybe it is the best way; you’re right that the other ways that have been tried… didn’t work out so well. But at the same time… I don’t know.” She glanced at Sunset, who thought that she was referring as much to the idea of going to Atlas as she was to Rainbow’s hidden ambitions. “I just… don’t know.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0032"><h2>32. A Misplaced Word</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Blake and Twilight discuss Atlas; Rainbow and Sunset discuss magic; Ruby says the wrong thing.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A Misplaced Word</p><p> </p><p>The title of the book was <em>Prison Journals</em> by Rudi Antonio. It was a large volume, well-preserved despite its age, with a handsome black cover – evoking something of a feeling of a jail – and the title and author's name picked out in gold letters. Blake had never heard of the book or author before, but as her eyes lingered upon the words 'with a new introduction by Sienna Khan' picked out in the same gold as the title near the bottom of the cover, she knew that at least somebody had.</p><p>Blake knew that her erstwhile mistress had been a historian before joining her parents in devoting themselves fully to the cause of the White Fang; in quiet moments, when she was in a restive mood, Sienna would occasionally reminisce about her time in what she described as the gerontocracy of academia, enduring the racism of tenured professors old enough to remember when faunus had been slaves; Blake sometimes thought that Sienna Khan must have been exaggerating about that. It was a part of Sienna's past that was not a mystery to her, and yet, this was the first time that she had ever held a book in her hands that dated from her time as an academic; everything that she had read from the High Leader had been written later, after she had committed herself first to politics and then to violent struggle. The fact that this tome in her hands predated all of that dated the book, or at least this edition; it must have been from quite some time ago for anything Sienna Khan had to say about it to be 'new.'</p><p>As she sat in the lounge of the skydock, waiting for a Skybus headed for Beacon, Blake wasn't sure what she wanted to read more: the book itself or the introduction by her former leader.</p><p>
  <em>I wonder what she sounded like, back in those days.</em>
</p><p>"You're staring at that book as though you'd like to set it on fire with your mind," Twilight observed as she settled down on the grey padded chair next to Blake.</p><p>Blake looked up – to where Sunset and Rainbow were engaged in animated conversation on the other side of the aisle – and then beside her into Twilight's face. "I'm sure that someone has a semblance that would let them do that," Blake observed, "but-"</p><p>"But that would be an awful way to treat an old book, so I hope they wouldn't use it," Twilight replied.</p><p>Blake managed a slight smile. "It would be a pretty poor way to treat a gift, too."</p><p>"All the same," Twilight said, "is everything okay?"</p><p>Blake showed her the book cover, her finger hovering near the point about an introduction from Sienna Khan.</p><p>Twilight frowned. "Sienna Khan; does that mean something to you?"</p><p>Blake's eyebrows rose. "She's the leader of the White Fang."</p><p>Twilight gasped. Her mouth formed an O of surprise. "Really?"</p><p>Blake nodded. "You really didn't know that?"</p><p>Twilight shook her head. "The White Fang are quite the mystery."</p><p><em>Or humans just don't care to discover the truth,</em> Blake thought, but that was possibly a little unfair and certainly rather unkind; the White Fang as a political group had become a marginal force long before her father stepped down and retired to Menagerie, and since assuming the role of High Leader, Sienna had done nothing to elevate her public profile. 'The cause is what matters, not my reputation,' she had been wont to say, before adding wryly that if nobody knew who she was, then it was harder for Atlas to order her assassination.</p><p>Adam, of course, had disagreed, both in the matter of holding his fame as the Sword of the Faunus of great import to himself and also in relishing in the notoriety that he enjoyed amongst their enemies, the terror that he inspired across all four kingdoms.</p><p>Of course, Adam never had any fear of death, at least none that he would allow even Blake to see.</p><p>"I'm a little surprised," she said, "that you haven't pumped me for information yet."</p><p>"What do you think you still know?" Twilight asked. "I mean, no offence, but you're a defector; the moment you left they would have moved their safehouses, changed their passwords, taken precautions against you… against you…"</p><p>"Against me deciding to betray my cause," Blake murmured.</p><p>Twilight's eyes were wide with concern as she reached out and placed a hand upon Blake's arm. "You didn't betray anyone until you were betrayed by the White Fang first; you kept all of their secrets until you were exposed."</p><p>"I went down to the docks before I was exposed," Blake pointed out.</p><p>Twilight hesitated. "True," she said. "But even so, you kept their secrets. And… all the more reason for them to take precautions about you leaking any information; the fact remains, any specifics you know are probably worthless now."</p><p>"Yet I'm not worthless to you," Blake replied.</p><p>"You're much more than a source of intelligence to us," Twilight assured her.</p><p>"Hmm," Blake murmured. "I'm…" she trailed off, her eyes flickering to Rainbow Dash across the aisle. "What am I to her?"</p><p>"A friend," Twilight said. "It's a great place to be." She smiled. "Nowhere safer, I guarantee it."</p><p>"I didn't exactly come to Beacon looking for safety," Blake informed her, "and I don't think that I'd go back there looking for safety, either."</p><p>"No, I suppose <em>you</em> didn't," Twilight said. She pushed her glasses back up her nose. "It's entirely your decision, obviously, but Rainbow wouldn't be asking you to come to Atlas if she didn't want you there, and she wouldn't ask if she didn't think it would be good for you. Rainbow… Rainbow thinks you need a cause."</p><p>Blake snorted. "Rainbow might be right," she admitted. "Of course, if Ruby were here, then she'd say that, for a huntress, serving humanity is the cause."</p><p>"I'm sure it is," Twilight agreed. "But a lonely one for most huntresses."</p><p>"And in Atlas, you're never alone?" Blake asked wryly.</p><p>Twilight chuckled. "If you really want more of the sales pitch, you should go over and talk to Rainbow Dash. I'm just explaining why she wants you, and maybe… maybe telling you not to dismiss the idea out of hand. And not to dismiss Rainbow's ideas out of hand, either."</p><p>Blake raised the book. "Is that what this is about?"</p><p>"He was a Mistralian faunus," Twilight explained. "He was elected to the Mistral Council, not too long after the Great War, but he was arrested and imprisoned for… for the rest of his life. And while he was in prison, he wrote."</p><p>"About what?"</p><p>"Everything, as I understand it," Twilight said. "Philosophy, history, politics… he advocated for a march through institutions as a solution to the question of how to obtain equal rights for the faunus." She paused. “It was an approach that… fell out of fashion compared to more activist ways of… attacking the problem.”</p><p>“Literally,” Blake muttered.</p><p>“I got it for you,” Twilight went on, “because I wanted you to see that Rainbow isn’t just being naïve, or making excuses for her loyalty to Atlas; incredibly intelligent faunus have thought deeply about these issues and come to the same conclusions.”</p><p>“Has Rainbow read this?” Blake asked.</p><p>Twilight couldn’t quite stop herself from smiling. “No,” she said. “I love Rainbow Dash, but I’m not sure she’d have the patience to get through this.”</p><p>“But you introduced her to the ideas?”</p><p>Twilight shook her head. “Not until after she’d already had them. She came up with the basics all on her own.”</p><p>Blake’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”</p><p>Twilight nodded. “The way I remember, we were lying awake one night, and Rainbow had been staring up at the ceiling for a little bit when she said ‘You know, Twi, if we had some faunus senior officers, I bet things would be a lot better for all the faunus.’”</p><p>“Somehow, I suspect that’s a simplification of the arguments in here,” Blake said dryly.</p><p>“Oh, of course, but it’s a start, don’t you think?”</p><p>“I suppose so,” Blake conceded, “but it’s still a start that I don’t know if I want to be a part of.”</p><p>“I can understand that,” Twilight said. “We’re still asking you to take a great deal about Atlas on trust, with only a handful of people to really illustrate what the kingdom is like. And that’s after all the trouble you had with Rainbow Dash earlier in the year.”</p><p>“I’ve forgiven her for that,” Blake said, “but it did demonstrate to me the problem of making rash judgements and assuming groups to be heterogeneous. If I take you as the average of what Atlas is like, then I’d be making the same mistake from a different perspective.”</p><p>“Well, there are a lot more Atlas students around than just Team Rosepetal now,” Twilight said. “So you could get to know a lot more, different Atlas students if you wanted to?” She smiled. “Of course, you’d have to be actively considering Rainbow’s offer for there to be any point to that.”</p><p>Blake didn’t reply. <em>Was</em> she considering it? Ought she to be considering it? It seemed absurd that she was even contemplating a move like this. This was <em>Atlas</em> they were talking about: Atlas the cruel, Atlas the relentless, Atlas the city from which the blood of faunus dripped down upon the earth. Atlas of the SDC, Atlas of the military, Atlas that was all the evil in the world, the great enemy of faunus rights and of all faunus kind. </p><p>And yet, she was – almost in spite of herself – actually considering it. A part of her rebelled against the fact, but when Blake looked inside herself, she couldn’t deny the fact that she really was thinking about it. </p><p>Not because of the toys or the technology but because… because Rainbow was right about one thing: Blake <em>did</em> need a cause. It wasn’t enough for her to just fight to survive; she didn’t fight for her own glory like Sunset, she couldn’t devote herself to some – no offence – vague idea of service to humanity like Ruby or Pyrrha. She needed to be working towards something, something important, something that mattered, something that she could look at and say ‘yes, I did that.’</p><p><em>I helped with that,</em> Blake mentally corrected herself. It was arrogant to assume that she could or needed to do everything on her own. </p><p>But it was an arrogance that had a hold on her, like a leech with its teeth in her skin. She couldn’t seem to shake it off. </p><p>Atlas was attractive for that reason, after she’d been shown that not all Atlesians were terrible people and that faunus could lead reasonable lives there. Some of them at least. </p><p>But still… it was Atlas. A place she still knew little about. </p><p>She didn’t know. She just didn’t know. She’d wanted to go to Beacon; she hadn’t just chosen it because it was in the same kingdom as she was or even because Vale enjoyed a reputation for tolerance. She’d chosen it because it was the best, and she’d hoped that it would make her the best version of herself. </p><p>In spite of what had happened, did she really want to forsake that? To turn her back on it, and all for what? For northern dreams? For a promise of something that might never materialise? For the enthusiasm of a true believer? </p><p>And if she had to spend the next four years – or however long was left once the Atlesians were through with her – as an honorary member of Team SAPR, well… there were worse fates. </p><p>If Blake might be permitted, in the privacy of her own head, to use an animal metaphor: the collar didn’t chafe as much as she’d been worried it might, but that didn’t mean that she wanted to go back to the kennel. </p><p>Not definitely, at least; not yet. </p><p>“I’m sorry that we couldn’t find anything out about Tukson,” Twilight said softly.</p><p>Blake pursed her lips together. At the hospital, she had learned that Tukson had been recently discharged, but they had not been able to tell her – either because they didn’t know or because they weren’t authorised to tell Blake – where he had been discharged to; they had swung by the shop to find the place boarded up, with a sign stating that it was closed with no indication when – or if – it would ever reopen. And of course, his scroll had been disconnected. </p><p>It had occurred to Blake that he might have been spirited away into witness protection for his own safety; if that was the case, then she wished him all the best… but she wished that she’d gotten the chance to say goodbye. </p><p>She sighed. “At least they told me that he walked out of hospital on his own two feet,” she said. “At least I know that he’s okay.”</p><p>Twilight nodded, if only slightly. “You know, I’m sure that if I talked to General, then he could find out-”</p><p>“No,” Blake said. “That’s kind of you to offer, but you don’t have to do that.”</p><p>“It’s no trouble, really,” Twilight said.</p><p>“It’s probably for the best if I don’t know,” Blake replied. “Nobody’s supposed to know, isn’t that how it works? And besides, even if I did know… I couldn’t go and see him, or I’d risk drawing attention to him.”</p><p>“But don’t you want to see him again?”</p><p>“That doesn’t mean that he needs to see me again,” Blake said. “I brought Tukson nothing but trouble; in the end, I even brought Adam to his door. It’s best that… I hope he’s happy, wherever he is.”</p><p>The doors into the skydock lounge slid open, and Ruby and Penny both came bouncing through, accompanied by Ciel. </p><hr/><p>Twilight had actually gotten Sunset two books, one of which was a little bigger than the other. The first, and larger of the two, was called <em>Prophet Narratives: Choosing and Power in the Religions of Remnant</em>; it had a very striking cover depicting a woman in blue robes getting smote on the breast by a bolt of lightning hurled from out of a cloud – hurled by who, it didn’t say. It was not a new illustration – a look at the back revealed it to be a painting by someone Sunset had never heard of, but then she’d never heard of any of this until Twilight had brought it up to her. The book had no author, since it was a collection of traditional stories, but was noted as being collected by one Oswald Oakenshaft; Sunset had never heard of him either, but a quick look at the back of the book had provided her with a limited degree of enlightenment: not much was known about the man except that he had enjoyed a sinecure from the crown of Vale in the time of King Athelstan Whitebeard, two or three generations before the Great War, and he had used the income to spend his life apparently pulling together this book, considering he had no other accomplishments to his name. </p><p>The current edition – or the edition that she was holding in her hands, at least – had been published by a small press somewhere in Vale; Sunset doubted that many copies had been produced. </p><p>The same press had also published the other book that Sunset was holding in her hands: <em>Red Queens</em>, a book that had neither author nor collector identified but which Twilight had insisted had to be read in conjunction with the prophet book; they formed, according to her, two halves of a narrative of decline and fall, a statement which she claimed would make sense once Sunset had done the reading. </p><p>Sunset didn’t blame her for being cryptic; she had asked for reading material, not a story; she wanted to be free to make her own judgements about what she was reading – and take notes – without Twilight’s interpretation getting in the way. </p><p>After all, Twilight only hoped and believed that magic existed – or had until she had learned Sunset’s secret; Sunset knew full well that magic existed and understood a fair bit about how it worked, so it was likely she would pick up on things that Twilight had missed. </p><p>She hoped so, anyway; it might be that all magic in Remnant was as alien to her as Ruby’s silver eyes – something Sunset hadn’t quite had the nerve to mention to Twilight, if only because she wasn’t sure that Ruby or Pyrrha would appreciate her giving out Ruby’s secret to just anybody – but she doubted it. Twilight’s description of her magical rescuer sounded very much like the sort of thing that an alicorn could have done; although, if all wielders of magic in Remnant were on par with alicorns, then Sunset might be in a bit of trouble if she ever met one.</p><p>And if they existed, then she did mean to meet one, if only to find out where they got their power from. </p><p>“Prophets, huh?” Rainbow asked from where she sat down next to Sunset in the lounge of the skydock. They were having to wait a little bit for a Skybus to arrive. “Twilight told you that she believes in…”</p><p>“Magic?” Sunset suggested.</p><p>“Mhm,” Rainbow murmured. “Do you believe it?”</p><p><em>Does the eagle believe that it can fly?</em> “Yes,” Sunset said. “It surprised me when Twilight told me you don’t.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because she’s supposed to be your friend.”</p><p>“Twilight is my friend,” Rainbow replied loudly. “It doesn’t mean that I have to think everything that she thinks, believe everything that she believes.”</p><p>“You’re also friends with Pinkie Pie,” Sunset pointed out.</p><p>“Yeah, and you show me one thing in one of those books that sounds anything like what Pinkie can do, and I’ll agree with you it’s magic,” Rainbow challenged her. “Twilight says that you can look back in these old stories and see that there are lots of things that keep coming around over and over again. And she’s right; they are all full of the same stuff.”</p><p>“You’ve read them?” Sunset asked in astonishment.</p><p>Rainbow nodded. “The Red Queen book is pretty cool, full of heroes and villains and fights… although I did have to get Twilight to tell me what half the words meant. But the fact that a lot of the same stuff keeps coming up doesn’t mean that it’s true; it just means that the people who came up with this stuff didn’t have a lot of ideas of their own.”</p><p>“What makes you so sure?”</p><p>“Because if there really are people who have amazing powers like that, then where are they?” Rainbow demanded. “Twilight thinks that they’re still out there, but where? I’ve never seen them.”</p><p>“Twilight has,” Sunset pointed out.</p><p>“Twilight thinks that she has,” Rainbow replied. “Did she tell you she took a pretty bad bang on the head?”</p><p>“She told me that she was in a car crash,” Sunset answered.</p><p>Rainbow leaned forward in her seat. “Listen, I am beyond glad that Twilight survived that, and I don’t pretend to know what happened on the road that day, but I know that a flying woman with white hair didn’t come out of nowhere and kill all the grimm by shooting lightning out of her hands.”</p><p>“Again, why so sure?”</p><p>“Because, again, why did she only do it once?” Rainbow demanded. “I love Twilight, but why did she get to be saved when nobody else does? Why come out for one person and not for others?”</p><p>“Twilight says there <em>are</em> others,” Sunset replied. </p><p>“A few, but that doesn’t change my point,” Rainbow insisted. “If there are people out there with… with magic powers, then why don’t they use them? It’s game time, come on, get off the bench.”</p><p>“Maybe they’re afraid of being discovered?” Sunset suggested, thinking about Pyrrha’s nervousness around Ruby’s eyes and what would happen to Ruby if the secret of those eyes became widespread.</p><p>“So they’d rather let people die, come on!” Rainbow snapped. “What is this, a gloomy superhero movie?”</p><p>“This is nobody’s story but ours,” Sunset declared, clenching one hand into a fist. “But not everyone can be Ruby or Pyrrha or even you for that matter. Just because someone has power is no guarantee that they’ll be minded to use it for the greater good. Or even to use it at all. Some people just don’t have the guts for the fight. Some people aren’t suited for it. Would you want Fluttershy out on the front lines just because she had magic?”</p><p>“Don’t be ridiculous,” Rainbow said instantly. “But if Fluttershy did have power like that, she wouldn’t just hide in a hole so that nobody knew existed. She’d… I don’t know exactly what she’d do because I don’t know what her magic would do, but she’d do something, even if it was just like magically healing animals or something.”</p><p>Sunset shrugged. “Like I said, not everyone has that kind of spirit.”</p><p>“But no one has it?” Rainbow replied. “Nobody, out of all the people who have ever had these special powers, nobody has wanted to do anything with them? Everyone who's ever had them has been too afraid of being found out to ever show their powers? I don’t buy it. I don’t buy that people are like that. I just… I don’t buy it.”</p><p>Sunset could see Rainbow’s point. She knew that the Atlesian girl was wrong – there was at least one form of magic in the world that had not come from Equestria – but at the same time, that very wrongness proved Rainbow Dash partly right, because Summer Rose <em>had</em> used her powers; she had not been more afraid of her gift being discovered than of the cost of not using them. </p><p>But at the same time, Summer had <em>not</em> been discovered; her silver eyes remained, for the most part, a secret. </p><p>“Maybe they have used their gift, but… subtly,” Sunset suggested. “In ways that didn’t attract attention.”</p><p>“Or maybe it’s all a great story but one that doesn’t mean anything,” Rainbow said. “Why do you want to believe in this so much?”</p><p>“Why do you want to steal Blake so much?”</p><p>Rainbow’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not stealing Blake; who would I even be stealing her from?” Rainbow answered her own question a moment later. “It’s you, isn’t it?”</p><p>Sunset brushed her trousers idly with one hand. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said quietly, looking somewhere else.</p><p>Rainbow snorted. “I really do think Blake would do great in Atlas. I really believe she’d be better off there than here.”</p><p>“You think everyone would be better off at Atlas.”</p><p>“I don’t think you’d be better off at Atlas; you couldn’t cut it.”</p><p>“What do you mean I 'couldn’t cut it'?”</p><p>“You don’t have the discipline,” Rainbow explained.</p><p>“You think that Blake has discipline?” Sunset asked, her eyes boggling.</p><p>“I think she could have, which is more than I could say about you,” Rainbow replied. She folded her arms across her chest, even as she crossed one leg over the other knee. “Do you honestly think that being an ordinary huntress will be enough for someone like Blake?”</p><p>“You say that like there’s some shame in being an ordinary huntress,” Sunset muttered.</p><p>“No, I didn’t,” Rainbow said sharply. “What I mean is… huntsmen and huntresses from the other kingdoms defend the status quad-”</p><p>“Quo.”</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“Status quo, not status quad.”</p><p>“Whatever,” Rainbow said. “The point is that they defend it. They defend the kingdoms, they defend villages, they defend whoever pays them, and that’s fine, but there’s no way that that will be enough for Blake. Blake wants to change the world, and she’ll be able to do that as an Atlesian officer.”</p><p>“How much world-changing does the average Atlesian officer get up to?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“Well… not much, <em>on average</em>,” Rainbow admitted. “But Blake’s not going to be an average officer; she already knows General Ironwood, and she’s got time to get to know him even better, see what a good man he is, how trustworthy he is.” She paused. “I’d put my life in his hands a hundred times over before I’d do the same for your Professor Ozpin.”</p><p>Sunset snorted. “I actually agree with you on that, and I’ve never even met your general.”</p><p>“You don’t trust the headmaster?”</p><p>“Neither do you.”</p><p>“Yeah, but he’s <em>your</em> headmaster; if you don’t have any faith in the guy, then what are you still doing here?”</p><p>“I have faith in myself and my team. I don’t need to believe in Professor Ozpin or his reputation,” Sunset insisted. “He knows more than he lets on. He plays games with us.”</p><p>“You got that right,” Rainbow muttered. “He knew about Blake all along; he knew everything. Just because it all worked out in the end doesn’t mean that… I mean…”</p><p>“Yes,” Sunset agreed. “I know exactly what you mean.” She fell silent, albeit only very briefly. “I suppose that I’d like to believe it,” she said, after a moment, “because I’d like to believe that there’s some wonder left in what is kind of a grim world.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t like to believe that everyone who's ever lucked into power put themselves ahead of everyone else,” Rainbow replied.</p><p>“And I wouldn’t like to lose Blake,” Sunset admitted. “Not even to another team, certainly not to Atlas, but we don’t always get what we want, do we?”</p><p>“I don’t know. I think I’ve gotten pretty lucky that way,” Rainbow said, with exaggerated mock casualness. </p><p>Sunset huffed. “Of course you have.”</p><p>The doors into the Skydock slid open, and Ruby and Penny bounced in excitedly, chattering to one another so quickly that their words became lost in a blur as they spoke over one another; Sunset wondered how they could possibly understand what the other was saying. </p><p>Ciel followed a couple of steps behind, moving at a more controlled and graceful pace. </p><p>“And that bit when Lady Jaye rescued the Councillors like wam-bam!”</p><p>“And then Roadblock took out Kobra Commander’s airship with a single shot to the engine!”</p><p>“That was an impressive piece of marksmanship,” Ciel agreed. She was the first to notice Sunset and the others. “Good afternoon, everyone.”</p><p>“Hey, Ciel,” Rainbow said, grinning. “Ruby, Penny.”</p><p>“Greetings, everyone!” Penny said, waving enthusiastically. “Ruby and Ciel and I just got back from seeing the best movie ever!”</p><p>“Let’s not be hyperbolic,” Ciel murmured.</p><p>“Yeah, it was pretty great, but it still would have been better if we could have gotten to see <em>Grimm 3</em>,” Ruby said.</p><p>“You like the <em>Grimm</em> series?” Rainbow demanded. “The second movie made the Atlesian soldiers out to be totally incompetent.”</p><p>“They weren’t incompetent; they were just caught by surprise,” Ruby replied.</p><p> “When the grimm attacked in the reactor complex, half of them shot one another!”</p><p>“Calm down, for goodness’ sake; it’s just a movie,” Sunset said.</p><p>“It’s bad enough that everyone thinks that we’re a bunch of robots, but everytime we’re not, we’re absolutely useless,” Rainbow griped. “It’s really annoying.”</p><p>“I feel your pain,” Sunset remarked dryly.</p><p>“What movie did you actually go and see?” Twilight said pointedly, glancing at Rainbow from over the top of her spectacles.</p><p>“<em>Real Atlesian Hero: Retaliation</em>,” Penny announced.</p><p>“There, you see,” Twilight said. “A nice action movie with no Atlesian incompetence in sight.”</p><p>“Unless you count the fact that the entire Council had been replaced by Kobra agents and nobody noticed,” Ciel pointed out.</p><p>Twilight sighed. “This is why I only take you to watch cartoons with me,” she told Rainbow Dash.</p><p>“But it was rather enjoyable nonsense,” Ciel added, “and Penny had a good time.”</p><p>“I certainly did!” Penny cried. “It was so exciting, and it all seemed so real, and Ruby Roundhouse is so cool!”</p><p>“Yeah, she is pretty cool,” Rainbow agreed. “It’s a shame they couldn’t get her to play Daring Do; she’d have been great at it.”</p><p>“I thought Chestnut Magnifico did a pretty good job,” Twilight said.</p><p>“She didn’t have the physicality,” Rainbow argued.</p><p>“Ruby Roundhouse has arms like mine,” Twilight pointed out. </p><p>“Yeah, but she moves like she knows what she’s doing,” Rainbow said. “Chestnut doesn’t quite have that.”</p><p>“What are you talking about?” Penny asked.</p><p>“Daring Do, Penny; we’ll have to show you those films some time,” Rainbow said.</p><p>“But didn’t you just say you didn’t like the actress?” Penny asked.</p><p>Rainbow shook her head. “She wasn’t <em>bad</em>; I just think that it could have been better. Still, classic films based on great books; they just… could have done with someone… someone with muscles like Pyrrha.”</p><p>“Pyrrha would be a terrible actress,” Sunset said.</p><p>“What makes you say that?” Penny asked. “She’s really pretty, and she knows how to make fights look epic!”</p><p>“True and true, but I don’t think she could act,” Sunset explained.</p><p>“She has spent half her life in the public eye,” Ciel pointed out. “Some might call that a performance far more demanding than short bursts on a film set.”</p><p>“That may be so,” Blake allowed, “but judging by the way that she feels about that performance, it’s probably safe to say that she wouldn’t enjoy acting.”</p><p>“And hence, she wouldn’t be good at it,” Sunset declared.</p><p>“Oh, hello, everyone,” Pyrrha said as she and Jaune walked into the lounge. Both of them had their arms full with brown paper bags, out of which various groceries were starting to protrude into view.</p><p>“Pyrrha!” Penny cried. “We were just talking about you!”</p><p>“Penny,” Ciel said softly, as she crossed the lounge to sit down next to Rainbow Dash. “That is not something one says.”</p><p>“Not even if it’s true?” Penny asked.</p><p>“<em>Especially</em> not if it’s true,” Ciel informed her.</p><p>“That only holds if you’re saying stuff behind somebody’s back,” Sunset countered. To Pyrrha, who was looking a little apprehensive, she added, “We were just pondering whether you’d be a good actress.”</p><p>“We agree you have the looks for it,” Blake murmured.</p><p>Pyrrha let out a little nervous laugh as her cheeks reddened. “Well, that… that’s very kind of you, but I’m afraid that I’ve no desire to pretend to be someone I’m not.”</p><p>“Haven’t you done that already?” Blake asked. “Isn’t tournament fighting just performing in front of a crowd?”</p><p>“More than I would like,” Pyrrha conceded, “but there is an undeniable element of skill to it as well, and besides, I’ve given up tournament fighting.”</p><p>Penny sighed dreamily. “I wonder what it’s like to be a star, to know that hundreds of thousands of people are going to rush to see you.”</p><p>“Are they seeing them or seeing the characters they play?” Pyrrha asked.</p><p>“It’s the stars, isn’t it?” Jaune said. “I mean, that’s why they get paid the big lien, right?”</p><p>“You would think,” Ciel observed, “but many industry insiders believe that the era of the traditional movie star is coming to an end as audiences narrow their attention to a few tentpole franchises based on well-known intellectual properties.”</p><p>Everyone stared at her. </p><p>Ciel looked at them. “What?” she asked evenly.</p><p>Twilight cleared her throat. “Anyway,” she said, “Pyrrha, Jaune, where have you guys come from?”</p><p>“Shopping, by the looks of it,” Sunset said.</p><p>Jaune laughed. “Yeah, we did pick up a few things on our way back, but only after we’d gotten back from the ice rink.”</p><p>Sunset’s ears pricked up. “'The ice rink'?”</p><p>“As it turns out,” Pyrrha said, “Jaune is very graceful.”</p><p>Ruby grinned. “So you guys finally went on your first date?”</p><p>Pyrrha chuckled, “I suppose we did, yes. It was…” – she glanced at Jaune, a soft smile playing across her face – “wonderful. For me, anyway; I’m not sure how much fun I was to watch flailing about on the ice.”</p><p>“I don’t know, that sounds like it could have been fun,” Sunset said.</p><p>“You weren’t that bad, Pyrrha,” Jaune assured her. “You did pretty well for your first time.”</p><p>“That was because I was using my semblance to adjust the movements of my skates,” Pyrrha confessed. “Not something I’m particularly proud of, but I didn’t want to embarrass myself too much on, well, on our first date.”</p><p>“But you did have a good time, right?” Jaune asked solicitously.</p><p>“Oh, of course,” Pyrrha assured him, as she sat down next to Sunset. “You were quite the sight to see. Every day, you reveal more and more talents.”</p><p>Jaune took a seat beside her. “Our town, the place where I grew up, sits between a forest and a lake; it’s beautiful, the water is practically silver. In the summer, you can fish in it, but in the winter, it freezes over most years, and that’s when we go skating on it.”</p><p>“I see,” Pyrrha said fondly. “You’ve certainly learned well there; I don’t think I’ll ever be as good as you.”</p><p>“I’m glad you two had a good time,” Sunset said, “but I don’t get why you went shopping afterwards.”</p><p>“Jaune’s going to teach me how to cook,” Pyrrha explained.</p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose. “Okay, but why?”</p><p>The groceries in the brown bags in Pyrrha’s arms rustled a little as she shrugged her shoulders. “I think that I should probably learn how to take care of myself if I don’t want to rely on my mother and my family.”</p><p>“You say that like you’ve been cut off,” Sunset said. </p><p>“I know that I haven’t been,” Pyrrha acknowledged, “but as I was saying to Jaune, it feels a little disingenuous to simply carry on as though nothing has happened between us.”</p><p>“Or you could just call her and put all of this behind you?” Sunset suggested. </p><p>Pyrrha sighed. “Please, let’s not have this conversation again, Sunset,” she begged. “Besides, what brought you into Vale?”</p><p>“Book shopping,” Sunset replied. “Twilight brought Blake and I some presents.”</p><p>“That sounds very kind of you, Twilight,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>“Just a few things I thought might interest them,” Twilight responded sheepishly. </p><p>Pyrrha leaned over slightly to get a better look at the books resting on Sunset’s lap. “What are they about, if you don’t mind me asking?”</p><p>“Magic.”</p><p>Ruby gasped. “You mean like my silver eyes?”</p><p>Rainbow’s ears twitched. “What’s this about Ruby’s eyes?”</p><p>Sunset twisted around in her seat. “I don’t suppose that I could say ‘nothing’ and you’d believe me?”</p><p>“No,” Rainbow said. “I really wouldn’t.”</p><p>Twilight frowned. “'Silver eyes'? What are you talking about?”</p><p>“You don’t know?” Sunset asked. <em>The one kind of magic that we know for sure existed, and you’ve never heard of it?</em></p><p>“No,” Twilight replied. “That’s why I asked what Ruby was talking about?” She glanced at her. “Do you… do you have magic too?”</p><p>“'Too'?” Rainbow repeated. “Twi, what is this ‘too’? Did you find some proof of-?”</p><p>“You know what, this is not really a conversation to have in a skydock lounge while we wait for a ride home,” Sunset said quickly.</p><p>“Is it a conversation to have at all?” Pyrrha murmured. “Ruby, you don’t have to say anything.”</p><p>“I don’t mind,” Ruby said quietly. “I trust Team Rosepetal, and Blake; I mean, we’re all friends here, right?”</p><p>Pyrrha nodded gently. “If this is what you want,” she said.</p><p>“How about this?” Jaune said. “We go back to Beacon, I’ll make dinner – I’ll show Pyrrha how to make dinner – and then we can all meet up in our dorm room tonight and talk about all of this stuff. All nine of us. And we can celebrate a successful mission at the same time.”</p><p>“Do you want to celebrate a successful mission?” Pyrrha asked, a touch of anxiety creeping into her voice.</p><p>Jaune hesitated, but only briefly. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do. Even if it didn’t go perfectly, we still got the bad guy, and we all made it back in one piece, and it feels like something worth celebrating.”</p><p>“If we’re going to celebrate, then Sun should be there too,” Blake pointed out.</p><p>“True, but…” Sunset trailed off, unsure of how to wonder aloud if she trusted Sun with Ruby’s secrets, still less with her own. “Can he keep his mouth shut?”</p><p>Blake’s face assumed a pensive expression. “I… think so,” she said. “He wouldn’t deliberately betray anyone’s secrets, and… I’m not sure who it could accidentally slip out to at the moment.”</p><p>Sunset looked at Ruby. “It’s your call.”</p><p>“I trust Sun,” Ruby said quietly.</p><p>Sunset leaned back in her seat. “Then it looks like we’re having a room party.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0033"><h2>33. Green Eyes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sunset and Pyrrha hash out some simmering issues.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Green Eyes</p><p> </p><p>Sunset’s scroll rang. She pulled it out of her jacket pocket and opened it up. The caller ID read ‘Lady Nikos.’</p><p>Even though she hadn’t answered the call yet, the knowledge of who was calling was enough to make Sunset get off Blake’s bed and rise to her feet on reflex. </p><p>Blake was the only other person in the dorm room with her; everyone else – on Team SAPR at least – was being either a hindrance or a help in the making of dinner, but Sunset had never cooked for herself in her entire life, and unlike Pyrrha, she had no intention of starting now. Blake seemed to feel the same way, because as Sunset’s scroll buzzed and vibrated in her hand, the princess of Menagerie was able to take a step towards her and crane her head to see who it was. </p><p>One black eyebrow rose. “'Lady Nikos'?” she asked. </p><p>“It’s Pyrrha’s mother,” Sunset said, as though it ought to have been obvious. It <em>ought</em> to have been obvious.</p><p>Blake’s other eyebrow rose to join the first.</p><p>“What?” Sunset demanded. </p><p>“You have Pyrrha’s mother down in your caller ID as ‘Lady Nikos,’” Blake observed.</p><p>“She’s the rightful Empress of Mistral; she deserves a little respect,” Sunset explained tersely.</p><p>If Blake’s eyebrows climbed much higher, they were going to disappear completely under her bangs; they were halfway to hidden already. “‘The rightful Empress’?” she repeated, disbelief suffusing her tone.</p><p>Sunset rolled her eyes. “If you want to debate my monarchism, then that’s fine, I’ll go some rhetorical rounds with you about it, but can you let me take this call first before my lady starts to think me insolent?”</p><p>“Well, we wouldn’t want that, would we?” Blake muttered, not bothering to hide her sarcasm as she turned upon her high-heels and stalked casually out of the dorm room, shutting the door gently behind her. </p><p>Sunset tapped the green icon to accept the call. Instantly, the stern, stony face of Lady Nikos appeared on the screen. </p><p>Sunset cleared her throat. “I would wish my lady a good evening, save that I fear in Mistral it is already night; I would not expect you to call so late.”</p><p>“And I do not wish to inconvenience you by calling too early, Miss Shimmer,” Lady Nikos replied.</p><p>Sunset inclined her head. “My lady’s courtesy is appreciated but unnecessary; to speak with you is never burdensome.”</p><p>The corners of Lady Nikos’ lips twitched upwards ever so slightly. “There is a fine line, Miss Shimmer, between courtesy and toadying. The latter does not become you.”</p><p>“I hope humility becomes me at least a little, my lady, but I take your point and beg your pardon,” Sunset declared. “However, I speak true when I say that you could have called at a more convenient hour; I have not been preoccupied with anything important.”</p><p>“You did not have classes today?”</p><p>Sunset hesitated for a moment. “We did not, my lady,” she admitted. “We have-”</p><p>“Your mission was not completely free of mishap, then, necessitating some time to recuperate,” Lady Nikos observed.</p><p>Now it was Sunset’s turn to raise her eyebrows curiously. “You… the word of our mission has spread as far as Mistral?”</p><p>“Roman Torchwick, the terror of Vale, has been apprehended by Pyrrha Nikos,” Lady Nikos said. “Did you think that this news would <em>not</em> reach as far as Mistral?”</p><p><em>Of course she gets all the credit. </em>“Pyrrha has done deeds worthy of a hero,” Sunset agreed diplomatically, “but the rest of us were… able to be of some assistance.”</p><p>Lady Nikos chuckled. “Your efforts to be humble are unnecessary, Miss Shimmer; you may be honest with me.”</p><p>“Then honestly, my lady, I say that Pyrrha has done great things,” Sunset said. “She destroyed an Atlesian war machine single-handed.”</p><p>“You mean with her semblance?” Lady Nikos asked.</p><p>“Yes, my lady.”</p><p>Lady Nikos’ brow, already wrinkled with age, acquired a few more wrinkles out of concern. “Has she begun to use it so recklessly, so frivolously?”</p><p>“I am not sure that it can be called either frivolous or reckless to use a semblance such as Pyrrha has been blessed with when confronted with a titan made of metal, my lady,” Sunset suggested.</p><p>Lady Nikos snorted. “Against some Atlesian toy, I would have hoped that Pyrrha’s native skill would have sufficed, or is the valour of Mistral fallen so far?”</p><p>“Say rather that Atlesian science has advanced so far, my lady, for these particular toys were far from child’s play to deal with,” Sunset insisted. “It took myself, Ruby, and some of our Atlesian allies to deal with one, while Pyrrha destroyed another, as I have told you, by herself.”</p><p>“At what cost?” Lady Nikos asked.</p><p>Sunset blinked. “I hope my lady does not think me too dull-witted when I say I do not take your meaning.”</p><p>“How many people now know of her semblance?” Lady Nikos asked, in a tone that did not quite become a demand but hovered upon the border of it like an army poised to invade.</p><p><em>Ah, now I understand.</em> “Pyrrha’s own teammates and the students of an Atlesian team, Team Rosepetal.”</p><p>“You have mentioned Atlesians twice now,” Lady Nikos observed. “I understand it is quite unusual for any training mission to require two teams of students.”</p><p>Sunset mulled over her options. She could either say that to attempt the capture of Roman Torchwick was no small thing and that the school authorities had thought it wise to be cautious, or she could tell something a little closer to the official lie. She chuckled in what she hoped was a self-deprecating manner. “In point of fact, my lady, our mission was never to apprehend, or even to attempt the apprehension, of Roman Torchwick and his confederates; our mission was to protect a working crew making repairs to the rail line. When that was done, we found ourselves in the town of Cold Harbour, where we also found our Atlesian friends of Team Rosepetal and decided to travel back to Beacon together. We were both fortunate and unfortunate to be waylaid upon the journey.”</p><p>“Indeed,” Lady Nikos said. “There are things you are not telling me, Miss Shimmer.”</p><p>“What makes my lady say so?”</p><p>“Because I am not an idiot, Miss Shimmer,” Lady Nikos said, her voice acquiring an edge of sharpness. “However, I trust your judgement in this matter, that you would not place Pyrrha in unnecessary danger.”</p><p>Sunset bowed her head once more. “I am grateful for my lady’s faith.”</p><p>“I am not so sure I trust either your or Pyrrha’s judgement in the matter of her semblance; does she use it openly now?”</p><p>“No, my lady, at least not in the sparring ring.”</p><p>“But in the field?” Lady Nikos pressed.</p><p>“Upon occasion, yes,” Sunset conceded.</p><p>“Pyrrha’s semblance is her <em>hidden</em> weapon,” Lady Nikos declared. “A concealed dagger that her enemies know not of. It should not be thrown around in grand displays where Atlesians can see it.”</p><p>“Team Rosepetal are to be trusted, if any are,” Sunset said.</p><p>“Trust is not the issue,” Lady Nikos said. “Today’s allies may become tomorrow’s enemies when the Vytal Festival begins. It is said that General Ironwood’s students have good mettle in them, for all that their headmaster is rather too in love with metal. Pyrrha may have need of her semblance to overcome them.”</p><p>“With…” Sunset trailed off, thinking better of saying ‘with all due respect.’ “My lady, I fear that Pyrrha aims at other things besides a crowning glory.”</p><p>“Did it take a great deal of effort for you not to say ‘higher things,’ Miss Shimmer?”</p><p>“No, my lady. I confess a Vytal crown glimmers yet in my imagination.”</p><p>“But not in Pyrrha’s?”</p><p>“I am not sure that she would not welcome it, but she does not esteem it the greatest prize to be won at Beacon.”</p><p>“No, that would be the detestable Mister Arc, I suppose.”</p><p>“I think it would be to do some act of great benefit to Remnant, such as she – as we – have done in our capture of Torchwick,” Sunset replied. “My lady, if I might advise you, if you were to reconcile yourself to Jaune, it would ease the path of reconciliation with Pyrrha.”</p><p>“They are still together, then?”</p><p>“If I may venture to say, my lady, they make a handsome pair.” Sunset paused. “If I may venture yet further to the cliff’s edge, Pyrrha will never reconcile with you if you are obstinate in this.”</p><p>Lady Nikos was silent for a moment. “Would she speak to me if I were to accept him, such as he is, and unworthy as he is?”</p><p>“In matters of the heart, my lady, I do not know that it is wise to talk of worth.”</p><p>“Would she speak to me, Miss Shimmer?”</p><p>Sunset hesitated. “I fear she requires a little longer yet, my lady. I have urged her, more than once, but she… she, too, is obstinate.”</p><p>“Then I will continue to rely on you, Miss Shimmer,” Lady Nikos said. “Please encourage her to limit the use of her semblance, especially in the presence of outsiders.”</p><p>“I will… mention it, my lady.”</p><p>“Much obliged to you, Miss Shimmer,” Lady Nikos said. She took pause a while. “And how are you?”</p><p>“I am well and content, my lady.”</p><p>“You may speak honestly,” Lady Nikos urged. “Especially since you have already admitted to me that your mission required some rest afterwards.”</p><p>Sunset sighed involuntarily. “Jaune… took a man’s life,” she said.</p><p>Lady Nikos was as still as any of the images of her ancestors that filled the garden of her great estate. “I cannot say I like the young man, but nevertheless, I would not wish that upon him,” she confessed. “It is a hard thing to do, and a hard thing, too, to comfort afterwards him who has done it.”</p><p><em>How many times did your husband return from the field in need of such comfort?</em> Sunset wondered but did not ask, for it was not her place to do so. “I endeavoured to point him in the direction of one who could offer him more than comfort, and now…” She wasn’t sure if she ought to tell Lady Nikos that Jaune was getting therapy from Professor Goodwitch; some people had old-fashioned ideas about weakness, and Lady Nikos was nothing if not old fashioned.</p><p>“I see,” Lady Nikos said, her voice quiet. “I am glad that the task of comforting him does not fall on Pyrrha alone. And yourself?”</p><p>It was all that Sunset could do not to touch her wound. “I… took an injury, my lady.”</p><p>Lady Nikos’ green eyes narrowed. “I hope that my faith in you is not already being proven to be misplaced.”</p><p>Perhaps she ought to have taken that badly, but it made Sunset smile, at least a little. Even if it did have something of a grimace in it. “I… allowed myself to be struck, my lady.”</p><p>“For what purpose did you engage in such lunacy?”</p><p>“He – Adam Taurus, of the White Fang – has a sword through which he can absorb attacks without coming to harm,” Sunset explained. “I needed to bury his sword in something so that I could hit him without him being able to negate my assault.”</p><p>“And you thought your own flesh was the most suitable sheath for his blade?” Lady Nikos asked, a note of incredulity making her voice tremble. “Are you still in your wits?”</p><p>“Perhaps not, where Adam Taurus is concerned,” Sunset admitted. “But it would have been worth it, had I managed to kill him.”</p><p>“Why? Who is he to you?”</p><p>“He almost killed Ruby at the docks,” Sunset declared. “Now he has almost killed me. I do not mean that he should almost kill Pyrrha.”</p><p>“Ah, so it is revenge, I see,” Lady Nikos observed. “That is a duty strongly to be felt, indeed, and worthy of your courteous manner and courtly upbringing.”</p><p>“A rather unique reaction, if I may say, my lady.”</p><p>Lady Nikos snorted. “I do not say that it will bring you happiness or contentment; I have never had cause to seek bloody vengeance myself, but many are the tales we tell of it in Mistral, and whatever comfort it brings to the avenger seems cold at best. But nevertheless, it… I will not say it must be sought, but I will say that it speaks well of you that you seek after it. But if I may offer you a word of caution, Miss Shimmer?”</p><p>“I will receive it gladly, my lady.”</p><p>“As I say, we tell many stories of revenge in Mistral,” Lady Nikos said. “As oft as not, they lead the avenger to their grave. I would not have you be amongst their number.”</p><p>Sunset blinked rapidly. “Your concern…” She trailed off, and when she spoke again a little of her affect had fallen away. “I am touched, my lady,” she said quietly. “I swear that I do not intend to die in this endeavour.”</p><p>“I believe that you do not,” Lady Nikos agreed, “and so I trust that you will choose your path with wisdom, tempering the wrath of Pyrrha’s namesake with the prudence of Penelope. I put my faith in you, Miss Shimmer.”</p><p>“And I will be worthy of it, my lady.”</p><p>“And now I leave you to your evening,” Lady Nikos said. “Goodnight, Miss Shimmer.”</p><p>“Goodnight and farewell, my lady,” Sunset replied as Lady Nikos hung up the call. </p><p>Sunset sighed once more as she folded up her scroll and put it back in her pocket, and as she did so, she looked up and saw Pyrrha standing in the doorway, looking at her with green eyes wider than usual. </p><p>Sunset felt a coldness in her stomach and a dryness in her throat. “How… how much did you hear of that?”</p><p>Pyrrha walked inside and closed the door behind her. “Enough,” she said softly. “My mother trusts you a great deal.”</p><p>Sunset didn’t reply. Silence had fallen between the two of them like a rockslide closing up the mouth of a cave. She turned away from Pyrrha and wandered down the room towards the far wall, the wall where they had carved their initials on their first night at Beacon. Sunset held out her hand, and her stuffed unicorn flew into it. She grabbed it by the waist and squeezed it a little bit, glancing down at the glassy eyes and the eternally happy expression. </p><p>It was probably inevitable that they should reach this point; Sunset’s decision to take Lady Nikos’ money, to take her sword, to take her part and urge Pyrrha to reconcile with her mother… yes, she should have seen this coming. </p><p>
  <em>Am I the Cadance here?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I hope not. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>No, I’m not, because Celestia and I were happy before that interloper came into my life and ruined everything. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yeah, keep telling yourself that.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Or rather, don’t, because this isn’t about me. This is about Pyrrha. </em>
</p><p>Sunset turned around, her grip on the stuffed unicorn loosening just a little. “So,” she said, with a slight sigh in her voice. “Are we going to do this now?”</p><p>Pyrrha hesitated. “Do… do we have to?”</p><p>“If the alternative is you brooding on how much you dislike me, then I’d rather we have a row and get it over with,” Sunset muttered.</p><p>“I don’t want to fight, Sunset,” Pyrrha said gently, “and I don’t dislike you, far from it.” She looked away, her eyes turning down towards her scarlet sash, the sash with which both of her gloved hands began to fiddle idly. “It… it might be easier if I did dislike you. My mother… she has approved of people before whom I did not like.”</p><p>“The man she wants you to marry?” Sunset guessed.</p><p>“Yes, Turnus is one such,” Pyrrha said. She frowned, marring her flawless skin with a momentary wrinkle. “Wants?”</p><p>“Hmm?”</p><p>“You used the present tense.”</p><p>“And you were listening,” Sunset pointed out. “You don’t need me to tell you what she said.”</p><p>“I didn’t hear everything,” Pyrrha replied.</p><p>“Right,” Sunset said softly. “Sorry. She is… still not entirely reconciled to Jaune, I fear.”</p><p>“I see,” Pyrrha whispered. Once more, she fell silent for a little while, her fingers continuing to play with the red sash. “As I said… as I was saying… it might be easier if I disliked you, but… but I don’t. Do you have any idea how hard it is knowing that your mother prefers your best friend to you?”</p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose in spite of themselves. Her tail straightened out a little behind her. “I’m your best friend?”</p><p>“Of course,” Pyrrha murmured. “Who else would it be?”</p><p>“Jaune?” Sunset suggested.</p><p>“I love Jaune,” Pyrrha replied. “But… anyway, the point is that I’m very fond of you, and that… it means I can’t just dismiss my mother’s affection for you as evidence of her poor judgement, or at least of a judgement that is incompatible with my own.” She began to walk towards the window, until she was standing side on to Sunset, presenting her profile to her team leader as she leaned upon the windowsill. “A judgement that shines on you as… as it has never shone on me.”</p><p>“That’s not my fault,” Sunset said quietly.</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha agreed. “But it is your nature. Though your name is Sunset, I sometimes think you are more like the rising sun, to which all the flowers turn and open up their petals.” A little melancholy laugh escaped her lips. “Perhaps I ought to thank you for leaving me Jaune.”</p><p>“You give yourself far too little credit,” Sunset declared. “Someone like Jaune could never love someone like me.” <em>After all, I loved someone just like him once, and I lost him.</em></p><p>“You’re too kind.”</p><p>“I’m honest, when I have cause to be.”</p><p>“My mother would call herself honest too, but her honesty is not so kind,” Pyrrha replied. “She… she has never told me that she trusted me, the way that she put her trust in you.” Pyrrha sat down upon the window seat. “She has not armed me with one of the heirlooms of our house.”</p><p>“Soteria?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Pyrrha nodded, although she still didn’t look at Sunset. </p><p>Sunset passed the stuffed unicorn from one hand to another. “Is it…? I didn’t think it was that big a deal.”</p><p>“You know that it was carried for my great-great grandfather at the Battle of the Four Sovereigns?”</p><p>“By a retainer,” Sunset countered. “It’s not like it’s your great-great grandfather’s sword that I’m carrying around slung across my back. Your mother gave me a bodyguard’s blade; there was a message there that I didn’t need to be a genius to see. At least, that is what I read into it. I think that is all that there should be read into it.”</p><p>“Yes,” Pyrrha said, “it is a bodyguard’s blade. But it is a blade that was carried for the last Emperor in the last battle of the last war that Mistral waged as a great empire. With that sword, Achates cut down the Captain of the King’s Guard and his standard bearer before he aimed his stroke at the Last King himself. That sword may not have been wielded by any of my ancestors, but it has a history as storied and as noble as any in the possession of the House of Nikos. And my mother armed <em>you</em> with it.”</p><p>“To protect you, in the last resort,” Sunset insisted. “Not that you need it, but…”</p><p>“Even so,” Pyrrha murmured. “She armed you with it.”</p><p>“Do you want the sword?” Sunset asked. “Because…” She trailed off, because of course it wasn’t as simple as just giving Pyrrha the sword if she wanted it. The black blade had been given to Sunset by the Lady Nikos, the head of the family, bestowed upon her, Sunset, to wield, to give good account, to honour as best she could with further deeds to add to its story that was already so heroic. If she simply gave it away, like a common trinket, she would be saying that she esteemed this great gift little and valued the friendship of Lady Nikos as being of little account. She was not willing to do that, not even for Pyrrha’s sake. </p><p>
  <em>And to be fair, I don’t think Pyrrha would ask me to be so discourteous.</em>
</p><p>“It’s the principle, isn’t it?” Sunset said.</p><p>Pyrrha nodded. “You understand what honour is done to you with such a weapon?”</p><p>“I do now,” Sunset replied. “Your mother… when she gave me the blade, she told me that it had been wielded in the Battle of the Four Sovereigns… and that Achates had fought against the Last King… I suppose she told me enough that I can hardly say I didn’t understand the import. She did not tell me who Achates had slain first, but… perhaps that hardly seemed relevant.”</p><p>“Indeed,” Pyrrha said. “Miló and Akoúo̱ are excellent weapons, and I would not trade them for any blade out of our family vault, but… I know that this isn’t your fault, and I ask you to forgive me, but… I hope you can understand that it isn’t always easy to look at you and see the daughter that my mother would rather have had.”</p><p>Sunset winced. Her ears drooped down towards her hair, and her tail drooped too, hanging listless down behind her. She threw away the stuffed unicorn, guiding it with telekinesis down onto the camp bed. “That,” she began, her voice a little hoarse, “that is-”</p><p>“Don’t say it isn’t true after you’ve just told me that you’re honest.”</p><p>“I said I’m sometimes honest,” Sunset reminded her. “But honestly, I think that you exaggerate.”</p><p>“Do I?” Pyrrha asked. “She gives you a sword out of our family’s treasury-”</p><p>“A retainer’s sword, for all its honour.”</p><p>“She gives you a stipend.”</p><p>“For dust and armour and other necessities; it’s not as though she’s written me a blank cheque,” Sunset replied. “I’m a better fighter because of the things I can buy thanks to your mother.”</p><p>“Don’t you think that Ruby and Jaune might also be better fighters if my mother were to offer them her financial support?” Pyrrha asked.</p><p>Sunset felt that was a question which, far from behind rhetorical, deserved to be taken seriously. She folded her arms across her chest. “Ruby… Ruby doesn’t really need dust, although she could use dust rounds, I suppose. Jaune… he could afford some better armour instead of that amateur dramatics stuff he’s got on at the moment, I suppose. Could he use dust in his sword?”</p><p>Pyrrha nodded. “He could infuse the blade, as you’ve done with Soteria,” she said.</p><p>“You could buy dust for him if he can’t afford it himself,” Sunset pointed out. “Is he too poor to buy dust?”</p><p>“I… don’t know,” Pyrrha admitted. “I haven’t… I don’t want to pry into his finances, in case… I’m worried that, with me being… would he take offence if I asked him how much-?”</p><p>“No,” Sunset said. “I doubt that there’s much that you could do that would offend Jaune, and I’m pretty sure that asking about money wouldn’t be one of them. Not the way you’re likely to ask, anyway.” She ventured a grin.</p><p>To her relief, Pyrrha smiled back. “That’s good to hear,” she acknowledged. “But the point is that my mother-”</p><p>“Isn’t invested in the prowess of the team, just in me,” Sunset finished.</p><p>“Exactly,” Pyrrha said. She looked out of the window once more, to where the sky without was beginning to grow dark. “And the worst part is… I can see why she prefers you. You’re ambitious, confident-”</p><p>“Overconfident, at times.”</p><p>“Proud.”</p><p>“Prickly.”</p><p>“There is no need for you to be so humble,” Pyrrha said. “The truth is, you are everything she would have wished for in an heir.”</p><p>“More fool her then, when she has you to be her heir,” Sunset replied. “Not only as skilled as a hero of old but as gracious as a princess to boot and as learned as a master of lore. I… I have a fire in my belly that you lack, maybe-”</p><p>“I don’t think there’s any ‘maybe’ about it, do you?” Pyrrha asked.</p><p>“But that is only because I want the things that you were born heir to,” Sunset insisted. “You don’t need to hunt after those things because you have them already: the glory, the reputation, the fame. All the things that I am ambitious for, you already possess, so why should you be ambitious?”</p><p>“My mother would have me be ambitious for further fame and other glories,” Pyrrha said, “but that is not what I desire.”</p><p>“Then why get so hung up that she favours one who does desire those things?” Sunset demanded.</p><p>“Well, when you put it like that, it sounds rather silly,” Pyrrha admitted. She got up and walked towards Sunset – and her own bed. “I’m sorry, Sunset.”</p><p>“You don’t need to apologise,” Sunset assured her. “I get it.”</p><p>Pyrrha tilted her head ever so slightly. “You do?”</p><p>Sunset nodded. “There was a girl, in my teacher’s house,” she explained. “She arrived not long before… the final break between us. She was pretty – beautiful, even – graceful and gracious, kind and considerate, beloved by everyone who had cause to come into contact with her.” Sunset grinned. “You remind me of her, except that you’re also a great warrior on top of all that.”</p><p>A faint blush rose to Pyrrha’s cheeks. “Stop it, Sunset; you’re just trying to embarrass me.”</p><p>“No, I’m trying to say that… she was everything that was expected of someone in our exalted position, everything that I was not,” Sunset said. “I hated her.”</p><p>“I don’t hate you,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>“No, because you’re a better person than I am,” Sunset replied. “I… I don’t want you to start hating me. So if… if there’s anything that I can do-”</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha said quickly. “I mean… I’m aware that this might make it seem as though I’m complaining for the sake of it, but I don’t want you to give up my mother’s money, or Soteria. It wouldn’t be right for me to ask that of you merely for the sake of my own… concerns.”</p><p>“Then what do you want?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Pyrrha sat down on her bed. “I don’t know,” she admitted, with a nervous laugh. “I suppose… I think… I don’t know. Perhaps I just wanted to let you know how I feel.”</p><p>Sunset took a couple of steps towards her and sat down next to Pyrrha on the bed. “I can understand that,” she murmured. She reached out and gently took hold of one of Pyrrha’s hands. “I… I’m sorry.”</p><p>“You don’t have to-”</p><p>“Yes, I do,” Sunset said. “My relationship with your mother… I should have thought about how it would make you feel.” She paused. “I would offer to swear an oath to her as a retainer, but I fear my pride would not bear it.”</p><p>Pyrrha snorted. “No, I doubt it would. And besides, what kind of friend would I be if I demanded that you humble yourself like that to make me feel better?”</p><p>“What kind of friend have I been to make you feel like this?”</p><p>“I’m fine,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>“Clearly not.”</p><p>“…no,” Pyrrha conceded, after a moment. “But I… I can bear it. After all, I am the one who has turned my back upon my mother; what right do I have to complain that you have her trust and I do not? And I have Jaune, I have… I have so many things to be thankful for, it would churlish to obsess too much over this one thing.” She hesitated. “I will try to remember that in future.” Pyrrha glanced at Sunset. “Will you remind me of it, if I forget?”</p><p>“Remind you not to be upset at me? Yeah, I think I can do that,” Sunset agreed. She smirked. “I’ll also remind you to call your mother.”</p><p>Pyrrha sighed. “Not now, Sunset.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0034"><h2>34. To A Successful Mission</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Secrets come out.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To A Successful Mission</p><p> </p><p>“Sunset,” Ruby cried. “What are you eating?”</p><p>Sunset blinked in surprise and ostentatiously studied the two slices of bread in her hand. “It’s a sandwich,” she announced flatly.</p><p>“It’s got nothing in it!” Ruby complained.</p><p>“Don’t be ridiculous; it’s got watercress and celery in it.”</p><p>“'Watercress and celery'!” Ruby repeated, her tone aghast. “That’s not a sandwich filling; that… that’s nothing. You’re eating an air sandwich!”</p><p>Sunset rolled her eyes and ignored Ruby’s opinion on her diet as she bit into the sandwich; the celery had a satisfying crunch as her teeth drove through the slices. </p><p>“I’m not altogether sure of Ruby’s motives for speaking out,” Twilight said softly, “but she does have a point. Did you know that celery is one of the only foods which consumes more energy to eat than you get back from consuming it?”</p><p>Sunset looked at her. “So… you’re saying that I’m losing weight by sitting here and eating this?”</p><p>“No,” Twilight said. “If you were only eating celery, that might be true, but bread definitely does not follow the same rule.”</p><p>“Pity,” Sunset commented dryly.</p><p>Rainbow snorted. “Concerned about your figure?”</p><p>Sunset raised one eyebrow in her direction. “Who wouldn’t want to look this good?”</p><p>“Get some muscle on your arms like me and Pyrrha, and then we can talk about looking good,” Rainbow bragged.</p><p>“You think <em>you</em> look better than me?” Sunset asked. She chuckled to herself as she took another bite out of her sandwich. “Dream on.”</p><p>“What, you think you’ve got something that I don’t?”</p><p>“I think that I’ve had a steady relationship and you haven’t,” Sunset said. <em>And I didn’t get Flash on my winning personality.</em></p><p>Rainbow shook her head vigorously from side to side as she dug into her grilled cheese and meatball toastie. “I,” she declared, oblivious to the little bit of grilled cheese and meatball sauce dangling down the corner of her lip, “could get anyone I wanted to.”</p><p>“Oh yeah?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“Yeah,” Rainbow replied, as Twilight dabbed at the corner of her lip with a napkin.</p><p>“Go on, then.”</p><p>Rainbow hesitated for a moment. “I… don’t want to,” she said as Sunset jeered at her.</p><p>“You are both idiots,” Blake muttered.</p><p>“Yeah, I mean, who eats celery without peanut butter?” Sun asked.</p><p>“I do,” Sunset said. “Does anyone have a problem with that?”</p><p>“I don’t have a problem,” Sun replied. “I just think it’s weird.”</p><p>Sunset rolled her eyes and focussed on finishing off the remains of her sandwich.</p><p>In spite of the discussion, the tone in the dorm room was affable, friendly, and comfortable; in fact, it was only in that comfortable atmosphere that you could say the things that had been flying between Rainbow and Sunset without worrying about the kind of offence that would leave scars. She wouldn’t have brought up Flash in front of people she didn’t trust, for fear that they would use it against her; it would have been very easy for Rainbow to have pointed out that her long-term relationship ended in failure and social humiliation. But she didn’t, because there was a difference between banter and being a jackass, and they all knew each other well enough to stay on the right side of said line. </p><p>Mostly. Nobody really knew Sun that well, or not as well as they knew one another, but he was Blake’s boyfriend, and he had been on the train mission, and it would have been its own kind of jackassery to have excluded him just because he was a relative newcomer to the group. </p><p>Plus, the word was that his own team hadn’t taken kindly to him sneaking off to be with Blake, so it might possibly have been extra harsh to have excluded him from tonight. </p><p>And, again, he had been on the train mission, and as much as a part of tonight was about sharing secrets, it was also about celebrating an operation which, for all its flaws, had been a great success when taken in the round. It would have been churlish not to have included in their victory feast someone who had been there when they gained the victory. </p><p>The room was crowded, but not oppressively so; there was enough room for everybody: Sunset and Blake knelt cross-legged on Blake’s bed, that had been Sunset’s bed until she so generously gave it up; Sun sat on the floor beside the bed, his head almost but not quite in Blake’s lap; Pyrrha and Jaune sat side by side upon the window seat; while Ciel sat on Pyrrha’s bed in a fashion like a lady riding side-saddle upon a horse; Rainbow, Twilight, Ruby, and Penny sat on the floor, in two pairs on either side of the door; Ruby and Penny were closer to the bathroom, Rainbow and Twilight to the far wall where their initials were carved.</p><p>This disposition meant that there was space on the floor for the food and mostly room to reach it when you wanted more; the plates were paper, which combined with the food on offer to lend a festival air to proceedings as people moved back and forth across the room to refill plates that became progressively greasier and greasier until they became unusable and had to be exchanged for something else. </p><p>The levels of cooking ability across the two teams – and Sun – varied considerably: Jaune could add ‘good cook’ to his ever-growing list of talents to balance out his inexperience as a huntsman; Ruby had an old family cookie recipe, which was no less an old family recipe for having apparently originated with her mother; Blake knew a few things about how to cook and serve fish which had the carnivores amongst the company in raptures; Twilight had apologised that her cakes were not as good as Pinkie’s, but not as good as Pinkie’s was a high bar to fall short of; Pyrrha was inexperienced but eager to learn; on the other hand, Sunset had never cooked before and had no intention of starting now, and she had seen what happened the last time Rainbow tried to bake and was grateful that she hadn’t tried again. </p><p>It had to be said that a lot of the food didn’t particularly appeal to Sunset’s palate – the chicken pieces with that seasoning on some of it and that coating on the rest, the tuna in that pungent sauce, the meatball toasties, the sausage rolls – they all left her cold, and so, she left them well alone. But her friends were aware enough of her tastes that she was not devoid of things to eat besides the controversial watercress and celery sandwiches: there were cucumber sandwiches too, but there was homemade slaw, jacket potatoes, beans, macaroni, cookies, and cakes. </p><p>Yes, there was quite enough that Sunset didn’t feel as though she was missing out by not eating of the flesh of another living creature. </p><p>“So,” Blake began, “did anyone else in here know that Sunset was a monarchist?”</p><p>“You want to talk about this <em>now</em>?” Sunset demanded.</p><p>Blake shrugged. “We’re all here.”</p><p>Rainbow swallowed. “I didn’t know that,” she said, “but now that you’ve said it, it doesn’t surprise me.”</p><p>“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Penny asked.</p><p>“It… isn’t really good or bad, I think,” Ruby ventured. “It’s just… a little weird.”</p><p>“It is a little bad,” Pyrrha sighed, her face beginning to redden, “if this is going where I think it may be going.”</p><p>“Where is it going?” Twilight said. “What do you mean by ‘a monarchist’?”</p><p>“She called Pyrrha’s mother ‘the rightful Empress of Mistral,’” Blake said.</p><p>“Which she is,” Sunset insisted.</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha murmured. “No, she isn’t.”</p><p>“The Emperor of Mistral laid down his crown at the end of the Great War, as did the King of Mantle and the Queen of Vacuo,” Ciel pointed out.</p><p>“The crown as a thing of gold, adorned with jewels, may be removed,” Sunset allowed. “It may be thrown away or melted down or laid at the feet of a greater conquering sovereign, but the crown, the weight of majesty of state, the royal rights and duties are not so lightly put aside.” <em>Snatch Princess Celestia’s crown from off her head, tear the heavy necklace from around her throat, hurl her golden slippers into the fire, yet she will remain Princess Celestia. For a throne exists not only upon a dais in a palace, a crown is not just a gleaming diadem; throne and crown alike are forged and fashioned in the hearts of little ponies everywhere who accept – nay, who embrace – the princess as their sovereign. </em></p><p>
  <em>And so it is in Remnant also. Though the race be changed, that remains the same.</em>
</p><p>“Are they not?” Ciel inquired. “It seems to me that the three kings did both, for none ruled in Mistral, Mantle, or Vacuo thereafter; they had not only laid aside their ornaments but their burdens too.”</p><p>“Let’s not pretend that they did it voluntarily,” Sunset replied. “They were forced to do by the King of Vale-”</p><p>“The King gave up his crown, too,” Pyrrha reminded Sunset. “Having established peace amongst all four nations and set up a system that would preserve that peace, he laid down his own crown and authority both and retired to the newly founded Beacon Academy.”</p><p>“Really?” Jaune said. “The King of Vale lived here?”</p><p>Pyrrha’s tone was fond as she said, “Jaune, he was the first Headmaster of the school. Doctor Oobleck covered that last semester.”</p><p>“Right,” Jaune said. “Thank you… for reminding me.” He laughed nervously. “No wonder I didn’t do so well on that test.”</p><p>“Yes, the King retired from the affairs of state and contented himself with the affairs of running the academy,” Sunset said, “while the four kingdoms were given over to lesser men.”</p><p>“Do you have to phrase it like that?” Blake asked.</p><p>Sunset looked at her. “That Mistralian historian you and Pyrrha have read described the period after the Great War as the world moving from a theatre of giants to a pantomime of dwarfs.”</p><p>“Yes, he did,” Blake said, “but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with him, and I don’t have to like hearing you say it. It sounds… wrong.”</p><p>“So the reason you wanted to talk about it is to convince me that I was wrong?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“You <em>are</em> wrong!” Blake insisted. “You can’t just talk about ‘lesser’ people as though you’re somehow different from the rest of them. You can’t just declare yourself better than everyone else-”</p><p>“Too late for that,” Rainbow muttered.</p><p>“I’m being serious!” Blake cried. “Pyrrha, I mean no offence, but your ancestor was a slaver. He kept my people as slaves. Why should someone like that, why should any one person, be allowed to rule over others, to make decisions that affect their lives and deaths? Why should so much power be bestowed upon someone who hasn’t earned it?”</p><p>“Because they do earn it, or they should,” Sunset said. “I admit that some of the kings and queens of the four kingdoms might have been a little less than perfect, but the ideal monarchy is so much grander and more glorious than even the ideal republic.”</p><p>“That’s because it is an ideal,” Blake said. “It doesn’t exist.”</p><p>“Ideals can exist,” Ciel declared. “Atlas is an ideal, a dream that we have conjured amongst the clouds and, with toil and hardship, made that dream a reality.”</p><p>“You might be working towards it,” Blake allowed, “but I’m not sure you’re there quite yet.”</p><p>“Okay, you want an example of a thing that exists?” Sunset demanded. “Pyrrha.”</p><p>“Please don’t bring me into this,” Pyrrha groaned.</p><p>“Pyrrha is training to become a huntress,” Sunset said. “Pyrrha is training so that she can defend her people; Pyrrha <em>has</em> defended her people against the karkadann when no other would.”</p><p>“That’s not very fair, Sunset; no one else <em>could</em>,” Ruby corrected. “Because they were all away. Not that you weren’t really brave, Pyrrha-”</p><p>“Believe me, Ruby, I quite understand what you’re saying.”</p><p>“Pyrrha behaved as the scion of a royal line ought,” Sunset asserted. “Meanwhile, what did the Councillors of Mistral do?”</p><p>“They asked Pyrrha to handle it,” Jaune said. “Do you think they should have gone out and fought it themselves?”</p><p>“Not necessarily, but come on, look at First Councillor Aris,” Sunset said. “She’s in power because she talks a good game and knows how to make lavish promises, but Ruby says that she starved the provinces of huntsmen for the longest time, and then when the White Fang started prowling around the city, she has done absolutely nothing to stop it. We in this room have done more to keep Vale safe than those who lead it.”</p><p>“That’s our job,” Ruby said. “Or at least it’s the job that we’re training for.”</p><p>“What is everybody talking about?” Penny asked. “I’m lost.”</p><p>“That makes two of us,” Sun admitted.</p><p>“Sunset doesn’t think that ordinary people should be able to decide who gets to be in charge,” Rainbow explained. “She’s wrong.”</p><p>“Am I?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“Yes,” Rainbow insisted. “Robyn Hill has never been elected to the Council; instead, we have people like Cadance and the General, good people, smart people. I’d rather have that than some motorbike racer be in charge just because of who his parents were. I know the system seems like it’s set up so that anyone can be successful, but real quality always finds a way to rise to the top.”</p><p>“I must confess that I am less sanguine about the political wisdom of the body politic,” Ciel said, “but in the interest of general harmony perhaps we ought to change the subject.”</p><p>“Oh, thank goodness for that,” Pyrrha groaned.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Pyrrha, I just…” Sunset trailed off. “I’m sorry. But I think what I think.”</p><p>“And what you think is…” Blake began.</p><p>Sunset frowned at her. “Go on.”</p><p>Blake shook her head. “No.”</p><p>“Go on,” Sunset insisted.</p><p>“Nobody wants to talk about this any more. I’m sorry for bringing it up,” Blake replied. “I should have known that it would spoil the mood.”</p><p>Silence descended in the dorm room. </p><p>Rainbow’s look passed through discomfort, travelled across guilt very swiftly, and then entered mischievous territory. “You know, the real reason Sunset doesn’t like voting comes down to the time she was voted ‘Biggest Meanie’ in the Combat School yearbook.”</p><p>Ruby snorted. “'Biggest Meanie'? You had a category for ‘Biggest Meanie’?”</p><p>“No, it wasn’t a real category,” Sunset hissed, “but that didn’t stop everyone from voting for me anyway. Every year.”</p><p>“What’s a yearbook?” Penny asked.</p><p>“It’s a book produced every year by Combat Schools,” Twilight explained. “Everyone has their picture inside, individually and with their class, and there are details about some of the clubs and sports teams; the upperclassmen get to answer to a few questions about their plans for the future, and all your friends sign the book so you can remember them after you graduate-”</p><p>“That all sounds wonderful.”</p><p>“And everyone votes for their fellow students to win superlative categories,” Twilight carried on. “Like 'Best Smile' or 'Class Clown' or 'Greatest and Powerfulest.'”</p><p>“Or 'Biggest Meanie,'” Sunset muttered.</p><p>“That last one doesn’t sound very nice,” Penny said.</p><p>“It wasn’t,” Sunset growled.</p><p>“You kind of deserved it,” Rainbow reminded her.</p><p>“Not every year, I didn’t,” Sunset snapped. “Not to mention, Flash and I ought to have been a shoo-in for Cutest Couple, but instead… you know, I can’t even remember who won Cutest Couple, they were that forgettable.”</p><p>“Oh, get over it,” Rainbow told her. “Everyone knows those awards don’t really mean anything.”</p><p>“Easy for you to say,” Sunset said. “You six got voted Best Friends every single year, and <em>you</em> were voted Most Likely to Succeed in your last year at Canterlot.”</p><p>Rainbow’s smile was unspeakably, unbearably smug.</p><p>Sunset glanced at Pyrrha. “I bet you were voted Most Likely to Succeed when you graduated Sanctum, weren’t you? No, Most Likely to Succeed <em>and </em>Best All Around.”</p><p>Pyrrha mumbled something so quiet that Sunset, even with two extra ears, couldn’t make it out.</p><p>“What was that?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Pyrrha’s face was flushed bright red. “And… Best Smile,” she confessed.</p><p>Sunset snorted. “Well, I won’t say that I can’t see it.”</p><p>“Twilight got that one,” Rainbow said, putting one arm around Twilight’s shoulders.</p><p>“I still feel like that's really unfair,” Twilight murmured. “Rarity should have won that, or Pinkie.”</p><p>“Nah, if you only focus on the smile, I can see that one too,” Sunset said.</p><p>“Besides, Pinkie won Class Clown, and Rarity was voted Best Dressed and Best Hair, so it’s not like either of them really missed out,” Rainbow assured her.</p><p>“All of this sounds kinda rough on anyone who didn’t get the votes, or who got the wrong votes,” Sun said. “It’s making me glad I didn’t go to combat school.”</p><p>“At any school other than Canterlot, you would have been a shoo-in for Class Clown,” Rainbow informed him.</p><p>“Is there not a difference between funny and foolish?” Ciel asked.</p><p>“Sometimes, sure,” Rainbow agreed. “But sometimes, stupid can be funny.”</p><p>“I bet you won something,” Sunset said. “Let me see… your close quarters aren’t good enough for Best All Around… Beauty and Brains.”</p><p>Ciel pursed her lips together. “As it happens, I was voted Most Unique. I’m still not certain it was intended as a compliment.”</p><p>“So you didn’t go to combat school either, Sun?” Jaune asked.</p><p>“Nah,” Sun replied. “I just picked up a few things growing up in Vacuo.”</p><p>“What do you mean, either?” Rainbow said. “You didn’t go to combat school?”</p><p>Jaune froze for a moment, with the look of someone who had forgotten that not everybody in the room knew his secret. “Well, funny story…” he began.</p><p>They ate, they talked, they laughed, and when they had eaten their fill the bin in the corner of the room was full to overflowing, and there were quite a few dishes in the kitchenette sink waiting for somebody to apply some elbow grease – and that person would probably be Sunset, given her lack of contribution so far – once they were done talking. </p><p>Right now, however, they had some information to share. </p><p>“So,” Sunset said, clapping her hands together. “We've come to the serious bit.”</p><p>“For a while,” Rainbow said, her tone subdued. </p><p>Sunset shrugged at that. It implied an end to the serious mood that she was not certain would come before evening’s end. She licked her lips and glanced at Ruby where she sat on the floor next to Penny. “Where shall we begin?” she murmured, as much to herself as to anyone else. “Where shall we begin?”</p><p>“Magic is real, and Sunset’s got it!” The words burst out of Twilight’s mouth like water gushing through a hole in a dam. </p><p>Silence descended on the dorm room. Pyrrha, Jaune, and Ruby – to whom this was not new – waited expectantly for any reaction from the Rosepetals, Blake, and Sun, to whom this <em>was</em> new.</p><p>Twilight laughed nervously. “Sorry,” she said. “I just couldn’t hold it in any longer.”</p><p>Rainbow Dash blinked rapidly. “It… it’s real? Like <em>real</em>? All of that stuff-”</p><p>“Yes!” Twilight cried triumphantly. “All of it is real, I was right, and you owe me an apology for implying that I was crazy!”</p><p>“I never implied that you were crazy!”</p><p>“You told me that people see things after they hit their heads!”</p><p>“That’s a concussion, not craziness!”</p><p>“It didn’t feel that way,” Twilight said, quietly and with a touch of sullenness.</p><p>“I didn’t… sorry,” Rainbow said. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad, I just… didn’t believe you.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“But you were right?” Rainbow asked. She looked at Sunset. “Twilight was right. It’s all true?”</p><p>“I don’t know about <em>all</em> of it,” Sunset said. “I’m not even sure what all of it is – that’s why Twilight got me those books – but magic does exist, and I have some.”</p><p>“I don’t understand,” Penny said. “What do you mean when you say 'magic'?”</p><p>“That’s what I’d like to know too,” Blake declared, her tone wary. Her ears were pricked up sharply above her head, long and straight like arrowheads. “What <em>do</em> you mean? What are you talking about?”</p><p>“In some ways, 'magic' is a lazy catch-all term, for things currently beyond our scientific understanding,” Twilight declared.</p><p>“My magic is not beyond scientific understanding; it’s simply beyond scientific <em>knowledge</em>,” Sunset corrected her. <em>In this world, anyway.</em> In Equestrian terms, Twilight’s definition of magic as a kind of dark matter was wholly inaccurate, although she could see how it worked in Remnant. “And it’s going to stay that way,” she added, sweeping her gaze across the room and all its occupants before she focussed on Blake. “Have you never thought that my semblance was strangely wide-ranging?”</p><p>Blake’s brow furrowed. “Some semblances are more versatile than others. My clones can be combined with dust to produce a variety of different effects; it’s just not obvious because I don’t have access to dust. You might say that Weiss’ glyphs are strangely wide-ranging, but that doesn’t make it magic.”</p><p>“No,” Sunset allowed. “But I don’t have a semblance.”</p><p>She wouldn’t have thought that it would be possible for Blake’s ears to stick up any higher on top of her head than they already were, but somehow, they managed it anyway. “You… you don’t have a semblance?”</p><p>“It’s magic,” Sunset said. “I’ve been passing it off as my semblance. Which, incidentally, is a possible answer to your question, Dash: they have been using their abilities; you just didn’t notice.”</p><p>“Why…?” Blake began, but no other words followed the first, at least not straight away. “I’m sorry, Sunset, but why should… ? How can…?”</p><p>“You don’t believe me?” Sunset suggested.</p><p>“I don’t want to call you a liar,” Blake said delicately, “but… it’s a lot to take in.”</p><p>“Would it help if I turned that chicken piece into a frog?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Blake’s eyes widened. “You can do that?”</p><p>“It seems to be her favourite method of demonstration,” Jaune observed.</p><p>“Whatever happened to the last frog?” asked Pyrrha.</p><p>“I let it out,” Ruby explained. “It didn’t seem right to keep it cooped up in here.”</p><p>“It would have turned back into an orange if you’d left it alone,” Sunset said.</p><p>“Oh.”</p><p>Penny stood up, leaning forwards eagerly. “I’d like to see you turn something into a frog.”</p><p>“I am uncertain that would be sanitary in the presence of food,” Ciel said, “and this is not a children’s party.” She paused. “For my own part, I believe that you can do it; there is no demonstration necessary.”</p><p>“You believe her?” Twilight asked. “You believe that magic exists?”</p><p>“The world is full of extraordinary things, some of which can appear… inexplicable,” Ciel murmured. She clasped her hands together on her knee. “My mother once told me a story of a… it was after the conclusion of a particularly harrowing mission. She was flying a Skyray through the teeth of a snowstorm at night, having lost contact with all other members of her flight; one engine was out of action, communications were down, she was carrying six wounded men in need of medical attention, but she had lost contact with her home cruiser. No situation ever seemed more hopeless. And then… then she saw a light. A single light, as though a star had pierced the clouds but closer, so close to her airship, moving as though it were trying to guide her. My mother did not know what this light was, but she was out of options but not out of hope, and so, she followed this light, this guiding star, trailing it as it twisted and turned, keeping it ever before her until… until it disappeared, to be replaced a few seconds by the myriad lights of the <em>Ardent</em>, welcoming her home. </p><p>“There was no air traffic detected beside my mother’s airship, no communications were received, and yet, <em>something</em> had guided her to safety. Just because the light cannot be explained does not mean that there was no light. There are more things in heaven and earth that we can dream of… or have yet dreamt of at least. We must have faith that all things will be revealed to us at need and that there is purpose to those things which we do not understand. If you say that you have magic and that that which you have led us to believe is your semblance is, in fact, said magic, then I believe you.”</p><p>“I suppose you have no reason to lie about it,” Blake said. “Or should I say, that you have no reason to stop lying, after having lied about it for some time already. But I still have questions.”</p><p>“You and me both.” Rainbow leaned back against the wall of the dorm room. “So the reason why you appeared to have gotten so much stronger since coming to Beacon compared to the way you sucked in combat school, that’s because you decided to cut loose with your magic?”</p><p>Sunset nodded. “I was hiding my light under a bushel before.” She grinned. “I’m not doing that any more, as you’ll find out if we ever meet in the sparring ring.”</p><p>Rainbow waved that off without responding to it. “Okay, so why hide in the first place?”</p><p>“Because I didn’t want to get poked and prodded by scientists to try and find out how magic works and how they can duplicate it.”</p><p>“But what if we could duplicate it?” Rainbow asked. “Maybe Twilight could figure out a way to copy it, to give it to everyone-”</p><p>“It doesn’t work that way.”</p><p>“How do you know, you haven’t tried?”</p><p>“Because I know,” Sunset insisted. “I know how my own powers work. They aren’t something that I… my magic is an extension of myself, like my aura, almost. You can’t just replicate it, and even if you got close, then it wouldn’t be my magic, because other people aren’t me. The power would change to fit them, their personality, their aptitudes and natures. You can’t clone me.” Her eyes narrowed. “Unless you’ve got secret Atlesian cloning tech that you’re not telling anyone about?”</p><p>“Don’t be ridiculous; we’re not working on anything like that,” Twilight said. “And if we were, I certainly wouldn’t admit it,” she added under her breath. “Anywayyy,” she went on, drawing out the word a little more than was strictly necessary, “while you’re probably right, I wouldn’t mind taking a look at you with a  couple of instruments.”</p><p>“Hmm, let’s think about that,” Sunset murmured.</p><p>“Can you at least answer the questions you didn’t get the chance to answer on the train because of Adam attacking?”</p><p>“Uh, yeah, okay, why not?”</p><p>“Have you always had these powers?”</p><p>“Yes,” Sunset said. “I was born with them.”</p><p>“Can you do anything with them that you haven’t shown yet?”</p><p>“Yes,” Sunset replied again, “but nothing useful in combat.”</p><p>“Turning things into other things could be pretty useful in combat,” Rainbow pointed out. “In fact, if you can do that, why do you waste time shooting laser beams?”</p><p>“Because aura blocks my magic,” Sunset explained. “I could turn an inanimate object into a frog, but I couldn’t turn you into a frog so long as your aura was up. I’d need to break your aura first, and at that point, I’d have won the fight anyway.”</p><p>“How about weapons?”</p><p>“Weapons are conduits for aura.”</p><p>“I know that,” Rainbow replied sharply. “But not when nobody is holding onto them.”</p><p>Sunset’s mouth opened just a little, but no words came out. That didn’t just happen. It was not possible that Rainbow Dash knew more about the way that Sunset’s magic could be used in battle than Sunset herself. </p><p>
  <em>I suppose General Ironwood likes her for a reason.</em>
</p><p>“Is it linked to your aura in any way?” Twilight asked, leaning forward expectantly.</p><p>“No, I’ve had my magic since before I unlocked my aura,” Sunset said. <em>Since before I knew what aura was.</em> “It’s like aura in that it’s unique to me, but it’s not connected.”</p><p>“Do you know why you have it?” Blake inquired, her voice soft. “I mean, out of all the people in the world, why were you born with this… unique gift?”</p><p>“How do we know it’s unique?” Jaune asked.</p><p>Blake frowned. “Because Sunset-”</p><p>“Is the only person willing to tell us about it,” Jaune said. </p><p>“Hmm,” Blake murmured. “That’s… a good point.”</p><p>“She’s not unique,” Twilight insisted. “There are reports of unexplained phenomena like the one that Ciel’s mother described happening all over Remnant, and I think that magic… for want of a better name, is the cause.”</p><p>“Perhaps, but it still doesn’t answer my question,” Blake pointed out.</p><p>“No,” Sunset said. “But that… is my secret to keep.”</p><p>Blake held Sunset’s gaze for a moment, before she nodded. “Of course. The limits of your honesty are for you to set, not us.”</p><p>“That’s very understanding of you.”</p><p>“It would be a little hypocritical of me to be anything else, don’t you think?” Blake replied. </p><p>“I don’t understand,” Penny said. “What does this mean?”</p><p>“It doesn’t mean anything,” Sunset said. “I’m still me. I just… my abilities come from a slightly different place.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t say that it doesn’t mean anything,” Rainbow said. “It means Twilight was right all along, for one thing.”</p><p>“And if Sunset exists, then that means there could be more out there,” Twilight added.</p><p>“If they don’t want to be found, you shouldn’t look for them,” Blake said. “Sun, how are you taking this? You’ve been very quiet.”</p><p>Sun shrugged. “It’s like Sunset said: it doesn’t mean anything.”</p><p>“You weren’t supposed to agree with me!” Sunset snapped.</p><p>“It’s like Ciel said: it’s a big world, and there’s a lot of stuff happening in it,” Sun added. “It’s cool for you, I guess, but… you know?”</p><p>“No,” Sunset said. “I don’t know, but apparently, neither do you.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, in response to Blake’s question, there isn’t any need to go looking very far for others with magic, because there’s someone else with magic sitting right here in this room.”</p><p>Ruby leapt to her feet, striking a pose with two fingers held in front of her right eye, while with her other hand she held her cape around her as though she was trying to hide in it. </p><p>Penny gasped. “Ruby! You have magic too!”</p><p>“Yep!” Ruby announced proudly.</p><p>“Can you turn something into a frog?”</p><p>“No,” Ruby admitted, deflating a little. “I… the truth is I don’t really know what I can do. Or how I can do it.”</p><p>“Twilight,” Sunset said. “All the research that you’ve been doing into magic, and you never came across the idea of Silver Eyes?”</p><p>Twilight shook her head.</p><p>“What about 'The Warrior in the Woods'?” Jaune asked. “What about the tale of the Dragon and the Two Sons?”</p><p>“The warrior in 'The Warrior in the Woods' never actually does anything that can be described as magic,” Twilight replied. “Her silver eyes are remarked on as a feature of beauty, not as a weapon. And… I’ve never heard of that other one.”</p><p>“I can lend you the book, if you like,” Pyrrha suggested.</p><p>“Ruby’s eyes are of course notable for the uniqueness of their colour,” Ciel said, “but you suggest that there is more to it than that?”</p><p>Ruby nodded. “My mom kept a diary; in it, she talks about using her silver eyes to zap grimm, to turn them to stone or burn them or things like that. She called it magic.”</p><p>“We didn’t believe it either,” Jaune admitted, “until Sunset told us that she had magic too, then it started to seem a lot more plausible. If one kind of magic exists, then why not more?”</p><p>“Does Yang know about this?” Blake asked.</p><p>“About my eyes, yes,” Ruby said, “but not about Sunset.”</p><p>“Can you use this power?” asked Twilight.</p><p>Ruby’s face fell a little. “No,” she confessed. “In her diary, my mom says that it’s activated by feelings of love, but… she doesn’t really explain what that means, and Sunset’s magic is too different from mine for her to be able to help. And Sunset doesn’t want me to talk to Professor Ozpin about it-”</p><p>“Don’t say it like that, Ruby; it makes it sound like I don’t have good reasons,” protested Sunset.</p><p>“Well, you kind of… don’t,” Jaune said.</p><p>“I have excellent reasons, thank you very much,” Sunset declared. “I don’t trust him.”</p><p>“We know, you’ve said, repeatedly,” Rainbow muttered.</p><p>“Professor Ozpin knows about the power of your eyes?” Ciel asked. “To be clear?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Ruby confirmed. “He helped my mom learn to master them.”</p><p>“That explains why he let you into Beacon early,” Rainbow muttered.</p><p>Ruby went on, “That’s why I could ask him for help if <em>someone</em> trusted him a little more.”</p><p>“Well, I don’t trust him, and you shouldn’t trust him either,” Sunset insisted.</p><p>“I am inclined to agree,” Ciel said.</p><p>Pyrrha looked at Ciel in astonishment. “Excuse me?”</p><p>“Ruby, how effective are the Silver Eyes you speak of? Does your mother’s diary offer any indication?”</p><p>“Pretty strong, I think,” Ruby replied. “She used them to take out whole bunches of grimm, even if it did leave her pretty weak afterwards.”</p><p>Ciel’s face was creased by a frown. “The Headmaster of Beacon, a man sworn to defend the Kingdom of Vale, has knowledge of a powerful weapon against the grimm and sits on knowledge and weapon both. He could approach Ruby and offer his services, in spite of Sunset’s disapproval, if wished to do so. Why does he not?”</p><p>“Perhaps he has some concern for Ruby as more than just a weapon,” Pyrrha suggested, a touch of acid corroding the tone of her voice.</p><p>“That is no reason to keep what he knows a secret,” Ciel said. “We should inform General Ironwood.”</p><p>“No,” Rainbow said. “We’re not going to do that.”</p><p>Ciel’s eyebrows rose. “Is there a good reason why not?”</p><p>“Because that’s not why they asked us here,” Rainbow declared, getting to her feet. “Ruby and Sunset are telling us these things because they trust us, and so, we’re not going to turn around and run our mouths about their secrets, not even to the General. Some things just aren’t ours to tell.”</p><p>Ciel hesitated for a moment, before she gave a curt nod of the head. “Very well. I understand and will keep all your confidences.”</p><p>“Besides,” Ruby said, “in my case, there’s not much to tell, since I can’t get my eyes to work.”</p><p>“Perhaps I could help with that?” Twilight suggested. “I understand that Sunset is wary of being examined, but it might be that I can find a scientific explanation for your magic that will enable me to unlock your access to it.”</p><p>“Really?” Ruby asked. “Do you think so?”</p><p>“It can’t hurt to try, right?”</p><p>“I don’t know, Twi,” Rainbow said. “Remember that time you tried to scientifically analyse Pinkie?”</p><p>“The bruises wore off eventually.”</p><p>“'Bruises'?” Pyrrha asked anxiously.</p><p>“Twilight had the bruises, not Pinkie,” Rainbow explained quickly.</p><p>Ruby nodded after a moment of what looked like thought. “I guess it couldn’t hurt,” she murmured. “Sure, if you think you can help, then why not?”</p><p>“Great!” Twilight cried.</p><p>“I’m a robot,” Penny announced. </p><p>Everyone looked at her.</p><p>“You know, since we’re all sharing secrets,” Penny said.</p><p>There was a moment of silence before the room – most of the room – collapsed into laughter. </p><p>“Thank you, Penny,” Pyrrha said. “That was… I think we all needed that.”</p><p>“Penny,” Ciel began. “Miss Belladonna and Mister Wukong-”</p><p>“It’s done now, Ciel,” Rainbow said. “I’ll explain to General Ironwood what happened. Kind of. In a way that doesn’t say anything about Ruby or Sunset.”</p><p>“Will you get into trouble?” Penny asked anxiously.</p><p>“Maybe,” Rainbow admitted. “But it was worth it this once.”</p><p>“And now everyone knows, we don’t have to worry about it being a secret any more,” said Ruby.</p><p>“<em>You</em> thought it was a secret,” Sunset murmured. “I’d worked that out weeks ago.”</p><p>“You did not!” Ruby declared.</p><p>Rainbow bent down and picked up her cup off the floor, raising it towards the ceiling. “Here’s to us,” she said, “and to a successful mission.”</p><p>“To a successful mission!”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0035"><h2>35. Her First Debriefing</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Blake gets debriefed by General Ironwood</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Her First Debriefing</p><p> </p><p>“Are you frowning at me?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Blake hadn’t realised that she was frowning, and she stopped as soon as she realised. “Sorry,” she said. “I just… I can understand why General Ironwood might want to see me, but not why he’d ask you to come up here.” The two of them stood in the corridor outside of General Ironwood’s office aboard the <em>Valiant</em>. Or rather, Blake stood; Sunset slouched against the wall like a sack of flour. Blake suspected that she was doing it on purpose in order to demonstrate that she wasn’t a part of General Ironwood’s military and wouldn’t be bound by its discipline. </p><p>It was the same reason that Sunset had her hands thrust into her pockets. </p><p>If Blake had been more determined to remain a mere ancillary of the Atlesian forces, then she might have been tempted to join her, if she had given Rainbow Dash a firm ‘no’ when the idea of transferring to Atlas, then maybe… but she had not given a firm ‘no’ for the good reason that she hadn’t made her mind up yet. And so, she assumed a somewhat military bearing, back straight and hands by her sides, even if she wasn’t actually standing to attention. </p><p><em>Shall I stay or shall I go?</em> Rainbow’s offer… it was a tempting one, not so much for the material advantages as for what you might call the spiritual ones. To be a part of something bigger than herself, bigger than just a four-man team – or a five-man team, even – to be a part of something large and powerful… something like the White Fang, but better. </p><p>But she’d been here before. The White Fang had seemed like the ‘something better’ not so very long ago. She had sat at the feet of Sienna Khan and listened to her talk about the need for justice and the need to take extreme measures in order to obtain that justice, and she had believed her, as she found herself starting to believe Rainbow and the others when they talked about how great and glorious Atlas was. She had a habit of getting swept away by the appeal of a cause when sold by someone passionate and convinced of its righteousness, and Rainbow Dash was certainly that. </p><p>Rainbow… Rainbow reminded her a little of Adam at times; they were both brave, each ferocious in battle, both utterly committed to the cause to which they had dedicated their lives, both able to sell that cause to others. To Blake. Of course, Rainbow Dash wasn’t cruel, or at least, Blake hadn’t seen her be cruel, and she had watched carefully. </p><p>She wasn’t sure how much that lack of cruelty was the doing of Twilight and Rainbow’s other friends and how much was simply the fact that Rainbow had more humanity than Adam. Were people born cruel or kind, or were they fashioned into one or the other by the circumstances in which they lived their lives? A philosophical debate which had eluded the greatest minds in Remnant, there was no chance that she would be able to solve it now while she waited for General Ironwood to see her. </p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose. “Are you saying it’s surprising that General Ironwood should want to speak to me?”</p><p>“No, I… you know what I meant,” Blake said, with a slight huff in her voice. </p><p>Sunset snorted. “Yes. I do. Do you enjoy this?”</p><p>“'Enjoy this'?”</p><p>“Being summoned into the presence of the commanding general himself?” Sunset explained. “Does your heart thrill to the great honour that is done to you?”</p><p>“You sound much more like a Mistralian than an Atlesian sometimes,” Blake pointed out.</p><p>“Thanks,” Sunset said, a slight smile playing across her face. “I prefer Mistral to Atlas.”</p><p>“They both have equally poor reputations when it comes to faunus rights,” Blake pointed out.</p><p>Sunset sucked in a breath, and her tone acquired an edge of mockery as she said, “Ooh, do you suggest that Atlas might be a little bit racist? Rainbow would be horrified to hear it.”</p><p>Blake gave her a flat look. “Rainbow isn’t blind… not <em>completely</em> blind to the state of Atlas; she just… believes that it can be improved.”</p><p>“And you?” Sunset asked. “Do you believe that it can be improved?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Blake admitted. “I’ve never actually been to Atlas.”</p><p>“Perhaps you should rectify that before you move there permanently,” Sunset suggested.</p><p>“I haven’t made up my mind to do that yet,” Blake informed her. But all the same, it wasn’t a bad idea; it was a little ridiculous that she was even considering transferring to a school in a kingdom that she’d never actually visited. Dash told her one story of Atlas, Ilia had told another; only with her own eyes could she actually judge whose account was closer to the truth. Only by going there could she see if it was really the kind of place she would want to live. </p><p>
  <em>Maybe during the vacation, before the Vytal Festival starts. </em>
</p><p><em>Not that it matters, since I won’t be competing in the Vytal Festival.</em> Blake was pretty sure there was no option for a team to compete with five members. </p><p>The point was, visiting Atlas might not be a bad idea. In fact, it was a very good idea. </p><p>“You changed the subject,” Blake pointed out.</p><p>“Did I? When?”</p><p>“When I pointed out that Mistral’s reputation on faunus rights was pretty poor.”</p><p>“I didn’t see any sign of that when I was there,” Sunset replied.</p><p>“Might that be because you spent all of your time with aristocrats?” Blake suggested. “Perhaps if you had descended the slopes into the lower city, then you might have had a different experience.”</p><p>“Why would I want to do that when I could associate with aristocrats instead?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Blake chuckled, but she also couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “I’m just saying that the Mistralian upper class-”</p><p>“Are not perfect, lest you think I believe otherwise,” Sunset said. “Far from it, in fact.”</p><p>“I’m glad to hear you recognise that,” Blake murmured, “but they are also not the entire city, still less the kingdom. Mistral is a lot more than Pyrrha and her class.”</p><p>“You’ve spent some time in the lower environs, I presume?”</p><p>Blake nodded. “For a while, with the White Fang.”</p><p>“How was it?”</p><p>“Poor,” Blake said. “Prey to criminals of every kind. The White Fang in Mistral spends more time protecting faunus neighbourhoods from gangs than it does trying to advance the cause of faunus rights.” She paused. “How was the peak?”</p><p>“Pompous, arrogant, full of themselves,” Sunset said.</p><p>“That doesn’t surprise me,” Blake murmured. “Sunset?”</p><p>“Hmm?”</p><p>“You’ve known Rainbow Dash for some time, haven’t you?”</p><p>“That depends how you define ‘known,’” Sunset replied.</p><p>“Has she…?” Blake blinked. “Has she ever been cruel? Have you ever seen her be cruel?”</p><p>“She was an ass to me, does that count?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Blake stared at her flatly.</p><p>“Oh, I see, we’re having a serious conversation now,” Sunset muttered, coughing into one hand. “I… no, I can’t say that I did ever see that. I wasn’t close to her, you understand, but she was so loud that it was hard to ignore her. So… no. I never saw her be cruel to anyone. She wasn’t as kind as Twilight or Fluttershy, but she was never cruel.”</p><p>Blake suppressed the sigh of relief she wanted to let out. “I see.”</p><p>“Why do you ask?”</p><p>Blake didn’t reply. In fact, she looked away from Sunset to make clear just to what extent she didn’t want to reply. </p><p>“She’s not Adam,” Sunset declared. “Rainbow has her faults, but she’s not him.”</p><p>Blake glanced at her. “How did you know?”</p><p>“I’m very perceptive,” Sunset said, a slight grin playing across her face. </p><p>Blake snorted. “Thank you.”</p><p>“Don’t go to Atlas,” Sunset said.</p><p>Blake couldn’t help but smile. “You really don’t want me to go, do you?”</p><p>“No, I don’t,” Sunset said. “I want you to stay here.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because… because we’ll have more fun together,” Sunset said. “More than you’ll have in Atlas. Rainbow Dash… you’ll be better off here in Beacon.”</p><p>Before Blake could reply that she was not entirely convinced of that, the door into General Ironwood’s office opened, and the yeoman stepped out into the corridor. “General Ironwood will see you now.”</p><p>Sunset allowed Blake to go in first, and she stepped into General Ironwood’s austere office. She heard Sunset’s footsteps echo on the deck behind her. </p><p>The General had his back turned to them, looking out of the window at his fleet and at the city that they protected. Blake couldn’t help but wonder if he genuinely liked the view or if this was some kind of power play by not showing them his face. </p><p>Or, perhaps, he just didn’t want them to see his expression.</p><p>It was probably not the latter, since he turned to face them both as soon as the door slid shut behind them.</p><p>“Miss Belladonna, Miss Shimmer,” he said. “Thank you both for coming.”</p><p>“It’s our pleasure, sir,” Sunset said, softly but without hostility.</p><p>“I asked you both here because I’ve finished reading Rainbow Dash’s report upon your recent mission,” General Ironwood announced, explaining the matter which had puzzled them outside – at least in part. He began to walk around his desk. “Miss Shimmer, I hope you’ll forgive me if I keep this brief: thank you, for protecting Twilight from that bastard.”</p><p>Blake’s ears pricked up. She supposed that she hadn’t known General Ironwood long enough to be surprised by him swearing, but at the same time… she was surprised. Whether she had any right to be was another matter. There was nobody in the room who could have suggested whether she did or not. </p><p>Blake didn’t miss the way that Sunset’s hand twitched towards the wound on her stomach. “Thank you, sir,” Sunset said. “I wish you could be thanking me for taking him out of the picture.”</p><p>Blake sucked in her breath but held her peace. It wasn’t her place to speak right now, especially not about this. </p><p>“Believe me, after the damage that he’s wreaked over the years, I wish that too,” General Ironwood admitted, “but I’m well aware of what a tough nut he is to crack, and I can’t fault you for not finishing the job. From Rainbow’s report, it seems you did the best you could in the circumstances.”</p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose a little. “Sir, you might be the first person who hasn’t called me a fool for doing what I did.”</p><p>“Sometimes, we have no choice but to throw our bodies into the firing line,” General Ironwood declared. “If only because we have nothing else to put in the way. I’m sure that those who remonstrate with you for your actions do so out of concern for your safety, but if they keep it up, perhaps you ought to remind them all that you’re a huntress-in-training: putting yourself in harm’s way is what you signed up for.”</p><p>“But Twilight didn’t,” Sunset said. “Did she, General?”</p><p>General Ironwood stared down at the Beacon student for a moment. “No, Miss Shimmer, she did not. I take it you’re aware of exactly what Penny is?”</p><p>“Yes, sir. I was the last of my team to find out,” – Sunset couldn’t quite keep the irritation out of her voice as she said that – “but I’m aware. It… explains a lot.”</p><p>“And as an outsider,” General Ironwood said, “how does it make you feel? Knowing that we have built… someone like Penny.”</p><p>Sunset was silent for a moment, considering her response. “It’s a magnificent feat of engineering you’ve pulled off,” she said. “It borders on… magical.”</p><p>General Ironwood raised one eyebrow curiously. “You’ve been talking to Twilight, I see.”</p><p>“Yes, sir.”</p><p>“Your appreciation of the efforts of the Polendina brothers is noted,” General Ironwood said, “but what I meant was what you thought of the ethics of it. Does it alarm you that we can create Penny?”</p><p>“No, sir,” Sunset said. “No offence to Penny, but for all that she’s a technological marvel, I’d still say Rainbow Dash is more reliable. I don’t think she’s going to replace us any time soon. I know that she’s new, but if we never did anything new because it might seem strange to people, then we would never advance, would we?”</p><p>“No, I suppose we wouldn’t,” General Ironwood conceded. “And you are correct; Twilight is not a huntress-in-training. She’s a scientist, here to monitor Penny during this, her field testing.”</p><p>“It can’t have been an easy decision for you to send her out into the field,” Sunset guessed. “She matters to you, doesn’t she General?”</p><p>“The life of every single boy and girl in my academy, every single man and woman under my command, matters to me, Miss Shimmer,” General Ironwood declared. “But you’re right: Twilight is dear to me. Which is why I’m grateful to you, for keeping her safe. Thank you, Miss Shimmer.”</p><p>Sunset understood that she was being dismissed. She bowed her head. “Thank you, sir. Your praise is the highest reward I could expect for my service.”</p><p>General Ironwood folded his arms. “I’m sure that there are some in Mistral or Vale who would appreciate such flattery, but not in this office.”</p><p>Sunset smiled. “Can’t blame a girl for trying, sir.” She bowed again, from the waist this time, although not deeply so, and stepped backwards out of the room. The door opened behind her and then closed in front of her face. </p><p>“If I may, sir,” Blake murmured, “why did you send Twilight out into the field?”</p><p>General Ironwood was silent. “Someone had to go,” he said. “Doctor Polendina didn’t believe that Penny was ready to go out into the field at all, but the prospect of another year’s delay on top of all the money, time, and resources sunk into her development… the Council was growing impatient and, I admit, so was I.” </p><p>He turned away from Blake and began to walk back towards the window with its panoramic view of Vale. He did not reach the window, however, but stopped and looked down at his desk, at the photographs that Blake couldn’t see. “I championed the Penny project. I selected it to go forward out of several funding submissions from some of the top minds in Atlas. Having a member of Doctor Polendina’s lab team – someone young enough to pass as a student alongside Penny – accompany her in case any issues arose was the compromise that enabled us to get things moving. There were only really two candidates, Twilight volunteered, and she had a lot to recommend her over the other girl I could have sent. In the end, I didn’t have much choice.”</p><p>Blake’s eyes narrowed just a little. “Sunset thought that you’d assigned Rainbow Dash to Penny’s team in order to protect Penny, but it was actually to protect Twilight, wasn’t it, sir?”</p><p>General Ironwood looked up at her. “It was to protect both of them,” he said. “Twilight, yes, but also Penny if her performance was not everything that we expected of her. If Doctor Polendina was correct, if Penny turned out not to be ready, then I knew that Dash – with Soleil’s help – would bring them home.”</p><p>“You think a great deal of her, don’t you, sir?” Blake said. “Not just a lot for a faunus, but a lot, period.”</p><p>General Ironwood looked up at her. “I trust her completely.” </p><p>“Why, sir?” Blake asked. “If I may?”</p><p>General Ironwood looked into Blake’s eyes for a moment. “Why don’t you ask Dash herself, Miss Belladonna, see if she’ll tell you?”</p><p><em>In other words, she might be willing to tell me, but you’re not, not yet.</em> “That’s fair enough, sir.”</p><p>General Ironwood nodded. “So, how was your first mission with the Atlesian forces?”</p><p>“It… was not what I expected, sir,” Blake admitted, “but at the same time, it confirmed some of my worries about working with Atlas.”</p><p>“Oh? Such as?”</p><p>“On the flight to Cold Harbour, Rainbow thought it was necessary to warn me that the base commander-”</p><p>“Might not mind their manners,” General Ironwood finished for her. “I’m afraid that’s something every faunus student learns.” He paused. “How was it?”</p><p>“There was no problem, sir,” Blake said. “Captain Blackberry was extraordinarily helpful and sympathetic to the faunus in and around the town. But that isn’t really the point. The point is that it could have been so much worse, that even Rainbow Dash, who is incredibly loyal to Atlas and its ideals, thought that it might be worse.”</p><p>“I won’t deny that there are a few fossils in the high command who haven’t moved with the times,” General Ironwood confessed. “I have hope that the new generation of rising stars will be more tolerant.”</p><p>“If I may speak freely sir, you have more hope in the new generation to be free of prejudice than I do,” Blake said, thinking of Cardin and those like him. She frowned. “General Ironwood, are you… aware of Rainbow’s plans?”</p><p>“Do I know that she means to rise to take my place one day and use the power of this office to improve the condition of the faunus? Of course I do,” General Ironwood said. “She asked me if I thought it was feasible.”</p><p>Blake’s eyebrows rose. “And did you?”</p><p>“Yes,” General Ironwood said. “Are you aware, Miss Belladonna, that I hold two seats on the Atlas council?”</p><p>“No, sir, I wasn’t.”</p><p>“One in my position as Commanding General and another as Headmaster of Atlas Academy,” General Ironwood explained. “The two seats don’t have to be combined, and haven’t always, but imagine what a faunus holding both or even one of those seats would be able to accomplish.”</p><p>“Will it happen, sir?”</p><p>“It will take a lot of work on Dash’s part,” General Ironwood allowed, “but I don’t know anyone more willing to work hard for something she believes in than Rainbow Dash.”</p><p>Blake felt a twinge of envy for Rainbow Dash. “She’s lucky to have someone who believes in her.”</p><p>“Dash has plenty of people who believe in her,” General Ironwood replied. “I’m fortunate to have someone I can believe in.”</p><p>“Do you know that she’s asked me to transfer to Atlas?”</p><p>General Ironwood looked into Blake’s eyes. “No,” he said. “I didn’t. Although, having read Rainbow Dash’s report, I can understand why.”</p><p>“I didn’t really do anything, sir.”</p><p>“You assisted in the capture of Roman Torchwick; that’s not nothing.”</p><p>“Others did a lot more than I did, sir.”</p><p>“Everyone plays their part in battle, and a part being less dramatic makes it no less notable,” General Ironwood informed her. He clasped his arms behind his back. “Atlas Academy does not usually accept transfer students, but with your grades and combat experience alongside our forces, I’m sure that an exception could be made in your case.”</p><p>“Aren’t you the one that gets to decide if an exception is made, sir?”</p><p>“I am, so you should trust my confidence,” General Ironwood informed her. “If, that is, you want to transfer.”</p><p>Blake glanced down at the deck. There was a dent in the floor, and she couldn’t work out how it had gotten there. “I don’t know, sir.”</p><p>General Ironwood sat down behind his desk. “I suppose Dash has already given you the sales pitch?”</p><p>Blake smiled. “Yes, General, she has.”</p><p>General Ironwood nodded. “Your feelings about possible racism among the senior staff aside, what was it like fighting with Team Rosepetal?”</p><p>“It was a different style than the one taught at Beacon,” Blake said. “I’m not ready to call it better on the basis of one mission. And I’m certainly not ready to judge Atlas on the basis of one team.”</p><p>“If you would like to accompany other teams on training missions as they come up, that can be arranged,” General Ironwood suggested. </p><p>“I… yes, sir, thank you,” Blake said. “I’d also like to visit Atlas during the vacation.”</p><p>“That depends on the threat posed by the White Fang at the end of the semester,” General Ironwood said, “but in principle, I’ve no objection to that either. You <em>are</em> considering it, then?”</p><p>“Yes, sir,” Blake admitted. “I am.”</p><p>“May I ask why?” General Ironwood inquired. “You don’t seem like the kind of student who would be excited by high tech gadgets or the ability to call in fire support.”</p><p>“Does that make me a poor fit for your academy, General?”</p><p>“No,” General Ironwood denied. “Although it means you may have something to learn when it comes to adapting to our philosophy.” The general took pause for a moment. “We don’t train Heroes at Atlas Academy, Miss Belladonna. Every student who passes through the halls of my school is a hero in my eyes, but we do not train Heroes. Do you understand the distinction?”</p><p>“Do you mean someone who fights alone, for their own glory?”</p><p>“Alone, or with only a handful of chosen companions like some knight or warrior prince of old,” General Ironwood corrected. “If your ambition is to roam the dark places of the world with only your own strength – or the strength of the handful you trust to stand by your side – to preserve you, then I wish you luck, but Atlas Academy isn’t for you. At Atlas, there are no soloists, only instruments in a grand orchestra. Scales on a leviathan.”</p><p>“So I understand, sir, and honestly… that’s what appeals to me. The chance to be a part of something bigger than myself… if only I could be sure that it was something good as well.”</p><p>General Ironwood said, “I consider this great creation of ours to be not only good but great, and I hope that Dash would say the same, but I don’t expect you to take either of our words for it.”</p><p>“No, sir. This is something… I have to decide for myself.” <em>I owe it to myself not to make another mistake in choosing a cause to fight for.</em> </p><p>“That’s fair enough, Miss Belladonna,” General Ironwood said. “When you do decide, just let me know.”</p><p>“Yes, sir. General, has Roman Torchwick said anything yet regarding the plans of the White Fang? Or anything else?”</p><p>“No, he’s not talking,” General Ironwood said. “A few more days in solitary, and I hope that will change.”</p><p>“And if it does-”</p><p>General Ironwood smiled slightly. “You’ll be one of the first to know, Miss Belladonna.”</p><p>“Thank you, sir.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0036"><h2>36. Science and Magic</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Twilight examines Ruby</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Science and Magic</p><p> </p><p>“So,” Twilight asked, “how was the General?”</p><p>Sunset leaned back in her chair. “He thanked me for saving your life,” she said. “His gratitude was effusive.”</p><p>Twilight looked around from the machine that she had been examining. “Really?”</p><p>“No,” Sunset conceded. “But it would have if he weren’t such a block of stone, I’m sure.”</p><p>Twilight frowned behind her glasses. “General Ironwood is not a block of stone,” she snapped. “In any sense.”</p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose. “Okay, Twilight, I didn’t mean anything by it.”</p><p>Team SAPR’s garage was a little crowded. Each team was assigned a garage to store any vehicles that they might have – Yang’s bike, Flash’s car, Sunset’s motorcycle – and wished to bring onto campus with them. The garages were bare and uninviting things, plain grey breeze block that offered no meaningful heat insulation and were pretty depressing to look at to boot, not to mention not terribly well-lit, but they were a little isolated from the rest of the campus, and they were large enough to accommodate the possibility – rare, admittedly, but still present – of a team having multiple vehicles that they wished to keep in one place. Which meant, since Team SAPR had only Sunset’s idiosyncratic beauty of a bike, there was plenty of space in the quiet, secluded place for Twilight to run her little science experiment. </p><p>Sunset, Ruby, and Penny each sat in the garage upon old swivel chairs, worn out and not particularly comfortable, that Sunset had found by the skips at the back of the dorms; someone hadn’t wanted them any more, but they were good for one more use, and that was all – hopefully – that they would need for this. </p><p>They were sat around an advanced Atlesian aura monitoring device, a tall, sleek, white machine that looked far too modern and clean to belong in this rather dark and slightly dinghy space, let alone sharing it with Sunset’s hybrid motorcycle. A screen, displaying a lot of data relating to aura, sat above what Sunset thought to be a holoprojector, although it was not currently projecting anything. A series of black cables ran from the machine to the battery pack and to Ruby, Sunset, and Penny, who were all hooked up to the machine via black, plastic feeling monitors wrapped around their uncovered forearms. </p><p>Another machine in the same white, pristine, slender Atlesian mode was monitoring their brain activity, with three lines, running horizontally and rippling up and down on the screen. Finer cables led to it from the nodes attached to the sides of the temples of the three huntresses. </p><p>A third machine, to which Ruby and Sunset were also hooked up, this time via their other arms, monitored vital signs. </p><p>Sunset had to admit, the fact that that was considered necessary was a little concerning.</p><p>Jaune stood not too far away from Twilight and her machines, making a light scuffling sound with his feet as he twitched from one foot to the other. He might have a part to play in all of this, if Twilight decided that a stimulus to the aura was just what the scientist ordered. Pyrrha stood still and silent near the garage door, mostly visible for the reflection of the dim garage lights upon her gilded armour. Ciel stood next to Penny, one hand upon her shoulder, her blue eyes darting from Sunset to Ruby and then back again. </p><p>The door was shut. They were encased within. </p><p>Twilight turned away from Sunset, looking at her aura monitoring device, or seeming to. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just… people talk about General Ironwood like… it isn’t fair, the things that they say. But you didn’t mean it, and I shouldn’t have reacted as though you did.”</p><p>Sunset snorted. “It’s mutual, then.”</p><p>“Hmm?” Twilight asked.</p><p>“You care about him,” Sunset explained. “The same way he cares about you.”</p><p>“Oh,” Twilight said. “Um, yes, I… of course I do. General Ironwood is… to be honest, I can’t imagine our forces without him. I know, intellectually, that there must have been a time before him – in fact, I can tell you the name of his predecessor – but at the same time, and at the same time as I know that he won’t always be around, that there will be a day when someone else will take his place… I can’t really imagine that day coming.”</p><p>“Not even if Rainbow Dash was the one taking his place?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Twilight blinked. “That… would require me to be able to imagine what Rainbow Dash will be like when she’s older, and I just… is it weird that I can’t do that? Not just with Rainbow, with anyone really? I can’t imagine us grown up.”</p><p>“And yet, it will happen to all of you nonetheless,” Sunset murmured. “Except for you, Penny,” she added, glancing past Ruby to where the newly-revealed robot sat on the far side of the garage. “You’ll… do you have a plan for what you’re going to do about that?”</p><p>“Do I need a plan for what I’m going to do about that?” Penny asked.</p><p>“Someone should have one,” Sunset replied. “You don’t really look seventeen now; it’ll be really noticeable when everyone else is twenty-one, and you still look about fifteen.”</p><p>“Some people stay looking young,” Ruby pointed out. “Dad and Uncle Qrow haven’t aged a day since they were at Beacon.”</p><p>“I’m sure that’s what they’d like you to believe.”</p><p>“No, it’s really true; I’ve seen pictures,” Ruby insisted. She paused for a moment. “They haven’t changed their clothes since then either.”</p><p>“That’s… a choice,” Sunset muttered. “I take it, then, that the answer is that you don’t have a plan for how to fake the appearance of getting older.”</p><p>“No,” Twilight said softly. “It… hasn’t come up.”</p><p>“Is that because Penny will be able to tell everybody the truth by then?” Ruby suggested.</p><p>“Do you think I should?” Penny asked, her tone wavering between eagerness and wariness. “I mean, what if… what if people find out what I really am and… they don’t like me?”</p><p>Pyrrha took a step forward, coming a little more into the light than she had been before. “We like you just fine, Penny,” she pointed out. “Finding out your truth didn’t change one bit how we feel about you.”</p><p>“You’re not most people,” Sunset said under her breath.</p><p>Ciel must have caught her words, because she said, “Indeed, as gratifying as your acceptance of Penny has been… it cannot be counted on to be universally replicated. We must take into account the possibility that there will be adverse reactions to Penny’s nature. Which is why her secret ought not to be shared more widely than it already has been.”</p><p>“You don’t trust us to hold our tongues?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Ciel sighed. “I wish that nothing had been said to Mister Wukong. There is a certain fecklessness about him that makes him hard to trust.”</p><p>“Feckless?” Sunset repeated. “There’s nothing feckless about Sun. Stupid, sure, but not feckless.”</p><p>“He has repeatedly abandoned his team-” </p><p>“Because they don’t matter to him, and why should they?” Sunset demanded.</p><p>“Because they’re his team?” Ruby reminded her.</p><p>“And he’s found something that matters to him more than they do: Blake,” Sunset declared. </p><p>“Your tone suggests you find virtue in that,” Ciel said. “I confess, I cannot see it.”</p><p>“When a man loves a woman,” Sunset said, her voice adopting a certain haughty air, “he puts her at the very centre of his life and world.” She twisted around in her seat to affix Jaune with a piercing look. “Devoting himself to her and sacrificing all his pleasures to her happiness. Otherwise, he is merely playing with her affection, and it is cruel beyond words to use a maiden’s heart so.” </p><p>“What are you glaring at me for?” Jaune asked nervously.</p><p>“I’m just exercising my neck muscles,” Sunset said casually, looking away from him once she was sure that he had gotten the point. For all his faults, she found that she kind of liked Sun; he wasn’t likely to treat Blake the way that Flash had treated her. </p><p>“I’ve never heard anything like that before,” Ruby said.</p><p>“Then hearken to my wisdom, Ruby,” Sunset said. “You need someone older and wiser telling you what to do.”</p><p>“I like a good singalong more than probably anyone here,” Twilight interjected, “but please tell me you’re not about to start singing ‘Sixteen Going On Seventeen’ from <em>Edelweiss</em>.”</p><p>“Of course not,” Sunset snapped. “That guy was a complete jackass.”</p><p>“In any case, no offence to Sunset-”</p><p>“But you’re about to insult me.”</p><p>“-but Ruby, I wouldn’t necessarily take Sunset’s words on the subject of relationships too much to heart.”</p><p>“I suppose that she should take your advice instead,” Sunset muttered. <em>Listen to Twilight long enough, Ruby, and she’ll teach you how to get Jaune away from Pyrrha.</em> She could accept the fact that Twilight had not intentionally set out to steal Sunset’s boyfriend, but at the same time, that kind of made it even worse; Twilight hadn’t set out to do it, but nevertheless, she had accomplished precisely that. She didn’t <em>need</em> to try; she was just so pretty, so sweet, so <em>nice</em> that men fell over themselves to ask her out. “How’s Timber Spruce?” She took a slightly wicked glee in the way that Twilight’s face flushed. </p><p>“He, um, I mean we, uh… it, uh, didn’t work out,” Twilight muttered. “Long distance, it was fun, but we didn’t really, you know. I mean it’s not like he was a bad guy or anything-”</p><p>“Perhaps we should focus on the reason we are here,” Ciel suggested pointedly and with something of a glare in Sunset’s direction. “Then we can all escape this rather dismal place.”</p><p>
  <em>You’re no fun at all, are you?</em>
</p><p>Twilight, on the other hand, seemed to find Ciel’s intervention rather gratifying. “Thank you, Ciel. That’s an excellent idea.” She coughed into her hand. “Ahem. Thank you… both of you,” she added, in a tone that suggested she was a little less thankful for Sunset’s presence than she might have been, “for coming. And thank you, Penny, for agreeing to be our control.”</p><p>“I thought you were in control?” Penny said.</p><p>“I did too,” Ruby agreed.</p><p>“A control, sometimes known as a control group, is a scientific term,” Twilight explained. “It refers to the… the normal element in an experiment. By looking at Penny’s aura, I can see if there are any abnormalities in yours or Sunset’s auras that might be caused by your magic.”</p><p>“But my aura isn’t normal,” Penny pointed out. “Not like yours or Ciel’s.”</p><p>“It’s true that your aura is, as yet, unformed,” Twilight conceded, “and in some ways, it might have been better to use Ciel as the control, but… well, to be honest, after I told everyone that I needed this equipment in order to run some checks on you, Penny, it makes me feel a little less dishonest if I run a couple of checks on you.” She laughed nervously.</p><p>“'Unformed'?” Ruby murmured. “What do you mean, Penny’s aura is unformed?”</p><p>“I mean… it’s probably best if I show you,” Twilight replied. “In fact, I <em>will</em> show you, because this is really cool. At least, I think it is anyway. As you might be able to guess from the presence of this technology and the fact that, well, Penny exists, we in the Defence Advanced Research Commission – pronounced ‘dark’ – have begun investigating aura from a purely scientific standpoint, stripping away the mysticism with which many past generations imbued it.”</p><p>“Is that possible?” Pyrrha asked. “We’re talking about the reflections of our souls, Twilight; how can that be stripped of… of reverence? And why would you want to?”</p><p>Twilight glanced at her. “I understand that aura is a wonderful thing-”</p><p>“Aura is far more than just wonderful,” Pyrrha murmured. “Aura is… aura is a gift; a shield of light to guard us against the darkness and to enable us to fight against them.”</p><p>“A gift from whom?” Twilight countered.</p><p>Pyrrha was silent for a moment. “That,” she admitted, “I do not know.”</p><p>“That ignorance does not disprove her point,” Ciel declared. “The fact remains that aura is our link to the heavenly, to something more than human.”</p><p>“Can that really be true, when aura is something that all humans have the potential to access?” Twilight asked.</p><p>It was clear from the way that she bit her lip that Ciel was not happy about that answer, yet nevertheless, she did not reply, save only to say, “In any case, please continue.”</p><p>“Right,” Twilight said, speaking a little more softly. “Anyway, as I was saying, we at Dark have been researching aura, its applications, its nature, and what we’ve discovered – one of the things that we’ve discovered – is really pretty neat.” She tapped into the keyboard jutting out at a forty-five degree angle from the aura monitor, and the holographic projector burst into life, a light blue glow emitting from it as it began to project into the air in the garage. </p><p>What it projected was an amorphous green blob, shapeless yet moving gently as though it were alive, pulsing somewhat in a manner that reminded Sunset of a heart. And yet, in no other way did it resemble a heart at all; it was just a mass of something, resembling nothing.</p><p>“What is it?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“That is Penny’s aura,” Twilight explained. “It doesn’t look like anything because, well, because – and I have to admit that this is only a theory, but it’s a theory supported by all the present evidence-”</p><p>“Get to the point,” Sunset urged.</p><p>“The point is that Penny hasn’t finished figuring out who she is as a person yet,” Twilight replied. </p><p><em>She hasn’t found her cutie mark yet, in other words,</em> Sunset thought.</p><p>“At least, that is the prevailing view amongst we who’ve been looking at this,” Twilight went on. “It appears that, as a person grows and develops, as they figure out who they are, their aura starts to form into… well, why don’t I show you?” She turned back to the keyboard and began to type away again. “This is… oh.”</p><p>Sunset’s eyes widened as the image on the holographic projector changed, the shapeless green mass disappearing to be replaced instead by a red rose. </p><p>And it was beautiful. </p><p>Sunset was not a great horticultural enthusiast, but she had never seen a flower so perfect as the one that was being projected before her eyes at this moment. Every petal was perfectly shaped, and there were so many petals, they rose in layers to make up the complete flower which blossomed to their view. Surely, no true rose could be so red; surely, no true rose could be shaped so consistently, without any defects of variation; surely, no true rose could hold the eye like this rose did. </p><p>“Is that you, Ruby?” Penny asked. “Your aura is… it’s so lovely.”</p><p>“And so well-formed,” Twilight murmured. “Usually, at your age – or even at our age – I’d expect much more of a work in progress. You must be astonishingly self-actualised for… not just for your age, but period.”</p><p>“Um, thanks?” Ruby muttered. “Uh… can I ask a question?”</p><p>“You don’t know what self-actualised means, do you?” Twilight asked.</p><p>“Nope.”</p><p>“It means you know exactly who you are.”</p><p>“Doesn’t everybody know that?”</p><p>Sunset laughed. “Far from it, Ruby, although life might be easier if that were true.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Twilight murmured.</p><p>“Is everything okay?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“Fascinating,” Twilight said softly as she leaned forward.</p><p>“What is it?” asked Jaune.</p><p>“These silver lines on the edges of the rose,” Twilight said, tapping the keyboard without looking at it so as to magnify the view of a single rose petal. Sure enough, the red of the petal was bordered with lines of silver around the edges, as though in adornment to a jewelled rose fashioned for ornament. “They… I’ve never seen anything quite like that before. Everyone’s aura is only ever one colour– red in Ruby’s case – so what is that silver doing there?”</p><p>“Silver eyes, silver on her aura?” Sunset suggested.</p><p>“As good a working hypothesis as any,” Twilight allowed. “Do you mind if I bring up your aura for a moment?”</p><p>“I’d rather you didn’t; it’s likely to be a little embarrassing by comparison,” Sunset remarked.</p><p>Twilight looked at her. “Do you mean that, or are you just being you?”</p><p>Sunset sighed. “Go on, get on with it.”</p><p>As she had expected, the hologram of Sunset’s aura looked rather embarrassing by comparison with Ruby’s. Everyone was too polite to say anything, but nevertheless, Sunset felt her cheeks heating up as she averted her eyes from the child’s sloppy crayon drawing of a sun being projected in front of her.</p><p>“Now, this is interesting,” Twilight said. “Your magic is green, isn’t it? That’s the colour of your shields and your energy bursts.”</p><p>“That’s right,” Sunset answered, still not looking.</p><p>“But I don’t see any green here at all.”</p><p>“That’s because my magic isn’t linked to my aura,” Sunset replied. “Just as I told you.”</p><p>“But Ruby’s is?” Twilight inquired.</p><p>“It’s a different kind of magic; it doesn’t have to obey the same rules.”</p><p>“I would have thought there’d be consistent principles behind it,” Twilight mused. “Or at least some shared bedrock. Apparently not.”</p><p><em>Let’s be fair, we are talking about magic from two different worlds,</em> Sunset thought. <em>It would be amazing if there was consistency.</em></p><p>Jaune took a step forward. “Does knowing that Ruby’s magic is connected to her aura in some way help you to… to help Ruby use it?”</p><p>“Hmm,” Twilight mused wordlessly. “I, um… Sunset? Do you have any ideas at all? I know that it’s not the same kind of magic, but, well, at least you have magic that you can use, so you’re still the closest thing to an expert that we have.”</p><p>“I would be an expert if we were discussing my own magic,” Sunset insisted, “but this… if it’s linked to aura, Ruby, can you focus your aura on your eyes? Maybe it just needs a strong boost, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll get Jaune to stimulate you.”</p><p>“I’ll try,” Ruby murmured, “but I’m not that good at concentrating my aura.”</p><p>“You can do it,” Pyrrha said softly. “It’s just a question of focus. Remove yourself from your surroundings and focus only upon yourself. Let the wall fall away until you are all that remains.”</p><p>“That sounds easier than it is,” Ruby commented plaintively.</p><p>“Yes,” Pyrrha admitted, “but even so, I have faith in you.”</p><p>“We all do,” Jaune added.</p><p>Ruby smiled, if only for a moment, but in that moment, her eyes sparkled in the gloomy garage. But then the smile faded, and she closed her eyes and – judging by the look on her face – tried to concentrate. </p><p>It was either that, or something in her stomach disagreed with her, judging by the way that she was starting to scrunch up her face more and more. </p><p>Everyone in the garage was silent. Even Penny seemed to understand the importance of concentration for this. They all fell silent, and they all waited for Ruby, to see if anything would come of this.</p><p>Sunset herself thought it was not likely; if all it took was a sufficient application of aura, then surely, Ruby would have already had this down by now? If she just didn’t have enough aura, then… what was the point of a power that required her to have Jaune-levels of inhuman aura capacity to actually do anything with it? It would be like most unicorns not being able to do any magic because they lacked the sheer power level required. Of course, it was not so; everypony had as much magic as they needed to follow their path in life as set out by their cutie mark, and Sunset was almost certain that it was the same in this case. </p><p>She was almost certain that this was not going to work, both because Ruby ought to have enough aura ordinarily to make use of her silver eyes if aura was required and also because aura wasn’t magic. Magic in Remnant might graft itself onto aura, but aura was not the same as magic; at least, Sunset did not perceive it so. </p><p>She had mainly suggested this to buy herself a little time while she thought about other options. </p><p>Of course, there was no guarantee it wouldn’t work; if it did, that would be great for Ruby… and Sunset would have a lot to think about in regards to how she saw the powers of the world and their relationship. </p><p>Ruby’s eyes snapped open – and she cried out for a moment before shutting her eyes tight shut again. </p><p>“Ruby?” Pyrrha asked anxiously, taking a couple of steps forward. “What’s wrong?”</p><p>“Did you know that if you concentrate your aura in your eyes, it makes you see better?” Ruby replied, in a pained, wincing tone. “Not a great idea to look into a light when that happens.”</p><p>“Oh my,” Pyrrha gasped. “Ruby, I’m sorry. Are you alright?”</p><p>“I can see a lot of colours in front of my eyes,” Ruby declared, “but I’ll be okay. Eventually.”</p><p>“I’m not detecting any unusual readings from your aura,” Twilight observed. “Or in your brain activity, for that matter. That doesn’t seem to have done anything. Perhaps if Jaune were to-”</p><p>“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Pyrrha said, in a firmer tone that she was often wont to use. “Considering what happened when Ruby focused just her own aura around her eyes, she might permanently damage them if Jaune were to boost her aura in that area.”</p><p>“Yeah, I don’t really want to do that,” Jaune added. “Besides, if it’s about aura, then Ruby ought to be able to activate it with her own aura, right?”</p><p>“You make a good point,” Sunset murmured, phrasing it as a concession and not something that she had already known before she suggested a pointless exercise to Ruby. “Twilight, how is that machine working out that Ruby’s aura looks like that?”</p><p>“It’s very technical.”</p><p>“Try me.”</p><p>“It’s measuring the responses to multi-spectral animatropic resonance cascades.”</p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose. “What in the cages of Tartarus are 'multi-spectral animatropic resonance cascades'?”</p><p>“I warned you it was very technical,” Twilight replied. “Basically, it’s an ultrasound for the soul.”</p><p>Sunset’s eyes narrowed. “Are you serious?”</p><p>“Yes,” Twilight said. “Of course, it is still a very young science.”</p><p>“More like pseudoscience,” Sunset muttered. '<em>Multi-spectral animatropic resonance,' what kind of word salad is that?</em></p><p>“Sunset, do you have an idea?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Sunset growled. “I have always known that my magic was there, and so the fact that you can’t just sense it is… frustrating.”</p><p>“But not too surprising,” Jaune said. “You might have always been able to sense your magic, but I didn’t know that my aura was there until Pyrrha unlocked it in the forest.”</p><p>“But Ruby does know that her aura is there,” Sunset said. “So are you sure that you can’t feel any… growths, for want of a better word, upon it?”</p><p>Ruby shook her head. “I can’t feel anything except my aura.” She paused. “So, even when you were starting to learn magic, you never had to work to… to get it out of you?”</p><p>“I had to work, but that isn’t the same as not being able to feel it there at all,” Sunset replied. “But… maybe there is something that I can do, but not here. I’d need to… to think about it a little more.” <em>Think about it and consult with Princess Twilight. </em>“Twilight, is there nothing that you can do?”</p><p>“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Twilight admitted. “I’ve never seen anything like this before; this is… it’s amazing that we were able to pick this up on Ruby’s aura, but apart from that… I mean, we could try running a charge through Ruby’s eyes and see if that jumpstarts something-”</p><p>“I don’t think that’s a particularly good idea,” Pyrrha said firmly.</p><p>“No, probably not,” Twilight admitted. She sighed dispiritedly. “I’m sorry, guys; this has been a complete bust. Like everything else lately.”</p><p>“'Everything else'?” Penny repeated. “What do you mean, Twilight? Things have been going wonderfully so far, haven’t they?”</p><p>“I meant… it doesn’t matter, Penny; you’re absolutely right. I’m sorry, Ruby. I’ll keep studying the data that we’ve collected; maybe I’ll have a brainwave.”</p><p>“Don’t worry about it,” Ruby said. “If you figure something out, then that’s great; if not… my mother managed to figure it out, and I’m sure I’ll get there eventually.”</p><p>Twilight smiled thinly. “That’s very kind of you, but it doesn’t stop me feeling like I’ve just wasted all of your time.”</p><p>“It’s okay,” Ruby insisted. “Even though it didn’t work, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth a shot.”</p><p>“Like I said, it’s very kind of you to say so,” Twilight murmured. “Do you need any help getting out of all the equipment?”</p><p>“Nah, it’s okay,” Ruby said, pulling off the aura monitor. “Do you need help putting all of this stuff away?”</p><p>“No, thank you, I’ll be fine,” Twilight said, and with a little rustling and popping, Ruby, Sunset, and Penny unplugged themselves from all the scientific instruments. Pyrrha put one arm around Ruby’s shoulder as the two of them – and Jaune and Penny – started towards the garage door which opened to admit the light into the dark, enclosed space. </p><p>“Sunset?” Ruby asked. “Aren’t you coming?”</p><p>“I’ll catch up,” Sunset assured them. </p><p>Ciel looked at Sunset for a moment, and something unspoken passed between them; she nodded at Sunset – a curt nod, but at the same time a courteous one – and joined Penny and the others in leaving the garage, leaving Sunset and Twilight alone. </p><p>Their footsteps and the sounds of their talk died away. </p><p>“I really don’t need help packing up,” Twilight insisted as she knelt down on the ground and began to gather up wires. </p><p>“Maybe I just feel helpful,” Sunset replied, using her telekinesis to pick up some cables off the floor and bundled them up in a coil. “So, what’s up?”</p><p>“You mean more than my sense of failure?” Twilight asked.</p><p>“You aren’t having a sense of failure because this one thing didn’t work out.”</p><p>“Aren’t I?” Twilight responded. “I’ve spent half my life searching for magic, and now that I’ve found it, I can’t understand it at all.”</p><p>“It’s your first try,” Sunset reminded her. “You think I mastered every spell on my first try? Sometimes, it took until my second try.”</p><p>Twilight looked up, a chuckled escaping her lips. </p><p>“But seriously,” Sunset said, flopping back down into the old chair, “the study of magic is not something that can be rushed. Amongst my people, some… people spend their whole lives devoted to it.”</p><p>“I don’t have the luxury of a whole life to devote to it.”</p><p>“You’ve got more than the time we spent here.”</p><p>“I know,” Twilight said. “It’s just…”</p><p>“It’s just that something else is bothering you,” Sunset said. “Something related to Penny.”</p><p>Twilight froze. “What makes you say that?”</p><p>“You clammed up when she asked you what was wrong,” Sunset said. “You didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”</p><p>Twilight rose to her feet. “Penny… can be sensitive,” she confessed. “We never want to upset her.” She sat down in the chair recently vacated by Ruby. “It’s not just Penny,” she clarified. “It’s also the fact that I haven’t been able to trace the source of the video exposing Blake. Whoever they are, the means they undertook to protect themselves are incredibly sophisticated, and I… It just feels like I’m failing at everything that people are counting on me to accomplish.”</p><p>“How are you letting down Penny?”</p><p>“Does it matter?”</p><p>“Maybe I can help?” Sunset offered.</p><p>Twilight frowned. She hesitated for a moment before pulling out her scroll and opening it up. Her fingers, lithe and delicate, flew across the screen to conjure up a holographic sword, a weapon that, at first glance, seemed to be one of Penny’s weapons. With both hands, balancing the scroll upon her lap, Twilight reached for the holographic sword and began to pull it apart, dismantling what would have been the hilt if this had been a normal sword, turning it into its component parts.</p><p>“Is it classified?” Sunset asked. “Is that why you can’t say anything?”</p><p>Twilight’s hand began to glow with a faint purple light as she levitated a chocolate bar – one of the big, chunky ones that came in detachable blocks – out of her bag and into her waiting hand. She kept her eyes on Sunset as her hands unwrapped the chocolate. “Do you know anything about complex robotics?”</p><p>Sunset folded her arms and said nothing while she looked at Twilight’s hologram. She was embarrassed to admit that it took her a moment to realise that it wasn’t actually one of Penny’s swords; the blade was the same, but the rear – the ‘hilt’ and the ‘pommel’ for want of better words – were much larger and bulkier than Penny’s actual blades. </p><p>“Let me see,” Sunset said. “You’re not paying any attention to the blade or the laser cannon, but you have got a receiver and a dust battery which Penny doesn’t need right now unless… you want to take her wireless, don’t you?”</p><p>Twilight said nothing, but her silence said everything that Sunset needed it to.</p><p>Sunset kept her voice reasonably low. “I’m guessing that wireless weapons were always your original goal, but that you couldn’t make it work, and so, you had to go with wire filaments, and now… you haven’t given up hope.”</p><p>Twilight frowned and sighed as she pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. “It’s not that it didn’t work,” she said. “The wireless system works just fine: a dust battery for independent power and a receiver to pick up the command signals from Penny – she even has the transmitter built in; it’s just a redundant system right now. The swords already have thrusters for guidance and propulsion. The problem is that the power pack and the receiver made the back end of the sword too big to fit inside Penny’s back-pack in the numbers required.” Twilight sighed again. “It’s far from ideal, but the council demanded results. General Ironwood couldn’t stall them any longer. Hence, wires, and Penny will be stuck with wires unless I can figure out some way to miniaturize all this, and I just can’t see it!” She picked up the scroll and threw it away; only Sunset grabbing it in the embrace of her own telekinesis stopped it from clattering onto the garage floor.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Twilight said. “I just… I’ve been working on this for months, and I don’t feel like I’m any closer to getting it now than when I started.”</p><p>“You need to have that many swords?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Twilight nodded wearily. “The mega-cannon mode requires the power of that many individual lasers in order to achieve the mandated armour penetration; for the same reason, we can’t just reduce the output of the individual lasers in order to get away with a smaller battery, not that the savings in size are anything like commensurate with the reductions in capacity anyway.”</p><p>Sunset’s brow furrowed. From an interested lay perspective, she could understand why Twilight was having issues with this. Dust was the most efficient form of energy generation in Remnant, so if a dust power pack was too big, then there didn’t seem to be much hope for anything else. </p><p><em>Assuming that it needs an actual power pack.</em> “Can you not just use a battery, charged from Penny herself when she’s not using the weapons?”</p><p>Twilight shook her head. “It would work, but in order to get a battery small enough, you’d have to accept an unacceptably low combat time.”</p><p>“What’s unacceptably low?” Sunset said. “Most battles aren’t drawn out.”</p><p>“Most individual actions are not drawn out,” Twilight corrected. “Penny can’t just despatch a group of beowolves and call it quits necessarily; she might need to have to respond to situations across a wide area for hours, maybe days without respite.”</p><p>“Because now that you have Penny, you’re planning to retire the Atlesian Corps of Specialists,” Sunset replied. “Come on, you know that no flesh and blood huntress would be asked to rush up and down a full-scale battlefield like that; individual teams and units would have their own sectors and only respond to other areas in an emergency.”</p><p>“I know,” Twilight said softly, “but we both know that Penny isn’t a flesh and blood huntress. The council expects to be able to push her harder and take greater risks with her, and she needs to be able to handle it. She needs to be able to fight for hours, days, maybe weeks without stopping. And she needs to have all of these stupid wires out of the way.” She took her head in her hands, shaking it despairingly. “There must be an answer to this, right? This isn’t an insurmountable problem.”</p><p>“I don’t believe in insurmountable problems,” Sunset said. “Is there any reason you can’t just expand the backpack to make room?”</p><p>“She also needs to look appealing to civilians, so that they trust her,” Twilight explained. “Apparently, big, bulky backpacks aren’t cute.”</p><p> Sunset whistled. “Whoever set these parameters was doing you no favours.”</p><p>“I know,” Twilight groaned. “That’s one of the reasons I was keen to give helping Ruby a shot: I could use a break from pushing this boulder up the hill.”</p><p> “You can only bang your head against the wall for so long before it starts to hurt.”</p><p>“Tell me about it,” Twilight said. “Sunset, to go back to the topic of Ruby for a second, can I ask you something?”</p><p>Sunset plucked Twilight’s chocolate out of her hand. “You can ask me whatever you like,” she said as she broke off a piece of the bar. </p><p>Twilight stared at her.</p><p>Sunset offered Twilight her own chocolate back, even as she put the stolen piece into her mouth. </p><p>Twilight rolled her eyes. “Okay, why not?” she said, a slight trace of a sigh in her voice as she took the sweet back from Sunset. “Do you… is there any way that you could… give me some of your magic?”</p><p>Sunset choked on the piece of chocolate making its way down her throat. Her eyes bulged and then began to water as she broke out in a violent coughing fit, her throat straining as she struggled to eject the blockage.</p><p>“Sunset?” Twilight. “Sunset, are you okay? Oh, gods, let me help you!” She leapt up and darted around Sunset, hammering her back as hard as she was able to until the offending piece of chocolate flew out of Sunset’s mouth and landed on the floor not far from her bike. “I’m so, so sorry about that. Do you need a drink of water?”</p><p>Sunset wiped at her eyes with one hand, regretting the blow to her dignity as she struggled to get her breath back. “No, I don’t need a drink of water,” she said, although her throat did feel very, very sore right now. Every time she swallowed, it was like ripping off a bandage. “I need you to… give you my magic?”</p><p>“Not all of it,” Twilight replied, a trifle defensively. “I just… if I can study it in more controlled conditions, then maybe I could actually understand how it works well enough to be some help to Ruby.”</p><p>“But it’s <em>my</em> magic,” Sunset said. “Given to me, a part of me.”</p><p>“I’m not asking for all of it,” Twilight said. “Just some.”</p><p>“Would you ask me for just some of my aura?”</p><p>“Um, well, uh… you see… so is it possible?” Twilight asked.</p><p>“I… don’t know,” Sunset admitted. Complete transfer was certainly possible, but partial? That was something she was a lot less certain of.</p><p>“Would you do it if it was?”</p><p>“No,” Sunset said at once. “This is… this is my magic, Twilight. My… my gift. Bestowed on me by… by destiny, that I could make my mark upon the world; if I give this up, if I give it to you or anybody else… without this, I am nothing.”</p><p>“You’re being very overdramatic,” Twilight replied. “Even without your magic, you’d still be-”</p><p>“Without my magic, I’d be the underperformer I was in Canterlot,” Sunset said sharply, “and don’t deny it.” <em>Compared to Pyrrha or Rainbow or Ruby, I’d be pathetic, a joke. I’d be worth less than Jaune! </em>“I will not suffer that. Not for anyone, and certainly not for the benefit of your understanding.”</p><p>Twilight didn’t bother to conceal the disappointment on her face. Her lips crinkled visibly. “If I can’t experience, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to understand,” she said. “And if I can’t understand, I don’t know how I can help.”</p><p>“That is a pity,” Sunset said, “but it does not change my answer in the least.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0037"><h2>37. Treat Her Right</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sunset shares her views on love. Jaune is filled with pity. Blake meets an old friend.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Treat Her Right</p><p> </p><p>The common room was on the first floor of the dorm room, not far from the kitchenette; it was spacious enough for several teams at once to mingle and would have made a much better space for everyone to gather last night if it weren’t for the fact that they had needed seclusion and security to share their secrets. </p><p>The furniture was red, as per Beacon standard, and the floors were plain, uncarpeted wood. A projector that students could use as a TV was set on a metallic stand at the back of the room, in front of the windows. </p><p>Sun was lying on one of the sofas, trying to use one of the cushions as a pillow. </p><p>Judging by the way that he was turning over and over, it didn’t seem to be working very well. </p><p>Sunset, who had just come in carrying the books that Twilight had given her underneath her arm, saw him lying there, still dressed – or as close to dressed as Sun could be said to ever be, given his penchant for wandering around with his chest bared – with only his removed shoes a concession to what he was doing. </p><p>She stared down at him for a moment and seriously considered going back to her dorm room before curiosity got the better of her. “Sun?”</p><p>Sun looked up, bleary-eyed. “Wh- Sunset?”</p><p>“Good morning,” Sunset said.</p><p>“Hey,” Sun groaned. “These cushions aren’t very soft, are they?”</p><p>“I’m surprised that a tough Vacuan like yourself needs a snuggly pillow to lay his head,” Sunset remarked. “Shouldn’t you be able to make do with a rock?”</p><p>“Hey, don’t lump me in with Nebula and the rest of those jerks,” Sun replied. “I don’t see that there’s anything wrong with wanting to be comfortable if we can be.”</p><p>“One of the smartest things you’ve said since I met you,” Sunset observed. “So, if you’re not practicing masochism to prove that you are, indeed, a Hard Man from a Hard Land who is so much Harder than all of us soft, decadent city folk, what are you doing sleeping on the couch?”</p><p>“Oh, uh, you see… my team kicked me out.”</p><p>Sunset blinked. “Come again?”</p><p>“Scarlet said that if I wasn’t going to stick with my team, then I could find somewhere else to sleep,” Sun explained. “They really weren’t happy about me going off with Blake and the Atlesians.”</p><p>“Well, I can’t say I don’t see why,” Sunset murmured as she sat down on the arm of the sofa, her back half-turned away from Sun so that she had to twist her whole body around to look at him. “You do have a habit of ditching them for Blake.”</p><p>“She’s important to me,” Sun said, stating the obvious.</p><p>“Somehow, I suspect that that doesn’t mollify your team very much,” Sunset replied.</p><p>“No, I guess not,” Sun moaned. “But what am I supposed to do? Blake matters to me, like a lot. Like… more than anything in the world. How am I supposed to ignore it when she needs me?”</p><p>Sunset was of the opinion that Blake didn’t really need Sun’s help – not when she had Team RSPT backing her up, anyway – but at the same time, she couldn’t deny that hearing him say those words was… it touched something in her heart in a way that her heart had not been touched for quite some time. It might be stupid, it might have gotten Sun into trouble with his team, it might be unnecessary, but that was what a good boyfriend was supposed to say, damn it! This was what Flash should have said, instead of ditching Sunset the moment their relationship became inconvenient for his reputation. </p><p>Sun was an idiot in some ways, but he was also a very good boy. Blake was lucky to have him. Sunset wondered if she understood just how lucky she was. </p><p>“Don’t,” she said.</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“Don’t turn away,” Sunset instructed him. “Don’t ignore it. Go to her, every single time, and to hell with Team Sun. Be a man. Be Blake’s man. Stand by her side, no matter what, because that’s what a good man does when he loves a woman.”</p><p>“Really?”</p><p>“Really,” Sunset said with absolute conviction. “Don’t you agree that Blake deserves to be treated like a queen?”</p><p>“Of course she does.”</p><p>“Then be her good servant: loyal and faithful and true,” Sunset instructed him. She got up. “Now, come on, follow me.”</p><p>“Where?”</p><p>“Back to the dorm room; you can sleep on my camp bed for as long as you like until I need it.”</p><p>“You mean it?”</p><p>“Yes, I mean it; my heart’s not made of stone, you know,” Sunset snapped, and snapped her fingers at the same time. “Come on, lover boy, let’s go.”</p><p>He followed her, the softer padding of his footsteps a counterpoint to the heavier tread of Sunset’s boots as she led him back the way that she had come, down the corridor, past the dorm room doors, until at last, they stood once again – once again for Sunset, anyway – before the door into the Team SAPR dorm room. </p><p>Sunset tucked the books that she had hoped to read – not that there wouldn’t be plenty of time to go back to the common room once she’d tucked Sun in and seen him settled – while she fished her scroll out of her jacket pocket and used it to open the door. </p><p>The latch clicked, and Sunset pushed it open. </p><p>Jaune was the sole occupant of the dorm room, sitting on his bed and reading one of the history textbooks with an intense frown upon his face. Ruby was with Yang, while Pyrrha was… Sunset wasn’t entirely sure where Pyrrha was, or Blake, for that matter. But they weren’t here; Jaune was the sole other presence in the room.</p><p>He looked up as Sunset came in, Sun following behind her. </p><p>“You’re back early,” Jaune said. “And, oh hey, Sun, what are you doing here?”</p><p>“I found him crashing on the couch in the common room and invited him to use my bed for a little bit,” Sunset declared. “I hope you don’t mind if I take my unicorn,” she added, summoning it into her free hand with telekinesis. “I don’t like strangers getting their hands on him.”</p><p>“I don’t need a cuddly toy; I just need a bed I can lie on,” Sun declared.</p><p>“Uh, what’s the matter with the bed in your own room?” Jaune asked.</p><p>“Don’t worry, man. I’ll be cool,” Sun assured him. “I don’t snore or anything; you won’t even know that I’m here.”</p><p>“Good to know,” Jaune admitted, “but all the same, what’s the matter with the bed in your dorm room?”</p><p>“The fact that it’s behind a locked door,” Sun groaned.</p><p>“His teammates have kicked him out,” Sunset explained.</p><p>Jaune frowned. “How did they manage to lock you out of your own dorm room?”</p><p>“Neptune’s a genius nerd,” Sun moaned as he climbed into Sunset’s bed.</p><p>“Hey!” Sunset snapped. “Take your shoes off first; this is a civilised dorm room.” <em>And I don’t want mud or whatever else is on your shoes on my bed.</em></p><p>“Right, sorry,” Sun muttered, as he kicked off his shoes. “I really do appreciate this.”</p><p>“Someone can really do that?” Jaune demanded. “Lock a team member out of their dorm room?”</p><p>“It’s actually not that difficult,” Sunset said. “All you have to do is either disable the recognition on the door’s sensors of that particular scroll – which is also the way that you’d allow access to anyone outside the team – or you could hack into the scroll itself and disable the subcommand that enabled it to respond to the door sensor.”</p><p>“Do I want to know how you know that?” Jaune said, a trace of a whimper in his voice.</p><p>“I considered using access as a way to motivate you,” Sunset informed him bluntly, “but you didn’t need that kind of… stern encouragement.” <em>Not to mention, it would have been hard to get it past Ruby and Pyrrha.</em></p><p>“Right,” Jaune murmured. “So… your teammates have locked you out, huh?”</p><p>“Yep,” Sun sighed as he pulled the blanket over him.</p><p>“Because of Blake?”</p><p>“Because I kept ditching them.”</p><p>“Right,” Jaune said. “Have you told them you’re sorry?”</p><p>Sun looked up and pushed himself up on his elbows. “Huh?”</p><p>“You know, maybe if you apologised they’d, let you back in?”</p><p>Sun shrugged. “They probably would,” he admitted. “Well, Neptune would. I don’t know about Scarlet; he’s had it in for me from Initiation; he thinks I took his spot as team leader.”</p><p>“What about…?” Sunset began, before she realised that she didn’t know the name of the fourth member of Team SSSN.</p><p>“Sage?” Sun suggested. “I never really know what he’s thinking; he’s kind of the strong, silent type.”</p><p>“Are you sure it’s not just the fact that you’re never around?” Jaune suggested.</p><p>“Heh, yeah, there’s probably some of that in there, too,” Sun acknowledged without a trace of shame in his voice. “But, anyway, maybe apologising would work, but it wouldn’t feel right to apologise if I didn’t mean it.”</p><p>Jaune blinked rapidly. “If you… you’re not the slightest bit ashamed of what you did, are you?”</p><p>“And he shouldn’t be,” Sunset declared.</p><p>“You’re on his side?” Jaune squawked in astonishment.</p><p>Sunset shrugged. “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be on his side?”</p><p>“Because you’re <em>you!</em>” Jaune exclaimed.</p><p>“And Sun’s gallantry has touched my romantic sensibilities,” Sunset asserted magisterially.</p><p>“Come on, Sunset, we both know that if I was dating Weiss and I had ditched the rest of this team to join Wisteria on a field mission, you’d have hung my guts from the curtain rail by now.”</p><p>Sunset narrowed her eyes. “Would you rather be dating Weiss?”</p><p>“No, of course not!” Jaune yelled. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it!”</p><p>“What I know,” Sunset said, “is that you could learn a thing or two from this young man.” She gestured at Sun with her stuffed unicorn. </p><p>“If you guys are going to have a fight, could you do it outside?” Sun asked, as he laid his head down on the pillow and closed his eyes. “I’m trying to sleep here.”</p><p>“This is our dorm room!” Jaune exclaimed.</p><p>“Don’t worry, this won’t take long,” Sunset assured him as she walked towards Jaune, who scrambled to his feet as she approached. </p><p>Sunset looked up at him and into his eyes. He was a nice boy… he seemed like a nice boy… but then, Flash had seemed like a nice boy too, which was one of the reasons why Sunset had made the mistake of making him her rock. And Pyrrha… Pyrrha wasn’t as emotionally resilient as Sunset was. </p><p>Hesitation robbed her of the power of speech. Was this even necessary? Did she really need to give Jaune the talk? Was he really going to treat Pyrrha like trash?</p><p>
  <em>You never can tell with guys.</em>
</p><p>Oh, come on, really? When he was sleeping in the same room as Pyrrha, Ruby, and Sunset, was he really going to bring all that down on him by acting like – as an older generation might have put it – like a cad?</p><p>
  <em>What’s the harm in nipping it in the bud before it gets that far?</em>
</p><p>Well, Jaune might think that she had a low opinion of him, for one?</p><p>
  <em>No, you just have a low opinion of teenage boys.</em>
</p><p>Yeah, but how likely was it that Jaune was going to do something bad? He was a nice boy-</p><p>
  <em>You thought the same about Flash.</em>
</p><p>But that was different. Pyrrha was in love with him.</p><p>
  <em>Like you were in love with Flash.</em>
</p><p>She wasn’t really, though, was she? She’d gotten over it.</p><p>
  <em>Yeah, right. Keep telling yourself that.</em>
</p><p>None of that meant that Jaune was going to turn out anything like the same way.</p><p>
  <em>But what if he does?</em>
</p><p>“Sunset?” Jaune asked. “Is everything okay?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Sunset snapped up at him. “I don’t… I’m sorry, I just… I’m trying to work out whether I need to… ugh… just don’t hurt Pyrrha, okay?”</p><p>Jaune stared down at her, his blue eyes seeming especially innocent as he blinked down at her. “Huh?”</p><p>“You…” Sunset stopped herself from just saying ‘you heard,’ for fear it might sound too surly on her part. “Don’t hurt Pyrrha. She…” Sunset also stopped herself from saying ‘she loves you,’ because if Jaune didn’t realise that – and Pyrrha hadn’t told him – then it wasn’t Sunset’s job to tell him. “She doesn’t deserve it. So if this is some love ‘em and leave ‘em thing where you walk away as soon as you can say you tapped Pyrrha Nikos, or you’re going to get bored in a few weeks and move on, or-“</p><p>“Sunset, come on,” Jaune interrupted her. “How can you say stuff like that?”</p><p>“It’s nothing personal.”</p><p>“Isn’t it? Because it sounds pretty personal to me!”</p><p>Sunset groaned. “This is what I was worried about; I’m not telling you this so that you can get offended, okay? I know that you’re a nice guy, but I’ve been let down by nice guys in the past. Badly. And I don’t want that for Pyrrha, because she’s my friend, and I don’t want her to get hurt. She doesn’t deserve it, she’s too-”</p><p>“I know what Pyrrha is,” Jaune said. “I know exactly what a wonderful person she is and how little she deserves to get treated like… like that. And I would never do that! You’re not the only person who cares about Pyrrha.”</p><p>“I know,” Sunset said, perhaps a little too sharply. She softened her tone. “I know. I just… you’re a boy, and boys can change so suddenly…” She sighed. “Or perhaps I’m just projecting like crazy.” She sighed again and even more deeply this time. “I really didn’t come here to offend you or upset you or… anything, really. I just-”</p><p>“Wanted to help Pyrrha,” Jaune said softly. “I get that. And it’s okay. I mean, sure, I was upset at first when you acted like I might… come on, I’ve got seven sisters. I know how to treat girls.”</p><p>“Really?” Sunset asked. “How’s that?”</p><p>“With a deep respect born out of fear and a knowledge that they know where you sleep,” Jaune said without hesitation.</p><p>Sunset couldn’t help but snort with laughter. “Yeah, I’m sure you do.”</p><p>Jaune smiled. “I… I don’t know how long this is going to last… but that’s only because I don’t know how long Pyrrha is going to be satisfied with a guy like me when she’s so… you know.”</p><p>
  <em>If only you knew.</em>
</p><p>“I don’t know if I can make her happy,” Jaune continued. “But I’m going to try, for however long she lets me.</p><p>Sunset looked at him for a moment, looking at his earnest face, looking into his eyes. “You… for what it’s worth, I’m sorry if I bruised your pride a little; and for what else it might be worth… I think you are a good guy, and I should have trusted you.”</p><p>“It’s okay,” Jaune repeated. “What are friends for except looking out for one another, right?”</p><p>“Yeah… right,” Sunset murmured. “Anyway…” Her tail swished uncertainly back from side to side. “So, I’m going to… yeah. You… you think about what I said, okay? Just… think about it. And…” <em>And treat her right.</em></p><p>Sunset didn’t flee the room. She most emphatically did not flee the room. She simply left it, at a very fast and slightly undignified pace.</p><hr/><p>Jaune watched her go, the door closing behind her with a little more firmness than strictly necessary. </p><p>He watched her go, and he felt sorry for her. He couldn’t bring himself to feel offended for himself; he didn’t blame her for what she’d said; not because she had reason to say it – she didn’t, and she ought to have known him well enough to know that she didn’t – but because… okay, back up a second. She had no reason to think that he would betray Pyrrha like that, no reason to suspect that his intentions were anything but pure, no reason to think that he wasn’t in this for as long as Pyrrha would have him. And it was a question of how long Pyrrha would have him, because, well, why shouldn’t get bored of a guy like him? Why wouldn’t she wake up and realise that she could do so much better than Jaune Arc? Why wouldn’t the most beautiful, kindest, bravest, strongest girl their age move on from a loser whose only attractive feature was being clueless? But if things ended – as Jaune felt certain, Pyrrha’s protestations of love aside, that they would end – then it wouldn’t be because he had ended them. </p><p>So Sunset had no reason on that count to say anything like that to him, to grill him, to press him, but for the other reasons that she had to say it, well… those reasons, he couldn’t deny, and it was for those reasons that he felt sorry for her. </p><p>The more things went on, the more certain Jaune became that Flash Sentry had done Sunset Shimmer dirty. It wasn’t obvious at first, because Flash was such a genial guy, so affable and good-natured, while Sunset was prickly and hard-edged; not to mention the fact that the venom that Sunset had for Flash sometimes got lost under the noise of her attitude towards other people. Plus, the fact that there were times in Jaune’s school life when he hadn’t been particularly inclined to feel very sorry for Sunset or to look too closely at her problems. Not to mention that he’d had enough of his own problems at other times or even at some of those same times. </p><p>But the more he looked, the more he felt as though Flash must have done something to really hurt Sunset, and the more he felt as though he couldn’t just ignore that fact. Sunset could be difficult, and she was proud and stubborn, and she thought she was so smart, even though she was making terrible decisions… but she was also their team leader, and she was a leader who would always have your back, even if she complained about it all the while. She had forced him to get a grip, and even though she had tried to use him as an accessory to bullying as part of a petty revenge scheme, he couldn’t ignore the fact that she had saved his place at Beacon too, and he knew – he knew in his gut – that she would do the same for Ruby or Pyrrha if either of them found themselves in trouble like that. </p><p>Sunset… Sunset took care of them, and Jaune felt as though they ought to take care of her as well, since they were a team. </p><p>Plus, there was the fact that if Flash really was hiding a dark side, then, well, just because he had lost interest in Weiss didn’t mean that he wanted to see her end up in the arms of someone whose fair face hid a black heart. </p><p>He wasn’t sure exactly what he could do, or ought to do to help Sunset with her problem, but he felt increasingly sure that he ought to – had to – do something. </p><p>Perhaps Pyrrha would know what to do. He should definitely speak to her about it before he did anything. </p><p>In the meantime… Jaune’s eyes were drawn towards Sun, where the nominal leader of Team SSSN was lying in bed with the blanket pulled up so high that it almost hid his face. </p><p>“Hey,” Jaune said. “Are you still awake?”</p><p>“Unfortunately,” Sun muttered.</p><p>“How long have you been sleeping on sofas?”</p><p>“Since we got back from the train mission,” Sun grunted. He lifted his head up a little bit so that he could look at Jaune. “How are you doing, by the way?”</p><p>“Distance helps,” Jaune said. “So does having stuff to take my mind off it.” He frowned. “How come no one has noticed you sleeping around the common room before?”</p><p>“People noticed; they just didn’t care or thought it was funny.”</p><p>Jaune winced. “That’s rough,” he said. He paused. “Listen, Sun… when Sunset let you in here, did she say anything to you?”</p><p>Sun hesitated. “Uh, yeah, she told me I’d done the right thing and that I shouldn’t feel guilty about it.”</p><p>Jaune rolled his eyes. “I meant what I said, by the way; if I pulled a stunt like that, I’d think myself lucky if <em>all</em> she did was lock me out of the room.”</p><p>“Yeah, but you’re on the same team as your girlfriend,” Sun protested. “Are you telling me that if you were on a different team from Pyrrha, then would you let anything stop you from heading into danger with her?”</p><p>“I might let the three other people who I’m <em>supposed</em> to be facing danger with let it stop me,” Jaune replied. “I mean… sure, I get it, and I’m glad that I’m not in your position… but it would be kind of insulting to Sunset and Ruby and…” – he plucked a name out of the air – “Yang to act like I was the only one who could help Pyrrha and keep her safe, and it would be doubly insulting to Ren and Nora and Dove if I kept ditching them and letting them go into danger without me. Triply so if I was supposed to be leading them into battle. I mean, don’t you care about your teammates at all? Doesn’t it matter to you that they might have to face real danger without you? Without anyone? They’ll be a man down against grimm or bandits or the White Fang, and in the meantime… what? Do you think that Blake can’t take care of herself? Do you think that Team Rosepetal doesn’t have her back? Do you think that we don’t have her back?”</p><p>“I know that Blake doesn’t need me!” Sun cried. “I get it, okay. You don’t need to rub it in. I know that Blake is surrounded by great people, and they’re all so much better than I am, trust me.”</p><p>Jaune was silent for a moment. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”</p><p>Sun nodded. “I want… I need to show Blake that I… that I’m more than just some bum, you know? I know… I know she doesn’t love me. I know she doesn’t feel the same way about me that I feel about her, but maybe… maybe if I show her that I’m the kind of guy who… who understands the things that matter to her and fights for them like she does then… then maybe… I don’t know.”</p><p>Jaune sighed. “Listen… I’m not great at this stuff either, so don’t take my word for it, but I think… I think that if you want to show Blake a different side of you, then maybe, instead of chasing her around, you should show her that you’re the kind of person that… not just the kind of person that <em>she</em> can rely on, but the kind of person that <em>everyone</em> can rely on… the kind of person that I think Blake would like to become. I mean, look at Sunset. Look at Rainbow Dash. Blake has a lot of respect for both of them-”</p><p>“Are you saying you don’t think Blake respects me?”</p><p>Jaune hesitated. “I… don’t really know?”</p><p>“Thanks, dude.”</p><p>“The point is that Blake doesn’t respect them because they both fall down at her feet and always go running off after her.”</p><p>“Both of them have done exactly that,” Sun pointed out.</p><p>“Yeah, okay, but they didn’t ditch their… okay, they both did that too, but not in the same way that you did,” Jaune insisted. “You know exactly what I’m talking about: Blake respects both of them because they’re good leaders, because they take their responsibilities seriously, because she knows that… that we can all rely on them if we need to. And maybe that’s what you need to show her.”</p><p>“Is that what you show Pyrrha?” Sun asked. “That everyone can rely on you?”</p><p>“Pyrrha… I still don’t really get what I did to get so lucky with Pyrrha.”</p><p>Sun sighed. “I envy you, man.”</p><p>“Hey, don’t put yourself down too much; you’re still with Blake, after all,” Jaune reminded him. “I suppose what I’m really trying to say is, don’t put too much stock in Sunset’s dating advice.”</p><p>“Okay,” Sun murmured. “What’s up with her? Is she okay?”</p><p><em>When it comes to guys, I don’t think she is.</em> “I don’t know,” Jaune lied. “I’ve really got no idea.”</p><hr/><p>Pyrrha had texted Dove, asking him to meet her under the shadow of the huntsman statue, but when she got there, she found that he had beaten her to their meeting place: he was sitting in front of the snarling beowolf – with the result that it looked a little as though it was about to pounce on him – reading <em>Fairy Tales of Remnant</em>. He must have heard her footsteps on the courtyard stone, because he looked up as Pyrrha drew near and scrambled to his feet.</p><p>"You don't have to get up," Pyrrha told him.</p><p>Dove smiled. "I think my grandmother would rise out of her grave and whack me with a broom handle if I didn't," he said. "Good manners were very important to her."</p><p>Pyrrha chuckled. "Well, if it means that much to you, then I can't stop you. Thank you for meeting me."</p><p>"It's not a problem," Dove assured her. "Plus, I'm a little curious as to why you want to talk to me specifically."</p><p>He had reason to be curious; it wasn't as though they interacted a great deal; even when Teams SAPR and YRDN interacted with one another, Dove was very easily drowned out by the more vocal and expressive personalities on his team. It made Pyrrha feel a little guilty about the fact that their first meaningful interaction was to ask him for a favour. She glanced down and fiddled momentarily with her red sash. </p><p>"I'm afraid that I would like to ask for something from you, however little right I have to ask it."</p><p>"You have the right to ask for whatever you like," Dove said. "Just as I have the right to say no."</p><p>"Of course," Pyrrha murmured. "You know… or you might not know… I've been training Jaune in swordplay."</p><p>"He has been improving by leaps and bounds," Dove told her. "The general opinion in the dorm room – and in Team Bluebell's dorm room, come to that – is that you've got something to do with it."</p><p>"Indeed," Pyrrha said softly; she found that she was not particularly surprised to hear that. It was no slight on Jaune to admit that he had arrived at Beacon in need of some instruction, and it made sense that she would be the one to provide him with that instruction. "Are there any… dissenting opinions?"</p><p>"Lyra thinks that Jaune was holding back when he first arrived at Beacon, so as to make himself seem weaker than he was so that his transformation would seem all the more impressive," Dove explained. "Like a sun hidden behind the clouds seems to shine brighter when the clouds disperse than a clear day ever can; her words, not mine."</p><p>Pyrrha smiled. "That would be a fine thing, if it was true, but… the general opinion is right; I have been giving Jaune some assistance. And I'm glad to hear you say that Jaune has improved; it shows that my judgement isn't blinded by… by my affection for him." She looked up into Dove's round face. "The trouble is… the trouble is that Jaune can't see the scale of his improvement because… because he's still some way away from beating me."</p><p>"Yang aside, we're all a long way from beating you," Dove said.</p><p>"I didn't come here to be flattered," Pyrrha said gently. "The point is… I was hoping that you might agree to become Jaune's sparring partner-"</p><p>"Because I'm much closer to his level than you are, and he can gauge his progress against me much more effectively?" Dove asked.</p><p>"I didn't mean to insult you," Pyrrha said quickly.</p><p>Dove held up one hand. "You didn't. My grandfather used to say that if you were insulted by the truth, then you either had too much pride or too thin a skin. I know that you're set high above me in your skill at arms. I know that I have work to do to climb the mountain that divides us." He fell silent, leaving Pyrrha unsure of whether he would agree to her request or not.</p><p>Nevertheless, she did not press him on it. She was, after all, asking him for a favour; impatience would hardly become her in this situation.</p><p>Pyrrha waited, as Dove half-turned away from her, his lips moving silently.</p><p>"I can do one night a week," he said. "In return for something from you."</p><p>"What?" Pyrrha asked.</p><p>"While you've been tutoring Jaune, I've been helping Lyra," Dove informed her. "She was a little better than Jaune at the start of the year, but I think he'd beat her now. Consequence of the difference in teachers; Lyra isn't as fortunate in her friends or teammates as Jaune is, so she's stuck with me instead of the Champion of Mistral."</p><p>Pyrrha didn't reply to that; there was no need, in her opinion; Dove would probably resent being patronised as much as Jaune did, but on the other hand, there was no need to lord her superior skill over him.</p><p>"If I give a night over to Jaune," Dove continued, "will you help Lyra on that night? I'm sure you can show her things I've not even considered."</p><p>Pyrrha smiled. "Of course," she said, warmly and readily. "You train every night?"</p><p>"No, three nights a week," Dove said. "Do <em>you</em> train every night?"</p><p>"Almost every night, unless there's a good reason not to."</p><p>"What about having fun?"</p><p>"Jaune… is determined to get better," Pyrrha said carefully, hoping that it didn't sound like she was suggesting Lyra was not… even though that was, to an extent, what she was suggesting.</p><p>"So does Lyra," Dove replied, a little defensively. "But she couldn't spend all her time practicing. What about homework?"</p><p>"I manage," Pyrrha murmured. "And Jaune… is fortunate to have Sunset and myself to assist him. Besides, we train every night but not <em>all</em> night."</p><p>"I see," Dove said. "You are truly blessed to have a mind as sharp as the edge of your sword."</p><p>"Fortune smiled upon me at my birth, and many other times after," Pyrrha agreed. "Shall I let you speak to Lyra and decide which day suits her best? If she even wants my help; she may not."</p><p>"True, in which case, I'm sorry, but I wouldn't be able to help Jaune."</p><p>"Of course. I understand," Pyrrha said. If that was the case, then her next call would be Blake, who fought with a sword sometimes, even if it was in quite an alien fashion to the style that she had been teaching Jaune. There was always Sunset, who now had a sword – courtesy of Pyrrha's mother – and who fought in a fighting style that could be called static, but Pyrrha thought that Sunset was <em>too</em> inexperienced with the blade; Jaune still needed to be challenged by his opponent. "I don't suppose that you know anything about attacking with your aura? Expelling it out through your blade, I mean."</p><p>"You mean like Ren?" Dove asked. "But with a sword? Is that possible?"</p><p>Pyrrha nodded. "I've seen it done, but I… I understand the theory, but not having ever trained it in myself, it's not something I could pass on to Jaune."</p><p>"And you thought I would know something you would not?"</p><p>"My mother – and the tutors she hired – taught me that expending your aura thus in an attack was a blunt instrument," Pyrrha said. "I was taught to be precise, but Jaune has the aura to spare for such attacks, in moderation. I wondered if you might have the skill."</p><p>"I'm afraid not," Dove said. "Although you've made me curious about it now. I might ask Ren if it is something he can teach me. In the meantime, I'll speak to Lyra, and let you know what she says."</p><p>"Thank you," Pyrrha said. "I appreciate your willingness to help me and Jaune."</p><p>Dove shrugged. "We're on different teams, but we all share a common purpose, don't we? We are… the light against the darkness, if that doesn't sound too pompous."</p><p>"Not at all. I think it's perfect," Pyrrha said, "and perfectly accurate too. You helping Jaune and I helping Lyra: what benefits one benefits us all."</p><hr/><p>Blake was not blind to the fact that there was a degree of risk involved in walking around the campus with a book written by a faunus political prisoner in her arms, and she was certainly not unaware that she might have been better off reading this in the SAPR dorm room. But she had no intention of spending her entire time at Beacon cooped up in that room, and the book that she was carrying with her wasn’t a White Fang recruiting pamphlet; it didn’t advocate terrorism as a means of advancing political objectives; quite the opposite, if Twilight’s summation of it was correct. </p><p>There was no reason on Remnant why she shouldn’t take it to the library this morning and start to read it. </p><p>Plus, everyone else was in class by now.</p><p>So Blake walked into the library, the door swinging shut behind her, carrying <em>Prison Journals</em> pressed against her chest, title turned away from the world. </p><p>“Hey, Blake?”</p><p>Blake stopped, her golden eyes widening at the burly figure who had just emerged from out of the stacks in front of her. “Tukson?”</p><p>Tukson smiled warmly. “It’s been a little while, hasn’t it?”</p><p>“'It’s been a…'” Blake fought to hold back the cry of irritation that threatened to rise up from her throat. “I went to the hospital to see how you were, and they told me you’d gone!”</p><p>“Yeah, I got discharged a few days ago.”</p><p>“I couldn’t call you!”</p><p>“They took my scroll away for my own protection, or something.”</p><p>“You… how long have you been here?” Blake demanded.</p><p>“Since I got out of hospital,” Tukson explained. “Professor Ozpin explained that it probably wasn’t safe for me to go back to the bookshop right away, since the White Fang might, you know, try and shut me up again, but he also offered me a job here in the library. It seems there are a lot of books here that need to be catalogued, so that ought to keep me busy until this whole thing blows over.”</p><p>Blake stared at him. She was speechless, torn between her joy at seeing him safe and sound and secure in this place, the heart of their fortress, and her anger at the fact that she had found this out by sheer chance of having to walk in here when he had been near the door. If she had stayed away – if she had decided to read in the dorm room, for instance – she would not have found out. She might <em>never</em> have found out. </p><p>“When were you going to tell me?” she demanded.</p><p>“You were away on a mission when I came here,” Tukson explained. “I didn’t want to distract you when your life, and the lives of those around you, were on the line.”</p><p>“I got back from my mission the day before yesterday,” Blake pointed out.</p><p>“Oh, I didn’t know that,” Tukson admitted. “I figured I’d see you around. And I did.”</p><p>Blake sighed. “Yes. Yes, I suppose you did,” she admitted. She bowed her head but then looked back up at him with a slight smile gracing her features. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she added.</p><p>Tukson took a couple of steps towards her and reached out to put his strong hands upon her shoulders. “And I’m glad you made it back from your mission in one piece. Are you allowed to talk about it? Do you want to talk about it?”</p><p>Blake hesitated. “I think it should be okay.”</p><p>“But do you want to talk about it?” Tukson repeated.</p><p>“Yes,” Blake said. “I’ve spent… too long hiding how I feel. Hiding parts of my life. I don’t want to hide any more.”</p><p>“Then do you want to sit down?” Tukson suggested. “There’s no food or drink allowed in the library, but-”</p><p>“I’ll be fine with just a seat,” Blake said. “Are you going to be okay, or will you get in trouble for slacking off?”</p><p>“I hope not; who’s around to tell?” Tukson asked as he took her by the shoulder and steered to one of the tables in the open heart of the library. </p><p>Blake pulled out one chair, and Tukson another as they both sat down. Blake put <em>Prison Journals</em> down on the table, still facing downwards. </p><p>Tukson nodded at the black book. “What’s that?”</p><p>“It’s nothing,” Blake replied.</p><p>“If it was nothing, you wouldn’t be trying to hide the title,” Tukson pointed out.</p><p>“I suppose not,” Blake admitted. “It’s Rudi Antonio’s <em>Prison Journals</em>.”</p><p>Tukson frowned. “Never heard of them.”</p><p>“So much for 'every book under the sun.'”</p><p>“It was just a stupid marketing slogan,” Tukson muttered. “So, what’s this book?”</p><p>“It’s a philosophy, amongst other things,” Blake explained. “About how the faunus can achieve equality non-violently by burrowing into systems and institutions. Apparently, anyway. That’s what I’ve been told; I haven’t actually read it yet.” She decided not to mention the fact that it had an introduction by Sienna Khan. </p><p>Tukson nodded slowly. “And that’s where your thinking is at now?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Blake admitted. “Rainbow Dash thinks it’s the way… I’m not entirely sure.”</p><p>“'Rainbow Dash'?”</p><p>“An Atlas student, and a faunus,” Blake explained. “She… I didn’t trust her, at first. Or rather, I suppose I should say that I didn’t get her. I didn’t understand how a faunus could wear an Atlas uniform and not hate themselves for what they were a part of.”</p><p>“And now?”</p><p>“Now… now, I kind of admire her,” Blake admitted. “She’s brave and loyal-”</p><p>“So are you.”</p><p>“And she never hides who she is,” Blake continued. “And she’s comfortable with who she is. With all of who she is.”</p><p>“You’ve had a tough life, Blake,” Tukson told her. “The fact that you have some regrets doesn’t make you less, and it doesn’t mean that you have to be ashamed of yourself before some Atlas girl who hasn’t had to make the hard choices that you’ve been faced with.”</p><p>“I don’t,” Blake responded. “Well, what I mean is… I like her. And a part of me would like to believe that she’s right about this. It’s not as though anything else we’ve tried has worked out.”</p><p>“Hey, show some respect,” Tukson said. “Generations who came before you worked their asses off to get to where we are today. Just because things aren’t perfect doesn’t mean that we accomplished <em>nothing</em>. Do you think that I would have been allowed to own my own business right after the war finished?”</p><p>Blake was silent for a moment. “I suppose I haven’t really thought about it.”</p><p>“Take it from my grandpa: the answer was no,” Tukson informed her. “It’s fine to be mad at the injustice that you still see in the world, but don’t let it drive you to despair. Things <em>can</em> change for the better.”</p><p>“Do you remember how they changed?” Blake asked. “You say that you accomplished things, but how did you accomplish them? And if my parents’ methods were getting results, then why… why did people older and wiser than me lose faith in them?”</p><p>“You ask me these questions like I was in the inner circle.”</p><p>“Are you trying to convince me that you weren’t?”</p><p>“I wasn’t; I just knew people who were,” Tukson clarified. “Anyway, you don’t need me to tell you what you already knew: whatever might have been happening wasn’t happening fast enough, and it wasn’t happening in a way that your father could point to. What the White Fang was accomplishing, assuming that we were responsible, was changing hearts and minds; attitudes towards the faunus amongst the humans were softening every generation; at least, that’s how it looked to me. Look at your friends; how many racist jackasses are there amongst them?”</p><p>Blake raised one eyebrow. “You think I’d be friends with a racist?”</p><p>“Okay, not your actual friends, your classmates.”</p><p>“Ah, you mean the patronising way that adults refer to everyone a young person’s age as their friend without bothering to find out if they really get along?”</p><p>“If you like, yes,” Tukson conceded. “In your class, how many?”</p><p>Blake thought about it for a moment. “Only one that I know of for sure.”</p><p>“And how is that regarded?”</p><p>“In a pretty negative light.”</p><p>“Precisely,” Tukson said. “Attitudes like theirs were once common, but now, they’re rare, and not only rare but seen as vulgar and obnoxious; meanwhile, faunus who would have only been allowed into Atlas as janitors can become students now. And so it goes, things change and for the better. But that’s not the kind of thing you can say when you’re the embattled leader of a campaigning organisation. Changing attitudes are hard to prove, especially when it’s the racists that stand out more than the people who aren’t racist but don’t do anything about it. People wanted laws on the books, they wanted signs taken down from shop windows, they wanted police reform. Your parents couldn’t show them any of that; he couldn’t even show that he was being listened to by the Councils in the four kingdoms. Sienna promised real results, to shake the kingdoms until they’d have no choice but to listen.”</p><p>“Is that what’s happening in Vale?” Blake asked. “Are things being shaken up?”</p><p>“You already know the answer to that, Blake.”</p><p>“But I don’t know if this is happening by Sienna’s order or if this is Adam… letting his anger run away with him.” Blake sighed. “It may be stupid, but I’ve already accepted that Adam is… I’ve accepted what Adam is. But I’d like to believe that I wasn’t completely foolish for putting my trust in Sienna.”</p><p>“Lots of us put our trust in Sienna at first,” Tukson said. “There’s no shame in it.”</p><p>Blake looked into his eyes. “Do you really believe that?”</p><p>Tukson was silent for a moment, and even when he spoke, he did not respond. Instead, he said, “Did you bring that book here because you meant to start reading it?”</p><p>Blake nodded. “I wanted to see what it was like.”</p><p>“I’ll leave you to it then,” Tukson said, rising from his seat. “The old way wasn’t worthless, but it also led to Sienna Khan and Adam and what the White Fang is today and… well, it led to where we are now. So if you can find another way, if you think that it’s in that book or anywhere else you might see it… don’t be afraid to take it.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0038"><h2>38. Three Stories</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sunset, Blake and Ruby all do some reading</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Three Stories</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u">And so it came to pass that the hand of God alighted upon the woman Mary, and the spirit moved within her, and his blessings fell upon her, and she was consumed with the divine grace.</span>
</p><p>Sunset adjusted the cushion behind her back. Since putting Sun to bed, she had returned to the common room to do what she had intended to do before she found Sun: take the books Twilight had provided and read up on what was known of magic in this world. She wasn't entirely sure what was true and what was religious embellishment, but already, she could start to see what Twilight was talking about: this was a Valish story, one of many lives of the saints from the Valish Orthodox Church, and not only did it begin in the same way as practically every other saint's life that she'd read so far, but there were clear similarities to their equivalents from Anima and Solitas. Sunset had even started keeping track, scribbling down the similarities on a notebook that sat beside her on the sofa.</p><p>
  <span class="u">All women. Age not stated but cultural context (unmarried, often under some kind of parental authority) suggests young when they came into power.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">They all come into power. None of them are born with it. Possibly this is the religious element but perhaps truth to it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">Weird dichotomy: either know the previous prophet – or whatever – very well, so well as to be present at her deathbed, or they are complete strangers to one another. I have yet to see any middle ground.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">In each tradition, there is never more than one at a time.</span>
</p><p>That was interesting. If her observations were correct – and if the accounts could be trusted upon this point – then it suggested that magic in Remnant was not something one was born to as a unicorn was, but rather something bestowed upon one like... like ascension, to be frank. It wasn't an exact parallel – you couldn't replace God or the gods with Princess Celestia and the holy spirit with a pair of wings or a horn and a crown and have the whole story still make perfect sense – but it was a better fit than Sunset had expected at first. It made sense, though, the more she thought about it; Equestrian magic was not, the occasional prodigy like Sunset herself aside, a catch-all or a force capable of shaking the foundations of cosmos. It had more in common with a semblance in that it reflected your personality and could range from great to staggeringly limited in its utility. It made sense to her then, when she stopped to think about it, that magic in Remnant would be something else, something on top of that, something reserved only for the chosen few.</p><p>The biggest difference – or at least the one that struck Sunset, coming from the Equestrian tradition as she did, as the most bizarre – was that none of these girls seemed to demonstrate their aptitude or worthiness for power until <em>after</em> it had been bestowed upon them.</p><p>But who was doing the bestowing? If it was not gods (Sunset wasn't prepared to say for sure, one way or the other) then who? If anyone?</p><p>Sunset returned to the story.</p><p>
  <span class="u">And Mary found that she had dominion over the fire and the water and that the gardens would bloom at her desire, and she was sorely afraid, for she did not understand the blessing of God. And the people were sorely afeared, for they comprehended not, and they shunned Mary for the changes that had been wrought upon her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">But then the old man came to the village of Providence and said unto the people there 'Where is the girl, Mary, daughter of a carpenter? I have come from afar seeking after her.' And the people of the village urged him to turn back, for the carpenter’s daughter had been transformed, and they did not comprehend what she had become. Nevertheless, the old man asked again where she might be found, and with reluctance, they pointed him the way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">And then the old man went to Mary and said unto her, 'Be not afraid. Rejoice! For you have been chosen.'</span>
</p><p>Of course there was an old man. There was <em>always</em> an old man. Often, he played this kind of role, telling the chosen one what they'd gotten themselves into and giving them their mission from God, or the gods. Interestingly, he was never named. He was just an old man, but everybody seemed to trust him anyway. Was it the same man? No, that was impossible due to the broad span of time across which these stories took place; a better question to ask was it whether there was only one ‘old man’ at a time. After all, if all of these religious traditions were just syncretic additions to explain or cover up the existence of magic, then it wasn't too much of a leap to say that there only needed to be one old man at a time flitting across the world explaining the rules.</p><p>Although that begged the question of how he was getting around. One herald per chosen one made just as much sense, although that didn't explain why said herald didn't stick around for longer.</p><p><span class="u">Who is the old man, and who told him what was going on?</span> Sunset scribbled, before reading on.</p><p>
  <span class="u">And the old man took Mary away from Providence, and in the wilderness, he taught her to understand the blessing that had been granted to her: to command the fire and water, wind and lightning; to make the desert bloom and bring forth life where before there was only aridness; to comprehend what had been and what could be; to understand that she was now more than she had been, that she had been chosen and a great purpose now lay upon her.</span>
</p><p>As a rundown of what magic could do in this world, it was pretty comprehensive, and pretty consistent not only with Sunset's reading up to this point but also with Twilight's childhood recollection; flying wasn't mentioned, but that could easily fall under command of the wind. Sunset had already written down a list of her best guesses: based on these somewhat archaically worded statements, magic in Remnant possessed the following attributes or capabilities: </p><p>
  <span class="u">Elemental control (plus lightning)</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">Fertility?</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">Divination?</span>
</p><p>It wasn't a hard and fast list, and the only ones she was sure of were the ones that Twilight had confirmed with her childhood eyes. The rest were plausible but unconfirmed interpretations; although the narratives were consistent, they were consistent in unfortunately couching everything in turns of phrase that were open to dispute in what they actually meant. Sunset read on.</p><p>
  <span class="u">And the old man saw how she had grown as a flower blossoming amidst the weeds, and he was well pleased, saying unto her 'My child, I send thee forth to spread the good news to all nations; be resolute in the face of wickedness, be compassionate in the face of weakness; be wise, be brave, and be kind in equal measure. Go forth, for you are ready.'</span>
</p><p>Sunset frowned. This was the bit she didn't understand. Assuming that there was some force that was choosing to bestow magic upon these young women, then why? What was it in aid of? What was the point of it all?</p><p>
  <em>Why does Equestria make princesses? To provide leadership and inspiration.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yes, in the service of harmony and of Princess Celestia. In what and to what are these saints and prophets in aid?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>God? Gods? If there are as many gods as there are faiths, then why are all their prophet-figures so similar? If there is no divinity but only magic, then from whence comes it and, again, to what end?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Why does the old man send her forth? What does he want or expect her to achieve?</em>
</p><p>Sunset had read a dozen similar accounts, and the accounts of what the girls did once the old man had decreed that they were ready: accounts of miracles, battles against the grimm – and in one memorable instance, with a trio of monsters who seemed themselves to have more than a touch of the magical about them – of how they had converted cities and peoples, or driven wickedness out of them; still, she felt that she was missing something. Perhaps Twilight would have a theory when they spoke again, for the existence of this system that seemed at once discernible and yet also to possess a quality that was tantalisingly outside of Sunset's reach.</p><p>
  <em>I am groping in the dark... but I can feel something beneath my fingertips.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If this is magic, if magic exists in Remnant, then it is not the magic that I know; it is a kind of ascension, once granted for a purpose that is not clear and, if Twilight is to believed, still being granted albeit now hidden from the world for reasons which, again, are not yet clear to me.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>By whom, and to what end? Answer those questions, and all will become clear.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And I will know how to obtain this power for myself.</em>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span class="u">Even though we only got back from our last training mission a week ago, Professor Ozpin has already assigned us another one.</span>
</p><p>“Raven wasn’t kidding,” Yang muttered. “Two training missions in the second semester, and before they’d even gotten to Armistice Day? Professor Ozpin did push Team Stark hard.” She glanced at Ruby. “You’re not going anywhere again, are you?”</p><p>“I haven’t heard anything about another mission,” Ruby said. “Sunset hasn’t talked about it; I don’t think she’d keep something like that to herself, either.”</p><p>“Good,” Yang said.</p><p>“It wouldn’t be such a big deal,” Ruby said. “What’s wrong with getting out of Beacon and helping people? And besides, you went on a mission too.”</p><p>“There’s nothing wrong with helping people, but my mission didn’t involve me stowing away aboard an Atlesian military train so I could try and do what the police and the Atlesian military couldn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of you for helping to catch Torchwick,” – Yang wrapped one arm around Ruby’s shoulders and squeezed her little sister tight and close – “but it doesn’t change the fact that it shouldn’t have been your job.”</p><p>“Well… Professor Ozpin didn’t exactly know that we were going to try and catch Torchwick on our way back, so…” Ruby trailed off, waiting for an expression of sisterly disapproval for her recklessness.</p><p>“Professor Ozpin knows more than you think he does,” Yang said. “I think he knew exactly what you guys had in mind.”</p><p>“You’re starting to sound a little like Sunset,” Ruby said. “She thinks the Professor might be up to something as well.”</p><p>“Then Sunset Shimmer might be smarter than she looks after all,” Yang said. “Come on; let’s see what this second mission for Mom and her team was."</p><p>
  <span class="u">But everyone was up for it, and Professor Ozpin said that it was a mission that he could only trust the four of us with; I’m still not sure why that is – there must have been pro-huntsmen or even older students he could count on – but the way he said it made it very hard to refuse. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">And besides, it kind of beats Professor Port’s class.</span>
</p><p>“It’s kind of depressing, don’t you think?” Yang said. “You’d like to think Professor Port had been a good teacher when he started, even if he isn’t any more.” The events they were reading about took place in Professor Port’s first semester, having been promoted following the retirement of his aged predecessor. </p><p>“Sunset says we’re just bad students.”</p><p>“Sunset says she can understand what Professor Port is trying to do,” Yang corrected her. “I don’t think even she says he’s doing it well.”</p><p>
  <span class="u">We went up to the top of the tower to see Professor Ozpin in his office. Professor Goodwitch was there too, although she didn’t look too happy to see us. Professor Ozpin introduced us to a woman named Auburn; he called her an old student of his and a friend. Our mission is to escort Auburn to the village of Seclusion, where a girl named Merida lives; we’re then to escort both Auburn and Merida back to Vale. Professor Ozpin won’t say why this girl needs to come to Vale, and Auburn pretty much told me not to ask. Raven is suspicious about it, but I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation. We set off at dawn tomorrow. We’ll be moving through wild territory, so there’s a chance of running into grimm, but if we don’t go looking for trouble, then too much trouble shouldn’t find its way to us.</span>
</p><p>The two sisters flipped to the next page, crossing the night and arriving at the next day in the blink of an eye.</p><p>
  <span class="u">I’m not sure what to make of Miss Auburn. She laughs a lot, and seems pleasant enough, but there’s something about the way that she laughs that seems forced, strained somehow. It’s like she’s pretending to be a lot more genial than she actually is. She drinks a lot too; every time I look at her, she has a skin of wine in her hand; I think we’re all amazed she can still function, although only Qrow had the nerve to actually call her out on it.</span>
</p><p>“Did I just read that?” Yang asked. “You read that, right? Uncle Qrow took someone else to task for drinking too much.”</p><p>“I guess some people really do change,” Ruby murmured, trying to remember the last time she had seen Uncle Qrow without a flask in his hand.</p><p>“Yeah, he went from calling this lady out to following her example,” Yang summed up.</p><p>
  <span class="u">Anyway, as weird as it seems, she can still function, and pretty well actually. We were attacked by grimm this evening, just before twilight. More grimm than I’d expect to see so close to Vale, to be honest: beowolves and ursai. It got bad for a moment. Tai and Raven both had their auras broken, and I had to save Raven before a beowolf took her arm off. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">I was going to use my silver eyes to destroy the grimm, but before I could, Auburn did something, I don’t know what she did, but it didn’t look like any semblance that I’ve ever seen. She was using fire and lightning and wind; at one point, it looked as though she was freezing leaves to make knives. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">She took out the grimm, not me, and then she healed Raven and Tai’s injuries; they were only minor cuts and bruises, but still, she just touched them, and they were gone. And while she was fighting, and while she was doing whatever it was that she did for Tai and Raven, it was as though I was looking at a completely different person: the real Auburn, not the one who pretends to laugh and hides who she really is. Someone serious, but maybe a little sad, too.</span>
</p><p>“The hell?” Yang said. “Does this make any more sense to you?”</p><p>“Mom… could be wrong,” Ruby said, trying to steer the conversation away from the idea of magic; she didn’t like lying to her sister, and more to the point, she wasn’t very good at it, and she was worried that if they talked about this too long, then she wouldn’t be able to keep the words ‘Sunset has magical powers’ from tumbling out of her mouth. “It could be a semblance that Mom had never seen before.”</p><p>Ruby doubted that, however. She might have believed it before she’d started reading this diary and had Sunset confirm for her that magic was a real thing that really existed, but now… and Mom had magic too, so she probably knew it when she saw it, even if she didn’t know that she knew it, if that made any sense. Had this Auburn been somebody like Sunset? Mom hadn’t mentioned that she was a faunus, but that didn’t mean that she hadn’t been one; maybe she came from the same place Sunset did and they all had magic there.</p><p>Although what Mom had written about didn’t sound like the kind of magic that Sunset did; Auburn wasn’t throwing energy around or making shields by the sound of it. It sounded almost more like dust, only without the dust. </p><p><em>Another kind of magic, maybe?</em> Ruby decided to ask Sunset about it; if anyone knew, then she would.</p><p>“I guess it could be that,” Yang said. “Or it could be something else. Something like her silver eyes, maybe?”</p><p>“…Maybe?” Ruby said. “Maybe… maybe we should just keep going. Maybe she’ll tell us… eventually.”</p><p>
  <span class="u">I would have asked her just how she did that, but I had bigger problems tonight:  Raven completely lost it with Qrow, yelling at him that this was all his fault, that he’d nearly gotten them killed. She said something about their family. I didn’t understand it. I just wanted her to stop. I did stop her, but Qrow took what she’d already said to heart. He walked off. I went and talked to him, and I told him that of course it wasn’t his fault, these things happen, that he fought well and that he’s a valuable part of this team. I wish I could be sure that he believed me. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">I’m worried about him. He seemed so upset about what had happened. He seemed to believe that it really was his fault, like he was a danger to the whole team, and he wouldn’t even really explain why he felt that way. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">I wish I knew why Raven had said what she did.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">I wish I knew what to say to Qrow to make it better.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span class="u">The obscurity into which Rudi Antonio has fallen is as undeserved as his ideas are impractical.</span>
</p><p>Blake sat in the library, reading the <em>Prison Journals</em> that Twilight had gotten her. Tukson was gone, having bustled off somewhere else in the library to… well, to do his job, not to put too fine a point on it; she supposed that since Professor Ozpin had been good enough to offer him shelter from the White Fang, the least he could do was earn his keep while he was at it. </p><p>Besides, having a job made it a lot easier to explain Tukson’s presence on campus; Beacon hadn’t had a librarian before, but that was no reason why it couldn’t have one – it had a library, after all; employing someone to maintain it made perfect sense – while the sudden appearance of a strange adult just idling around the school might have prompted questions. </p><p>Plus, Tukson would have been bored; at least this way, he got to spend time around books, which he loved, so being at Beacon probably wasn’t a hardship for him. </p><p>To be honest, he might even be happier here than he would have been in Vacuo.</p><p>Meanwhile, she was sat in the library, reading Sienna Khan’s introduction to the book. She had debated – long and hard – in her head as to whether she ought to bother with the introduction or not. Blake didn’t really need to read Sienna Khan’s words from long ago in order to understand the way the High Leader thought; she had heard her speak, received Sienna’s plans and policies from her own lips, sat at her feet and learned from her. Blake thought – and not without at least some justification – that she could probably guess what Sienna Khan had to say about the idea of peacefully working one’s way up the ranks of institutions dominated by humanity in order to seize control of them from within.</p><p>But people could change, or at least Blake devoutly hoped they could, and this introduction had been written a long time ago. It was possible that Sienna’s views had evolved over time, for all that they had evolved for the worse. She had, after all, worked alongside her parents for quite some time before the split in the movement. It was possible that the Sienna contained within these pages was not the Sienna whom Blake knew. </p><p>And she had been curious to find out. </p><p>It wasn’t looking all that hopeful.</p><p>
  <span class="u">Considering that these are his personal journals, Antonio is very guarded about his personal history, preferring to propound his ideals and philosophies. That is all very well for a philosophical and historical text, but at the same time, a cursory examination of his fate shows the naivety of his chosen methods. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">It is important to bear in mind that this advocate of working within institutions, to dismantle their racism from within, was arrested as he was on the cusp of election to the Mistral Council because the other councillors were unwilling to countenance the election of a faunus to their midst. They were unwilling to even brook the possibility that their racist supremacy might be challenged by a member of the despised underclass. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">And yet, Antonio, who spent the rest of his life incarcerated to prevent him from working to achieve change, would spend that time writing of the need to work within existing structures of power as he had singularly failed to do. How are we to explain this startling naivete?</span>
</p><p>Blake found herself frowning. It was impossible not to see and understand where Sienna was coming from. This was someone who had been locked up by the powers that be, and still, he advocated reform from within those same powers that had imprisoned him? Faunus had been radicalised by a lot less than life imprisonment. </p><p>And yet, at the same time, thinking about that fact – that much less severe offences had produced much more severe reactions from so many faunus – made Blake think that there must be more to it than simple naivete. After all, being thrown into prison to rot would make anyone a lot less naïve about the world works… wouldn’t it? But there was a difference between being naïve and being idealistic; Ruby was the latter without being the former; she knew that the world could be a harsh place – how could she not? – but she chose to see the good in it and in those who lived in it regardless. She chose to see it as something worth preserving and protecting. Perhaps Rudi Antonio had been the same: not blind to the flaws of the system that had imprisoned him, but unwilling at the same time to write it off as so many faunus did. </p><p>She would have to read on and see, but first she would have to finish with the introduction. </p><p>
  <span class="u">However, this should not be taken as saying that the ideas that Antonio espouses in his journals are without merit. Indeed, I would recommend this book to anyone wishing to better understand the plight of the faunus, for Antonio’s analysis of the structures that maintain the inequalities under which we labour is without peer.</span>
</p><p><em>Funny,</em> Blake thought. <em>You never recommended this book to me.</em></p><p>
  <span class="u">It is only when Antonio comes to the discussion of solutions that his thoughts become absurd. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">It is true to diagnose, as he does, that it is cultural institutions more than coercive power that maintain the system of the world that so disadvantages us. We are not held in chains by the guns of Atlas alone but by the fact that all the world tells us we should be in chains and it is unnatural that we should be free. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">However, Antonio places his faith to effect change in those same institutions and in changing them to change society. Ironically, in his reasons for doing so, he succumbs to the same cultural hegemony that he so presciently identifies: having been conditioned to take the status quo as normal and even desirable and to see the arc of history as a progression out of barbarism and into the light of civilisation, he cannot see the way forward save by becoming part of that progression. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">In reality, if we are to challenge the institutions that constrain us, it will be by building our institutions and establishing our own culture, imbued with a deep belief in the equality of faunus-kind until it is intolerable for any faunus to accept less than what is given to a human.</span>
</p><p><em>But you didn’t!</em> Blake thought, with a vehemence that surprised her. It was just… the irony of it was so thick that she could almost choke upon it. Here was Sienna Khan, mistress of the White Fang, writing about how the true obstacle to the equality of the faunus was not coercive power, and yet she had refashioned the White Fang into an instrument of nothing more than coercive power! Blake had heard Gilda tell her about ‘the old days’ of the White Fang in Atlas, when the Belladonnas, her parents, had led the movement. The official history was one of peaceful protests that had failed to garner much support – or, indeed, any great results; that was what Blake remembered of her childhood: rallies, marches, waving placards while her parents spoke. Gilda had remembered something different: the breakfast club that had fed her and her friend – Blake wondered if that consistently unnamed friend had been Rainbow Dash and how she felt about having once been fed by the White Fang – before school when her parents couldn’t; the neighbourhood watch who had kept crime down; the hall where all the moms met to talk shop and help each other out if they were struggling. All gone, under Sienna’s leadership, replaced by a single-mindedly martial focus. Blake’s parents might not have paid much attention to the social or self-help aspects of the White Fang, but Sienna Khan had trimmed down the movement until it was essentially the Atlas military reflected in a fractured mirror. </p><p>
  <em>And now they’re stealing Atlesian weapons so they can fight even more like Atlas.</em>
</p><p>If there was any building of alternative institutions going on, it was happening on Menagerie, under her parents. </p><p>Blake blinked, realising that might have been the most positive she had been about her parents’ political accomplishments in… in years. </p><p>Huh. </p><p>Of all the possibilities when she sat down to read, Blake definitely hadn’t been expecting that. </p><hr/><p>
  <span class="u">There are many who came to be known as the Red Queens, bloody-handed women who carved a place for themselves in the unhappy history of Remnant, but there was only one who ever called herself <em>the</em> Red Queen: the first and vilest of them all, her real name lost to history for all that it deserves to stand alongside the worst examples of mankind as an exemplar of cruelty and malice. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">What is known is that she was once a common brigand, the leader of a small band of miscreants hiding in the vast, wide lands of Mistral, preying upon helpless travellers and fleeing in terror from the knights whom the Empress of Mistral, Pyrrha, the Second of Her Name, despatched to keep the peace across the span of her dominions.</span>
</p><p>Sunset couldn’t help but smile; she couldn’t imagine what Empress Pyrrha, the Second of Her Name, had looked like, so her mind supplied an image of <em>her</em> Pyrrha sitting upon a gilded throne, looking awkward and uncomfortable as she dealt with the petitions of the court. </p><p>
  <em>She’d hate it, though I daresay it would please her mother.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I wonder how many Pyrrhas there are in her family tree.</em>
</p><p>She had moved on from the lives of the saints and prophets and was now skimming through an account of the so-called Age of the Red Queens who had brought the Age of Miracles to a close with their barbarism. Twilight said that this was the point at which magic went underground as it were, and Sunset was about to find out why. </p><p>
  <span class="u">One day, this bandit queen met the Dark Mother</span>
</p><p>Sunset blinked and read it again. <em>'The Dark Mother'?</em> That wasn’t a name that she had come across before, and yet, it was used so casually that the author evidently presumed a familiarity with it. </p><p>Sunset scribbled the name down in her notebook as something to ask Twilight about before she read on. </p><p>
  <span class="u">One day, this bandit queen met the Dark Mother, and the witch offered her the power to do more than to raid defenceless villages and farmsteads: she offered her the power to take all of Mistral for her own.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">‘What would you have of me, O creature of the night, in exchange for this great gift you offer?’</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">‘Nothing but a certain trinket in the possession of the Empress, which was rudely stolen from me in days long ago,’ the witch replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">And so, the bandit laughed, and with a light heart, she agreed to the Dark Mother’s bargain, thinking little of it.</span>
</p><p><em>'Trinket'? An enchanted object of some kind?</em> Sunset hadn’t come across them yet either, but then, she had only just started reading.</p><p>
  <span class="u">And then the bandit hearkened to the witch and listened to her counsel with ears as keen as a fox.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">And so, taking only a handful of her most skilled and trusted companions, the bandit queen lay in wait upon the road where the Prophetess Helen would be travelling, and when that good and virtuous lady came riding by, the bandits waylaid her. Though great power had been bestowed upon the prophetess, and she was bold and kind and wise beyond her youthful years, those vile vagabonds took her by surprise and cut her down, lovely as she was and virtuous. The bandit queen cut off her head, and as she smote the fair prophetess down, the gods bestowed all the power that once had belonged to her upon the villain who had laid her low.</span>
</p><p><em>Huh?</em> Sunset stared at the page with such a blank expression on her face that if she hadn’t been all alone in the dorm room, someone might have thought that there was something wrong with her. They couldn’t… that couldn’t mean what it said, could it? She was being stupid; there was another meaning to it. There… there had to be. Otherwise it meant… the text itself, the narrative voice, just called this unnamed woman a villain. She was a bandit. She cut off some poor woman’s head, and for these kindnesses, she was rewarded with power? The power that, in Sunset’s previous reading, had been bestowed upon the virtuous even if their virtues had not revealed themselves until after they came into the possession of great power? </p><p>
  <em>You know, there are plenty of problems with the way that ascension works – starting with the fact that the gift was never bestowed on me – but at least you can’t become an alicorn by murdering another alicorn! Sweet Celestia!</em>
</p><p>The image of someone cutting off Twilight’s head in an attempt to ascend filled Sunset’s mind and sent a shiver down her spine besides. </p><p><span class="u">Killer of previous prophet gained her powers; who decides, and what criteria are they using?</span> Sunset scribbled in her notebook. Her brow remained set with a deep furrow as she continued to read.</p><p>
  <span class="u">And when the old man came to her, as he had come to all the prophets who had come before her, to instruct her and to guide her upon her path, the bandit queen scorned him, saying unto him, ‘Fall to thy prayers, old man, I have no need of thee or of thy council. The power is mine, as mine own will be mine, and I will not be the catspaw of thee nor any other living thing that breathes upon this earth. Rather, being now possessed of might unchallenged and unchallengeable, I shall from this day forth order all things as I will, yea, even across the whole of Mistral. For is it not fitting and proper that the powerful should rule, and those that have no power should slink low and obey as the sheep obey the shepherd? This world has beaten me with whips and chains, but I shall flay them in their turn with scorpions.’</span>
</p><p>Sunset found herself unable to suppress a wince. Stripped of its old-fashioned verbiage, it was the kind of thing that she could imagine herself saying, the kind of thing that she had thought more than once. </p><p>
  <em>There but for the grace of Team SAPR go I. I mean, I’d hope that I wouldn’t cut off anybody’s head in order to get to the top, but…</em>
</p><p>She had been so lost when she came to Beacon; Atlas had done so much to grind down upon her, to step on her, to twist her with bitterness… if it hadn’t been for her team, who knew what a few more years of crap might have done to her? It was an uncomfortable thought, that she might be little better than someone who was being lambasted as one of the worst monsters ever to draw breath, to feel that their words would come – or would have come, at least – very easily out of her mouth. </p><p>
  <em>I am not her. I didn’t become her, and I won’t. My friends will keep me on the right road and will not let me fall.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>My deeds will be of a nobler sort; provided they define me, I should be okay.</em>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">And so she sent the old man away, and he departed with much sorrow in his heart. It was then that the brigand cast aside her old name and began to call herself a queen, for in her pride, she believed that the power that had been granted to her had granted, too, the right to rule over all Mistral and the lands beyond. Many credulous peasants flocked to her banner, awed by her power, eager to do her service.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>Either that, or they were terrified of what she’d do to them if she didn’t.</em>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">Towns and villages who resisted her were put to the sword utterly, save only for a single survivor from each settlement to which the she and her host laid waste, whom they sent to Mistral to bring word of these calamities to the Empress. ‘Lady, where are your warriors?’ the people cried. ‘Why do you not protect your people?’ And the Empress Pyrrha wept to hear of the devastations that were being visited upon her subjects.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">And the so-called queen began to be called the Red Queen, for she not only drenched the land in blood but herself also, and she found the name pleasing to her ears and took it for her own.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">The Red Queen led her army, growing each day with villains sharked up from every low place in the land, to the gates of Argolis and laid siege to it, and at the same time, she sent a messenger to Mistral with a challenge to the Empress: to meet her in single combat before the walls of Argolis and decide the war at a single stroke with both their crowns upon the hazard. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">Pyrrha the Second was fair and virtuous, with a heart so great that it burned at all the sufferings that the Red Queen was daily inflicting upon the people of Mistral. She was yet young and proud and a most puissant warrior of whom it was said that none could withstand her arms, and she determined at once to accept this challenge and put an end to the Red Queen’s villainy once and for all. Yet the heart of the Emperor her husband was filled with sorrow, for he had heard the reports of the miscreant’s inhuman power, and he feared she could not be withstood by any mortal. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">At the gates of Mistral, where Pyrrha’s horse was saddled and waiting, he held their daughter in his arms and begged her not to go forth to this battle, saying to her, ‘My brave wife, this courage of yours dooms you.’</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">‘If that is my fate, then I cannot avoid it but must meet it with all the valour in my heart,’ said Pyrrha, victor of the people.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">‘You have no pity for your child or for your husband whom you shall soon make a widower,’ he replied. ‘This Red Queen shall destroy you, and would that I were better dead, for there will be no more joy for me without you, but only sorrows without ending. Pyrrha, you are wife and sister and mother to me; I have nothing but you and nobody but you; take pity on me now and on your little girl and do not go forth to a battle where there is no victory.’</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">And Pyrrha of the flaming hair replied, ‘My lord, I, too, am filled with trepidation, but I would be shamed before the great-hearted men of Mistral and their wives in trailing robes were I now to shrink thus from the fighting like a coward. My foe has sent for me, and I cannot refuse. Nor is it in me to hide between the high walls of my city, since from my earliest youth, I have striven to excel in arms and win great glory for my house and for myself. I must go. For me, there is no other path.’ And so, great-hearted Pyrrha reached out to take her daughter, but the child, frightened by the bronze of her helmet and the tall burning crest of crimson horsehair that stood tall upon it, took fright and cried out, clutching at her father’s chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">Then her great lady mother laughed aloud, and her lord father too, and Pyrrha swept the helmet off her head and took her daughter in her arms and kissed her, saying, ‘Grant that this girl may like me be foremost amongst the Mistralians, as strong, and a greater leader of this city and this land; and grant that they may say of her ‘she is a better prince than her mother ever was’ that her father’s heart may rejoice.’</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">And with those words, she mounted her horse and rode away and was never seen again by mortal sight. Long they looked for her coming from the high towers of Mistral, but she did not return by mountains or by sea. Instead, it was the Red Queen who arrived at the Mistral gates and laid the Empress Pyrrha’s broken sword before them as a token of her victory.</span>
</p><p><em>Pyrrha’s broken sword.</em> It wasn’t her Pyrrha, of course. Pyrrha wasn’t dead, she hadn’t ridden anywhere, no monster possessed of powers near to divine had challenged her to single combat, but… perhaps it was the way that the names being the same had caused Sunset to imagine the Mistrali Empress as her teammate, but what had started as the amusing image of Pyrrha sitting awkwardly upon a throne… it didn’t seem so funny any more. For just as Sunset could fit the sentiments of the Red Queen, if not the language itself, into her own mouth, so too could she hear the sentiments of Pyrrha the Second echoing out of the mouth of her Pyrrha in the right circumstances. She could see her, before the gate, Jaune holding their daughter in his arms as he begged her not to go. And yet, she went anyway, turning away from him and mounting her horse, riding away, never to return. She would go, in those circumstances, just as her ancestor had. She would go because… because that was what a hero did.</p><p>And in the going, she would be lost to them.</p><p>
  <em>I won’t let that happen. We won’t let that happen.</em>
</p><p><em>Pyrrha isn’t going to die. </em>I<em> won’t let her.</em></p><p>Sunset started to skim through, past the bit where the Red Queen seized control of Mistral to the reappearance of the Dark Mother – whoever she was – demanding her pound of flesh.</p><p>
  <span class="u">But the Red Queen laughed at the bargain they had made, saying to her ‘Get you gone, old crone; the sight of you offends mine eyes. I have no need to honour any bargains, for all that I have is the fruit of mine own strength and what my bold heart has won for me. Go, lest I should strike you down for your impertinence to make demands of me.’ And the Dark Mother departed with her heart full of wrath.</span>
</p><p>Sunset skimmed a little further, to when the Red Queen died, peacefully in bed at what, all things considered, could only be called an unfairly old age. </p><p>
  <span class="u">And no sooner did the eyes of that most wicked of queens close than did her daughter stride out and say unto the people, ‘The Queen is dead! I am your new queen!’ But when the people cried out to her to show them her power, she could not, and all knew that the gods had forsaken her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">But the sorrows of Remnant were far from over, for in every corner of the world, new red queens would rise and set the world to bleeding.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span class="u">No philosopher should fear that his work will be superseded by those who come after them. Indeed, I feel that they should welcome it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">Perhaps it will seem to you who read my words in some later time that I protest too much when I say that I look forward to the day when future scholars will write in introduction to my work ‘Antonio makes a trenchant point, but also talks a good deal of rot, as later events have shown’.</span>
</p><p>Blake smiled. Perhaps Rudi Antonio did protest too much, perhaps he was trying to convince himself of something that he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe, perhaps he was even using the mortality of his work as a proxy to confront his own mortality in prison, but the fact that he could even write such a thing was, in its own way, quite charming. Sienna Khan had, indeed, done exactly as Antonio had wished that someone would, but somehow, Blake thought that she wouldn’t be so charitable to someone daring to critique her own thoughts in such a manner. </p><p>
  <span class="u">Even more do I look forward to the day when my thoughts, set down here in this little book, have been rendered completely obsolete by events, when the faunus no longer have to struggle for equality, no longer have to fight to hold place with men, when a faunus sitting on the Council of Mistral or commanding the armies of Atlas or being headmaster of Beacon is as unremarkable to human and faunus alike as a rainy day – a rainy day anywhere but Vacuo, I hasten to add. </span>
</p><p>The smile remained upon Blake’s face. Alas, that they were not there yet. Even if all of Rainbow’s dreams and ambitions came true, her succession to General Ironwood’s dual seats of command would still be a great novelty, a talking point, something for bigots to mutter angrily about and those who wished to be thought virtuous to point to and say how wonderful they were, that they had permitted a faunus to hold such high offices of state. </p><p>
  <em>We’ve got a long way to go.</em>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">That day may be far off now, but I dream of it nonetheless. In this place, I have little to do but dream, and yet, the fact that I can dream – and write – makes the absence of other diversions bearable.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">My cell is eight feet wide and six feet deep; walking up and down it gives me little exercise; I fear I am becoming unfit, even on the meagre diet which is the lot of a prisoner. And yet I can still dream, and in my dreams, I am free to imagine the better world which, I trust, future generations shall create by their labours. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">It is my hope – a proud hope, but a hope nonetheless – but the thoughts I pen here may be of assistance in that endeavour. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">All of which is a long digression from my point, which is that no philosopher should fear or be insulted if some later writer impugns him somewhat or does not accept the older notions wholeheartedly and without critique. Thought must advance, even as technology does, if society as a whole is to move forward. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">All of which – forgive me if I repeat myself; I have not the services of an editor in this place – is to say that I mean no offence to Karl Feuer when I say that I disagree with him and that, in fact, a part of my intent is to explain why, in my humble opinion, he is mistaken.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">Feuer was a human, but that should not stop him being read by all who care seriously about the oppression of the faunus – indeed, of all oppressed peoples, for the human who labours in the Mantle mines in these days is no less a slave than the faunus who risks death beside him. </span>
</p><p>Blake had, in fact, read Feuer, and she would even agree with Antonio’s assessment: if one wished to understand, at least in part, the plight of the faunus, then Feuer’s diagnosis of economic inequality could not be bettered. And yet, at the same time, she had felt as though she was reading the work of someone fundamentally mistaken in ways that she could not explain.</p><p>Perhaps Antonio was about to elaborate on that. </p><p>
  <span class="u">And yet there is a deep vein of historicism in Feuer of which we should be deeply sceptical. Feuer sees a revolution of the underclass as inevitable: at some point, the workers will tire of their oppression and rise up to establish a more equal society. That is why the working class are ‘the class to whom the future belongs.’ </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">And yet, this has not happened. The elites who control the kingdoms – at least the kingdoms of Mistral and Mantle-Atlas – have suffered military catastrophe, the collapse of the old monarchies and many of the ancient legal privileges of the noble caste, the loss of much territory to the creatures of grimm, have presided over loss of life on a scale unseen in history, have in their pride and folly brought our world to the brink of ruin, and yet there has been no revolution to tear them from their high places. Indeed, with the literal and metaphorical rise of Atlas, they seem more entrenched now than ever before. Even the Faunus Rights Struggle – to which I hesitate to attribute the word revolution – was an attempt by the oppressed not to overthrow the system but to join it, and to do so moreover at a level not greatly removed from their previous condition as slaves. </span>
</p><p><em>That’s a little unfair, don’t you think? </em>Blake thought. <em>I think we should give the faunus who fought in the war the credit of accepting that they knew exactly what they were fighting for. </em></p><p>
  <span class="u">How are we to account for this? Why is it that, far from being the inevitable, the revolution predicted by Feuer appears now to be an unlikely occurrence?</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">The answer is not to be found in coercive power. Turn your gaze away from those Atlesian airships! Impressive as they are, harbingers of the future of warfare as they may be, they are not the cause of our condition. Indeed, even when technology advances farther than it has presently, there will never be a fleet or army so vast as can hold a people in subjugation against their will.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">No, the answer lies not in coercive power, but in the hegemony that the establishment enjoys over culture and, though culture, thought. Put simply, the ruling elites develop a hegemonic culture so that their values, self-serving though they may be, nevertheless become the commonsense values of all. So successful have they been at this project that even a faunus may identify their interests more closely with the ruling elite than with their own people striving for change.</span>
</p><p>Blake had to laugh. She couldn’t help it. She knew that you weren’t supposed to laugh in a library – although apparently you were allowed to play loud board games in there – and she also knew that it was probably a little cruel to laugh at a good person trying their best, but even so, she had to laugh. She had to laugh because Rudi Antonio had just described Rainbow Dash to a T in this book that was supposed to persuade Blake that Dash was right. </p><p>The unthinking, reflexive patriotism, the thoughtless assumptions about ‘the way things are,’ the inability to see change except in increments within an established framework, the identification of herself more with the Atlesian elite like Twilight and General Ironwood than with poor struggling faunus… it was all too perfect. </p><p>And yet, this was supposed to vindicate Rainbow Dash in Blake’s eyes. Perhaps Twilight had simply misunderstood the book. </p><p>
  <em>Or perhaps I need to read further on.</em>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span class="u">I feel a lot better about Auburn now. It’s like, now that she's shown us some of what she is – although she still won't explain; even when Raven asked her straight to her face, she wouldn't answer – she doesn't feel as though she needs to hide who she is. She doesn't laugh so much, but considering how fake and forced her laughter sounded, I think that's probably a good thing. She was a big help to me with Qrow. I talked to her, and she helped me find the words to tell him what I was trying to make him see: that he's my teammate and he matters to me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">I'm sure he matters to his sister too, even if she was mad at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">I haven't spoken to Raven about it, but when we get back to Beacon, I'm going to suggest that she should apologise. I'm sure that her aura breaking with all those grimm around was scary, but there's no way that it could be Qrow's fault.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">I can't understand why Qrow seems to believe it was. It was just bad luck is all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">Qrow seems a little better now. He still blames himself, but he doesn't seem quite as bitter about it as he was, which is something, even if it isn't perfect. I’ll take it for now. I wish that I could make everything better, but if all I can do is make him feel valued in this team, then I'll do that and hope it helps. It's little enough, but from the way Qrow talks, I'm afraid it might be more than he's gotten from his family.</span>
</p><p>"We should skip this," Yang said. "It feels... wrong, reading this, don't you think? Like we're prying into Uncle Qrow's secrets."</p><p>"Yeah," Ruby agreed, feeling a weight of guilt at what they had already read settling on her stomach. "It's not like Mom, where... you know. Uncle Qrow... it doesn't feel right."</p><p>"Let's try the next page," said Yang.</p><p>
  <span class="u">We arrived in the village a little after first light, having encountered no more grimm than the ones that attacked us on the first day out of Vale. The girl Merida lives near the centre of town, and to be honest, I was expecting her to be younger. Professor Ozpin, Auburn, none of them talked about her age, but I assumed she'd be a child. She's actually older than I am, if not much. It seems wrong to call her a girl. The woman Merida.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">She still lives with her mother, though, and her mom wasn't too happy to see us.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">Well, when I say 'us,' I'd say she wasn't very happy to see Auburn. She barely seemed to notice us at all, but she gave Auburn a real earful about taking her daughter away. Merida herself was quiet; she seemed a little scared of something, though I'm not sure what, and I won't find out because when Auburn went inside the house to talk to the pair of them, she left us outside. There wasn't a lot to do until they came out except listen to Qrow and Tai complain about it until Raven told them both to shut up. Then there was enough for me to do in stopping an argument from breaking out. I actually agreed with Raven about that – the guys were getting a little annoying – but she didn't have to say it like that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">Since we had time, I took her aside and tried to talk to her about her attitude.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">Raven didn't laugh in my face when I suggested she ought to tone it down. I guess that's something. She did look at me like I was a bit of an idiot though. We ended up talking a lot about Professor Ozpin; Raven thinks he's keeping things from all of us, but from me especially.</span>
</p><p>“She reminds me of Sunset sometimes, the way Mom writes about her,” Ruby admitted. “I don’t… I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Yang murmured wordlessly.</p><p>Ruby winced; it probably hadn’t been a good idea to say that out loud. “Let’s, uh, let’s keep going, okay?”</p><p>“Mhmm.”</p><p>
  <span class="u">I think she's right. The professor is definitely keeping things from us, and from me specifically. The difference between Raven and I is that I don't think that necessarily has to be a bad thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">We're just kids. We're still in our first year at Beacon, and already, Professor Ozpin has shown us so much trust, even what you might call favour. He's given us training missions ahead of any other team, and unlike Raven, I see that as a good thing. I don't know about her or Qrow or Tai, but I'm here to help protect the world against its enemies, to save it if I can; if I can do that instead of sitting through Professor Port's class, I'll do it. And that's without mentioning the way that he's helping me with my powers; why would he do that unless he wanted to help me reach my full potential as a huntress? Why should Professor Ozpin tell me anything? Who am I? Who are any of us that we deserve all of his secrets?</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">Maybe he is using me – maybe he's using all of us – but if he is, then it's in a good cause, a cause that I would gladly be made use of in.</span>
</p><p>"See?" Ruby demanded, looking up at Yang. "Mom gets it."</p><p>Yang frowned, and a huff escaped her lips. "Ruby, I... never mind."</p><p>"What?" Ruby asked. "Come on, you can say it."</p><p>The frown on Yang's face deepened. "We have to hear this from Mom through her diary because she's not around to tell us herself," she said, the words galloping out of her mouth as though she were in a hurry to get rid of them. She grunted. "I don't know exactly what happened, and I don't know that it had anything to do with the professor or silver eyes or any of this stuff, but... I don't want that to happen to you."</p><p>Ruby stared at her elder sister for a moment. "I'm training to be a huntress, like Mom. It could happen."</p><p>"That doesn't mean I want to think about it, and it doesn't mean that I want to encourage it!" Yang cried. She shook her head. "It's not wrong of me to want to keep you safe for just a little while longer."</p><p><em>What does 'safe' even mean, really?</em> Ruby wondered. She wasn't surprised at what Yang had said. Even Sunset, for all that she was really smart, didn't seem to quite get all the time what they were doing here. The way Sunset talked about glory and being heroes and their fame, it was almost as if she thought that they were going to live forever, like it hadn't occurred to her that they might die at any moment. As though she hadn't quite realised that death stalked their profession more persistently than any grimm.</p><p>Ruby hadn't been able to believe that since the day that her mom hadn't come home.</p><p>But she was here anyway, here at Beacon, learning to follow in Mom's footsteps because she knew, the same way that her mom had known, that this was right and just and necessary.</p><p>Yeah, she'd be lying if she denied that the coolness of being a huntress didn't excite her, she'd be lying if she'd said that wasn't a part of what attracted her to it, all the stories of great huntsmen in the books and all the awesome things they did. But there were a lot of cool jobs. Being a movie star was cool, being a singer was cool; being the voice actor in a cartoon was pretty cool too, but Ruby had never wanted to be one, or a singer, or even a movie star. She wanted to be a huntress because the world needed help of the kind that Ruby Rose could give it.</p><p>"Yang," she said. "I don't know what happened to Mom either; but whatever happened, I'm sure that she didn't regret a single decision that she made-"</p><p>"How can you say that?" Yang asked. "You don't think that she'd want to be here now, to watch us graduate-?"</p><p>"Not at the cost of turning her back on the right thing," Ruby replied firmly. "That's not who she was." That wasn't the person she remembered, however vaguely, and it wasn't the person she was reading about in this journal.</p><p>Yang sighed. "I don't want to see you get hurt," she said. "Is that a bad thing?"</p><p>Ruby shook her head. "I don't want to get hurt either," she replied, "but if that's what it takes... do you want to stop or shall we keep going?"</p><p>Yang hesitated for a moment. "Let's see what else she has to say."</p><p>
  <span class="u">Anyway, eventually Auburn came out and told us that Merida had agreed to come back to Vale with us. I don't understand why, or rather I don't understand why Merida decided to come; I talked to her and learnt that she used to be a Beacon student, but after graduation, she decided not to become a huntress but to come back here and defend her village instead. She wanted to be able to help the people she cared about without being given orders that would take her away from them. I think that's fair enough, even if it does mean she has to live with her mother because she can't afford a place of her own.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">But it means I don't understand why she's leaving her village now. She told me that Auburn and Professor Ozpin were going to help her protect her village in a way that she never would be able to otherwise. She wouldn't say more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that there are other kinds of magic that Professor Ozpin knows about and I don't; Auburn and Merida probably don't know about silver eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">If these are the secrets that Professor Ozpin chooses to keep from us, then fine by me; I don't need to know everything. And whatever the professor does, and whatever he tells or doesn't tell, there isn't a doubt in my mind that it's all for the greater good.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span class="u">We cannot build counter-institutions.</span>
</p><p><em>That’s bluntly put,</em> Blake thought. <em>No wonder Sienna doesn’t think you give the idea enough consideration.</em></p><p>
  <span class="u">One need only cast a cursory glance over the history of the kingdoms that have risen and fallen in Remnant to understand that no ruling class will tolerate the emergence of a state within a state, especially one that is composed of an underclass deprived of rights in the ‘mainstream’ society.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>Okay, you’ve got a point there. A point underpinned by your own life, sadly.</em>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">Even though the supremacy of humans is established through hegemony, the elite will not hesitate to use coercive power against any challenge to that hegemony.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>I can believe that too, unfortunately.</em>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">And besides, so great is the hegemony that the elite have achieved, so complete is their control over all existing cultural institutions, that any attempt to establish alternate institutions of any kind would be a hard task indeed. In what soil would these institutions root themselves, how would they sustain themselves, what audience would they find? One need only look at the – universally low – circulations enjoyed by counter-cultural journals, magazines, and newspapers, especially when compared to the popular media, to understand the scale of the proposition confronting such a path. When the ideas that underpin human supremacy are so entrenched in the popular imagination that even to suggest that the faunus ought to be given a measure of equality is to be treated both as a figure of ridicule and a dangerous menace to polite society, who would partake in new institutions that challenge everything that is commonly believed to be ordinary, respectable, or decent? </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">A few idealists cannot create a new culture single-handedly. There must be an audience eager to consume it, and I do not see such a thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">No, our best chance – I would say our only chance – is to work within the strictures of the society that we seek to change. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>Okay, now you agree with Rainbow Dash.</em>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">It will not be an easy task. In fact, I must confess that the march through the institutions of power and influence – dominated by elites as they, and geared as they are towards our oppression – will be a longer one than that undertaken by any general in any war ever fought in Remnant. But it must be undertaken. For the good of all faunuskind, it must be undertaken. We must enlist in the military and serve in the police forces; we must get jobs in the vast bureaucracy of state that turns the lofty directives of the Council into actions that touch upon the lives of ordinary men. We must send our children to the academies, combat and cultural. We must report the news, we must appear on film, we must write the movies and direct them too. We must ensure that there are faunus present in every part of the life of the kingdom and in the cultural life of those who live in it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">It is not enough to have a single faunus in a single room, though they be the most highly placed faunus in the room. We must be everywhere, until the outspoken amongst our enemies rage ‘not another damn faunus!’ Only then can we begin to change the culture.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">And only once we have changed the culture can we change the world.</span>
</p><p>Blake shut the book and pushed it perhaps an inch away from her. </p><p>It was not quite what Twilight had led her to believe it was, but then, that wasn’t too surprising, since apparently Twilight had never read it. </p><p>All the same, it had become something other than what Blake had accepted, something that, if it did not condemn Rainbow’s ambitions, at least thought them… naïve, if that was not too unkind a way of putting. She might succeed; she might even succeed General Ironwood, but the words were written right there in black and white: it would not be sufficient to have a single faunus in a single room, though that room was the Headmaster’s office or the Atlesian Council Chamber or the heart of a warship. </p><p>It was not so surprising to her that General Ironwood and Twilight didn’t see it that way; it wasn’t even a surprise that Rainbow Dash herself couldn’t see that her rise, much as it might gratify her and her supporters, was not enough by itself. They were all, as Antonio would say, caught up in hegemony, brainwashed almost into accepting the status quo with all its flaws. </p><p>Blake meant no arrogance by it when she thought that one advantage of growing up outside the kingdoms was that she was less marinated in the culture of those kingdoms and all the assumptions that went with them. </p><p>One faunus was not enough. </p><p>
  <em>Which is why it needs more.</em>
</p><p>Blake frowned. The thought had stolen into her mind unbidden, but now that it had so crept in, it proved very hard to dislodge. And who was to say that Rainbow didn’t already know what Antonio had proclaimed, and that was why – or part of the reason why – she sought Blake’s help in Atlas? Just because she hadn’t said it out loud didn’t mean that she was unaware. </p><p>One faunus was not enough. Two faunus wouldn’t be enough either. </p><p>
  <em>But it could be better.</em>
</p><p>Blake frowned. She hadn’t made a decision. She wasn’t sure what she wanted. </p><p>But she couldn’t deny that… there was a temptation. </p><hr/><p>
  <span class="u">In the four corners of Remnant ruled four queens. Four queens and no justice.</span>
</p><p><em>Never more than four,</em> Sunset thought. She was nearing the end of the book that Twilight had given to her, and as well as the end of the text – large chunks of which she had admitted to skipping in order to get a general feel of events too far back to have been covered in history classes – she had a feeling she was nearing the end of the era of the so-called Red Queens. </p><p>There were no more prophets now, no saints performing miracles or carrying out the commands of the old man to spread the good news of whatever faith was promulgating these accounts. They were all gone now, hunted down and slain, and in their place, there were four queens – only ever four queens – who toppled ancient thrones and tore down the walls of storied kingdoms to exalt themselves above their fellow men in orgies of violent bloodshed. </p><p>Only ever four queens. Never more, never less.</p><p><span class="u">Four queens,</span> Sunset scribbled. <span class="u">Seems like a hard limit.</span></p><p>She was coming to believe that there was no omniscient being bestowing these gifts, whatever the legends might say. No God, no gods, no spirits choosing to pass down their blessings upon anyone. Receipt of the gift of magic was not the ascension to which Sunset had sought to equate it in her head; there was no Celestia looking down upon the young, ambitious unicorns and deciding that Twilight Sparkle was worthy to ascend while Sunset Shimmer was not. Had they both been born in Remnant, then Sunset could have ascended via compassing the death of Twilight, and the fact that she would have made herself a murderer would – if these legends be true – have proven no obstacle.</p><p>Sunset didn’t want to believe that there was a god out there who thought it was a good idea to bestow power on the people who had just cut down the previously chosen recipients of it; if they existed, then she never wanted to meet them.</p><p>
  <em>Let us assume then, for the benefit of my sanity if nothing else, that the magic is not bestowed. No one is chosen for it, except in a metaphorical sense that the magic must go to someone – there cannot be more or less than four people, all young women who have the power – but no being with a consciousness makes a decision on who should get it. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It just goes to someone. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>From that perspective, the wonder isn’t that it went to someone unsuited for it, the wonder is that it took so long.</em>
</p><p><span class="u">How does the magic transfer?</span> Sunset wrote. <span class="u">Kill equals get power. Power sometimes went to someone at the previous holder’s deathbed. Other times to strangers. </span></p><p>
  <span class="u">Does this have rules? Power to the last person you see if eligible?</span>
</p><p>Sunset decided to keep reading, although there hadn’t been any answers to this question yet, maybe there would be more to come.</p><p>
  <span class="u">The wizard</span>
</p><p>Sunset read that again. <em>What wizard? Is that the same as the old man from before? Or an old man from before? Why suddenly call him a wizard now?</em></p><p>
  <span class="u">The wizard was filled with despair, as he saw the gift that the gods had given to mankind turned against them and become a tool for wickedness, and as he despaired, so did the world despair, and the grimm fed off the despair of the people and multiplied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">And the people, harried by grimm and tormented by their four queens, cried out ‘Please, save us!’</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">And the wizard set forth to answer their prayer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">He gathered around himself five faithful companions, warriors renowned both for their skill at arms but also for their virtue, pure in heart and without a trace of wickedness in their souls: the Crimson Death, swift of foot and great of valour; the Summer Flame, whose heart did not burn less than the fire in her hair with rage at the pitiless cruelty that stalked the land; the Gilded Knight, whose courage sprang from a fearful heart; the Marble Girl, renowned for her honour as much as her peerless skill; and the Shadow, a humble faunus whom the others had freed from slavery. </span>
</p><p>Sunset’s eyes narrowed. Perhaps it was unbearably egotistical on her part, but she couldn’t help but feel that there was something familiar about those descriptions. </p><p>
  <em>Well, I already knew that people recur across universes; is it really so surprising to see them recurring across time as well?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I wonder how many Celestias there have been in Remnant across the thousand years Princess Celestia has ruled Equestria?</em>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">Together, they made a sacred vow, that they would hold fast to their fellowship with one another come what may and that they would redeem the world from the cruelty of these queens or perish one and all in the attempt. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">And so they set forth, these five heroes and the wizard who had assembled them, journeying under cover of night and hiding their faces from the spies of the queens, travelling through the lands of the grimm and enduring all the perils of the road.</span>
</p><p>Sunset skipped ahead to the interesting bit: that these six heroes had, one by one, hunted down the queens and killed them all… and that, to all appearances, was that. No new queens rose up to take the places of the dead ones. No new prophets, no more saints. The age of miracles was over, and when the Age of the Queens, too, passed, nothing else replaced it except, perhaps, something approaching modern history of the kind that would have been familiar to Doctor Oobleck. Magic was done. </p><p>And if Sunset had believed that some divine or divines was controlling who got magic, then perhaps she could have believed that; it would have made sense that any god handing out such gifts would have turned away at the sight of what had been done with them… except that they would have done that long before the wizard and his companions hunted down the last red queens and brought the time of magic to a close. And then there was Twilight’s eyewitness account and the fact that there was a subculture of true believers tracking magic through the ages. All of which indicated that it hadn’t gone away it had just… what? Stopped being so obvious? Why? Why would everyone who was fortunate enough to receive this gift just suddenly be okay with hiding their light under a bushel?</p><p>
  <em>I wouldn’t, in their place.</em>
</p><p><span class="u">Why hide?</span> Sunset wrote. Why hide your own magic? Why hide magic more generally? Was someone forcing them to hide? That made a degree more sense than all the inheritors of magic deciding on their own to keep it secret, but then, who would have the power to compel them, and over such a long span of years, how would such a policy be faithfully maintained? You’d have to assume a vast global conspiracy stretching down through the centuries, and that… that was just a bit farfetched; you’d need to be Celestia in longevity as well as wisdom in order to set up something like that. </p><p><em>I’ve been reading too long,</em> Sunset thought. <em>I have some answers, but mostly, what I have are even more questions.</em></p><p>
  <em>Why do I feel as though the answers are so far away… and yet at the same time right under my nose?</em>
</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0039"><h2>39. Equivalent Exchange</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Blake finds a new home.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Equivalent Exchange</p><p> </p><p>“You believe that Twilight’s right? You really think there’s more magic out there than just Ruby’s eyes and all the stuff that you can do?” Jaune asked; Sunset couldn’t help but note the somewhat incredulous tone in his voice.</p><p>“I’m still getting used to the idea that ‘magic’ is a thing outside of genre fiction,” Blake said dryly.</p><p>“You should be honoured that I trust you with this instead of throwing you out of the room every time we want to talk about it,” Sunset said, though she grinned up at Blake to take some of the sting off her words. “And as for your point, Jaune… why should magic be restricted to the – no offence – singular and esoteric instance of Ruby’s eyes? It makes more sense that there should be at least some other kinds of magic out there too.”</p><p>“I guess,” Jaune said. “Although… I suppose I’m still getting a handle on this magic stuff. It’s a lot to take in, you know?”</p><p>“But if my mom saw it, and if Twilight saw it, and if there’s all this stuff written about it,” Ruby reasoned, “that means it… it can’t be a lie, can it?”</p><p>“I never said it was,” Jaune said. “I just…” He laughed nervously. “It feels like I’m the only person here who found out this huge thing about the world that they’d never known before and is actually treating it like this huge thing, and if what Sunset read is true, then it gets even more huge… anyone can have… magic if they… if they…”</p><p>“If they’re willing to kill for it, it seems,” Pyrrha whispered.</p><p>“A system designed to attract the worst and repel the best,” Blake observed.</p><p>“One hopes that there’s more to it than that,” Sunset muttered. “Perhaps Professor Ozpin knows, if anyone does. Since it seems that he knows a lot more than he lets on.”</p><p>“For good reason, don’t you think?” Blake asked.</p><p>Sunset leaned backwards, resting her hands upon the dorm room floor. “I… have yet to be convinced on that score.”</p><p>“After what you read?” Blake demanded. “After what you told us? If the White Fang knew about that kind of power, there isn’t anything that they wouldn’t do to obtain it for themselves. Can you imagine what that would mean for Remnant? Do you honestly think that people have gotten any wiser, any better than they have since those days? Do you really think that the world can be trusted with the kind of power you’re talking about?”</p><p>“I think that the world is full of power, and it hasn’t ended yet,” Sunset said. “What’s one more power source in the scheme of things?”</p><p>“A power that can enable a bandit chieftain to bring down an empress,” Pyrrha reminded her. “Is that not a thing to be afraid of?”</p><p>“A power that can be defeated in its turn,” Sunset replied. She sighed. “Maybe there is a good reason for keeping this a secret, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like having those secrets kept from me, okay? It feels as though every new thing that I learn in this place only opens my eyes to the fog of mysteries that surrounds us all. Am I the only person who feels that way? Am I the only person who is troubled by the fact that everything we discover only serves to increase our store of ignorance by revealing new things that we didn’t know that we didn’t know about?”</p><p>“But if it’s for a good cause-” Ruby began.</p><p>“How can we know that for sure if we don’t know all the facts about the cause?” Sunset demanded, cutting her off.</p><p>“Perhaps there comes a point when we have to trust,” Pyrrha said, “as the rest of the world trusts in Professor Ozpin.”</p><p>
  <em>Professor Ozpin. Trust in Professor Ozpin. Professor Ozpin, the great huntsman, the youngest ever headmaster, the great man of Remnant. Trust him. Trust him to do what? To defend Vale? To serve the best interests of the Four Kingdoms? To keep us safe?</em>
</p><p>That was the crux of it all: trust Ozpin to do what? Sunset could accept, in abstract, the argument that Blake advanced: in a system that seemed to self-select for ruthlessness and concentrate power in the hands of those least deserving to possess it, then it made academic sense to hide the existence of said power, and that was true irregardless of the existence of other forms of power, like particularly strong semblances and the like. But why should Ozpin be the one in the know; he knew about silver eyes, he knew about whatever this other thing was, he knew a lot that other people didn’t know, and why? Because he was a headmaster at a huntsman academy? So what? It didn’t make him Celestia, with whom Sunset might have disagreed, but she could at least acknowledge that she had the ages of wisdom to back up her claims to make the big choices for other people. </p><p>And that was the other thing, the biggest thing, the thing that she wasn’t sure that anyone else in the room would understand because they were all too noble for their own good but which Sunset saw as clear as day: leaving aside why Ozpin should have the right to make those decisions, what kind of decisions was he going to make? Even if you trusted him to do the right thing, that was only going to be the right thing for Remnant, or the human race, or the Kingdom of Vale, or all the human kingdoms, depending on his allegiance and the breadth of his perspective. It wasn’t the right thing for Team SAPR or for the Xiao Long-Rose family or for any of them as individuals any more than Celestia’s decision, right for Equestria, had been right for Sunset Shimmer. </p><p>That was the take away from Ruby’s account that no one else seemed to see: that Ozpin had set Team STRQ out into peril half-blindfolded by a lack of understanding of what was really going on around them. Sure, it had all worked out okay that time, but Ruby’s mom… well, she was dead, not to put too fine a point on it. It was all very well to send them out to fight grimm – that was what they were here to do – but what if Ozpin started giving them missions that brought them more and more into contact with the magic of this world, the way he’d apparently started doing for Team STRQ? </p><p>Ozpin might be acting for the greater good of Remnant, but if that greater good entailed getting SAPR killed, Sunset… she couldn’t be sure that he’d do it, but she couldn’t be sure that he definitely wouldn’t either, and that… that was unacceptable.</p><p>Sunset’s hands clenched as she glanced around the room. Ruby and Pyrrha were just the kind who would readily give their lives in a worthy cause; Jaune would probably do it too, and Blake… Blake was so desperate to atone at any cost. Sunset had to protect them, but how could she do that when she was mired in this swamp of unawareness? When she didn’t know where the blows were going to come from?</p><p>
  <em>I am not a piece on your board, Professor, and neither are they. </em>
</p><p>Still, it wasn’t as though she could just march into the headmaster’s office and demand answers, was it? No, as satisfying as the idea might be, it wouldn’t actually get her anywhere. All she could do was keep learning as much as she could and hope it was enough when – if; she had to concede that none of this might actually matter – the time came.</p><p>There wasn’t much more to say on the matter right now, and in any case, there wasn’t any time to say it because Sunset’s scroll went off. So did Blake’s. They both fished them out and opened up their devices at the same time. </p><p>Sunset saw a message from Professor Goodwitch summoning her to the amphitheatre. </p><p>“The amphitheatre?” Blake asked.</p><p>Sunset looked at her. “You too?”</p><p>Blake nodded, jumping lightly off the bed and onto her feet. “I wonder what Professor Goodwitch wants?”</p><p>Sunset shrugged as he climbed up off the floor, more slowly than Blake’s acrobatic display. “Improvised sparring class?”</p><p>“It’s Friday afternoon,” Blake pointed out. “There are no classes today.”</p><p>“That’s why I said it would be an improvised class,” Sunset replied. “See you later, everyone; I’ll let you know if it was anything important.”</p><p>“Good luck, both of you,” Pyrrha called as the two of them left the dorm room. </p><p>Outside, as the door closed behind the two of them, the huntresses were joined by Yang, Ren, and Nora of Team YRDN coming out of the room across the hall. </p><p>“Did you guys just get a message from Professor Goodwitch, too?” Yang asked.</p><p>“We did,” Blake confirmed. “Are you three on your way over there as well?”</p><p>“We sure are,” Nora confirmed enthusiastically. “At first I thought she was going to yell at us again – even though I don’t think that we’ve done anything to deserve to get yelled at recently, but then, I don’t ever really think that we deserve to get yelled at by Professor Goodwitch – but if you two are coming over as well, then I don’t know what she could want.”</p><p>“We’ll find out when we get there,” Ren said.</p><p>“Obviously,” Sunset replied. “Where’s Dove?”</p><p>Yang shrugged. “Not with us. Maybe hanging out with Lyra and Bon Bon? He does that a lot. If it’s a whole team thing, he’ll meet us there.”</p><p>“Why would Professor Goodwitch want to see Sunset and I alongside your team?” Blake asked.</p><p>“Why would she want to see the three of us and the two of you?” Yang countered.</p><p>“As I said,” Ren repeated patiently, “we’ll find out when we get there.”</p><p>They made their way down out of the dorms and across the grounds. The summer sun shone high above them, and the air was warm as they followed the paved paths between the lawns. As it was Friday afternoon, with classes ended for the week and all the students at liberty, there were various parties of students from all schools – some recognisable from their different uniforms, others wearing their field gear – sprawled out on the grass, studying or reading or talking. Laughter echoed towards the skies, unbroken even when an Atlesian airship passed overhead, temporarily blotting the sun and plunging the ground into shadow. </p><p>The five students made their way to the amphitheatre, eschewing the usual route into the changing rooms and heading straight through the main doors into the theatre proper where the spars and speeches took place. </p><p>They found that they were not the first to arrive. Professor Goodwitch stood upon the stage, and with her stood Professor Ozpin, leaning upon his cane with both hands. Team BLBL – the three remaining members of it, anyway – stood on the right hand side of the lower gallery, side by side, waiting. They had their backs to the doors, but all three of them looked around as Sunset, Blake and the three members of Team YRDN strode in. </p><p>The fourth member of Team YRDN had also preceded them there; Dove Bronzewing stood near the centre of the room, almost directly in front of the stage. He half-turned to face the others as they entered.</p><p>“Yang, Ren, Nora,” he greeted them affably, each with a slight nod of the head. “Blake, Sunset.”</p><p>“Dove,” Blake replied softly, and Sunset could hear – and feel – the concern in her voice. What were they all doing here? What were BLBL doing here? Why had Professor Goodwitch – or Professor Ozpin, who must have instructed her to do it – brought them all together like this?</p><p>The other three members of Team YRDN – minus Dove – stood on the left of the room; Sunset and Blake took up spaces in the middle, to the left of Dove. </p><p>Sunset’s tail flicked back and forth as she waited to hear what this was all about. </p><p>“Thank you all for coming,” Professor Ozpin said. His tone was genial, and there was a slight smile upon his face as he ran his eyes across the assembled students. “I would have called this meeting in my office, but as you can see, there are quite a few of you.” He chuckled for a moment. “Nevertheless, Professor Goodwitch has asked you all to join us so that we might discuss certain irregularities in the team roster that have arisen since the beginning of the semester and how those irregularities might be normalised.</p><p>“As you will all no doubt recall, at the beginning of Fall Semester, Miss Xiao Long, Mister Ren, Mister Bronzewing, and Miss Valkyrie formed Team Iron under Miss Xiao Long’s leadership, while Miss Belladonna, Miss Heartstrings, Miss Bonaventure, and Mister Lark formed Team Bluebell, led by Miss Belladonna. This was in accordance with the standard practices around Initiation, in which partnerships were formed and teams assigned according to the relics chosen during the Initiation itself. However, as you will also remember, at the beginning of this semester… certain facts about Miss Belladonna came to light which made it impossible for her to continue as leader of Team Bluebell… at least in the eyes of her teammates.” Professor Ozpin glanced at the other three Bluebells. Lyra shrank from his gaze, her expression shamefaced, while Sky shuffled his feet uncertainly. Only Bon Bon met the Headmaster’s gaze without a trace of nervousness. </p><p>Sunset scowled at her. <em>Self-righteous prig.</em></p><p>“The situation as it now stands is both undesirable and irregular,” Professor Goodwitch declared. “Miss Belladonna is now living with Team Sapphire, all the while undertaking extracurricular activities on behalf of General Ironwood and the Atlesian forces.” She managed to imbue the name of General Ironwood and his troops with a particular kind of disdain. “Team Bluebell, temporarily under the leadership of Miss Bonaventure, has only three members… and quite frankly, given your grades and performances in my class, I question whether you are capable of functioning in the field in your present state.”</p><p>It was all Sunset could do to keep the grin off her face as Professor Goodwitch said that. It was harsh and rightly so. They deserved to hear that and worse. They were lousy huntsmen, lazy – Sunset had overheard Pyrrha telling Jaune about the deal she had worked out with Dove and how Lyra only trained three nights a week to Jaune’s seven – and with the utter brass-necked gall to look down on Blake, though she was worth three times the whole pack of them! Imbeciles, the lot of them; it was high time that they were put in their place. </p><p>Yang raised her hand. “Professor… Professors, I get that this is about Blake’s future, and I suppose Sunset’s here because Blake is living with Team Sapphire at the moment, but I don’t see how this affects Team Iron?”</p><p>“It affects Team Iron, Miss Xiao Long, because Mister Bronzewing has devised a solution which may resolve many of the issues thrown up by the current state of affairs,” Professor Goodwitch said.</p><p>“Mister Bronzewing,” Professor Ozpin added, gesturing out at the other students with one hand, “the floor is yours.”</p><p>“Thank you, Professor,” Dove said softly. Sunset had always thought of him as a little bit pompous, but he seemed uncertain in front of an audience now as he took a step forward so that everyone could get a better look at him. He didn’t seem to know whether he ought to be addressing his fellow students or the professors, with the results that he first started turning back and forth in an effort to do both, and then ended up turned so that he was facing his teammates, side-on to the professors, and had his back to Team Bluebell. Judging by the way he started looking over his shoulder, that hadn’t been his intention. </p><p>“I… I’ve liked being your partner, Yang,” Dove said. “I was proud to fight alongside you at the Green Line last week. I’ve liked being a member of Team Iron; I’ve been proud to say that I was a member of Team Iron and that my teammates were Yang, Ren, and Nora.” He paused for a moment. “I’m sure that you’ll all be amazing huntsmen and huntresses and achieve all of the dreams we talked about on our first night together after Initiation.” He looked at Blake. “Blake Belladonna, I… I won’t pretend to know what made you do what you did, and if honourable people like Ruby and wise men like the headmaster believe that you deserve to be trusted then… then I suppose you deserve a second chance here, a real second chance.</p><p>“Lyra, Bon Bon, you… you were my first friends here at Beacon; when I stepped off the airship with no idea of where I was going or what I was supposed to do, the two of you helped me find my way. And Sky, you’ve been willing to listen to me and not judge and not spill… you’re all my friends, and the thought of you going into battle with one man down and maybe…” He paused, trailing off. “I don’t know, maybe it’s just my provincial nature talking; I’ve been told I’m a little bit of a hayseed, but…” He scratched the back of his head with one hand. “I was brought up to always help a girl in trouble and always step in to protect a girl in danger. I don’t really make a big deal of it because I’m not sure Yang or Nora really need it.”</p><p>“Not really, no,” Yang agreed, her tone playful and rich in amusement. “I’ll let you know if I ever start getting… vapours or something.”</p><p>“It’s '<em>the</em> vapours,'” Blake murmured, so softly that probably Sunset was the only one in the room who heard her.</p><p>“Anyway, the point is,” Dove went on, “that I’ve suggested to Professor Goodwitch and Professor Ozpin that I should join Team Bluebell, and then Blake could take the open spot in Team Iron, since you don’t have to have a problem with her.” He shrugged. “Then Blake could get out of the Sapphire dorm room, and Team Bluebell would have four members. And I don’t think we’d even have to change the team names.” He smiled sheepishly. </p><p>Silence greeted the end of this speech, broken by Nora, her voice small and a little childlike. “So… you’re leaving us?”</p><p>“I… I don’t know yet,” Dove said.</p><p>“But you want to leave us behind,” Nora insisted.</p><p>“I want to do what’s right,” Dove replied. </p><p>Ren put a hand on Nora’s shoulder. “And that is a very admirable thing to want; that’s what any true huntsman should want.”</p><p>“Is that what’s going to happen, Professor?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“That depends on you students, Miss Shimmer,” Professor Ozpin replied.</p><p>“<em>Some</em> of you students,” Professor Goodwitch corrected. “You have neither choice nor veto, Miss Shimmer; you are here as a courtesy, since Blake is currently living in your dorm room.”</p><p>“And she’s welcome to stay there, if she wants to,” Sunset declared. “Don’t think that you have to clear out to go to any old place.”</p><p>“Hey!” Yang cried. “Team Iron is not 'any old place.'”</p><p>“Would you be willing to lose Mister Bronzewing and gain Miss Belladonna, Miss Xiao Long?” Professor Ozpin asked. “By the same token, Miss Bonaventure, Miss Heartstrings, Mister Lark, would you be willing to have Mister Bronzewing as a teammate? And of course, Miss Belladonna, so much depends on you? What is it that you want?”</p><p>Blake hesitated, one hand clutched just above her chest, close to her heart. “I… I understand that this would be a big help to Team BLBL-“</p><p>“You don’t need to think about what they want,” Sunset said. “They’re the ones who-”</p><p>“Miss Shimmer,” Professor Goodwitch cut her off in an icy tone, “perhaps you should let Miss Belladonna finish?”</p><p>Sunset cleared her throat. “Sorry, Professor.”</p><p>Blake’s ears drooped a little. “I… I don’t have any objection to joining Team Iron, if they’ll have me, but… with my obligations to the Atlesians, then there’s at least some chance that Team Iron will be left with only three members.”</p><p>“I can speak to General Ironwood and see if we can’t minimise the risk of that,” Professor Ozpin said, “but you are correct, Miss Belladonna; the chance cannot be discounted completely. Miss Xiao Long, Miss Valkyrie, Mister Ren, you should be aware of this before you make any final decision.”</p><p>“There… there’s something else that you should know as well,” Blake said, her voice rising for a moment to regain the attention of everyone in the room. “I… Rainbow Dash has asked me to transfer to Atlas at the end of this year. I… am considering it.”</p><p>Sunset wanted – she so, <em>so</em> wanted – to take a picture of Bon Bon’s expression when Blake said that. Lyra looked pretty startled to hear it too, but Bon Bon looked as though she had just bitten into a sandwich only to find that there were flies inside devouring the rancid meat. Oh, how it must gall her, Miss High and Mighty, that the team leader she had spurned and rejected as unworthy of her had been offered a place amongst the clouds of Atlas. </p><p>Since she couldn’t really take a picture in front of the headmaster, Sunset settled for trying to fix the image in her memory instead. </p><p>“Miss Dash has asked this of you,” Professor Ozpin murmured. “Has General Ironwood said anything about it?”</p><p>“We’ve talked about it,” Blake said. “I think that he’d support the idea if I decided to go along with it.”</p><p>Professor Goodwitch sniffed. “James continues to find ways of surprising me with his behaviour. Just when I thought that he couldn’t-”</p><p>“Now, now, Glynda,” Professor Ozpin interrupted quietly. “James merely wants what we all want: for all of our students to flourish to their full potential. If he believes that Miss Belladonna will do better at Atlas than Beacon, well… that is a matter upon which reasonable people might reasonably disagree. You say that you are considering it, Miss Belladonna?”</p><p>“Yes,” Blake said, and her voice shook only a little. She glanced at Beacon’s headmaster. “I mean no disrespect-”</p><p>“You needn’t worry about hurting my feelings, believe me,” Professor Ozpin said lightly. “I can acknowledge that Atlas is a fine school, and that some fine young men and women have emerged from it, without losing a scintilla of the pride I feel in Beacon and its students. You must do what is best for you, Miss Belladonna; so long as you find your path and walk it for the betterment of all mankind, then all of this great edifice erected for your education has been worthwhile. It has no other purpose.”</p><p>Blake bowed her head. “That’s very kind of you to say so, Professor,” she murmured. “But, again, if I do go to Atlas at the end of the year, then Team Iron will be left with only three members.”</p><p>“True enough, Miss Belladonna,” Professor Ozpin acknowledged. He leaned upon his cane, and a sigh escaped his lips. “Sadly, that state of affairs is not unheard of amongst second year teams and higher. We do what we can to protect our students, but this world and this life are dangerous, and sometimes, our best is not enough. Team Iron would, in some respects, be more fortunate than others in a similar position.”</p><p>“More importantly,” Professor Goodwitch added, “there is always the possibility that a student from Shade or Haven, or perhaps even the great Atlas,” – she laced the name with a touch of acid – “may decide to transfer to Beacon at the end of this year.”</p><p>“Also a possibility,” Professor Ozpin concurred.</p><p>“And it’s a position that Team Bluebell are in now, and with less…” Dove trailed off. He glanced at his new teammates, or at those who might soon be his new teammates. “I mean, no offence, guys, but I think Yang, Ren, and Nora could handle themselves a lot better without a fourth guy than you.”</p><p>“I think you’re probably right,” Lyra conceded in a voice that was half mutter, half groan.</p><p>Yang glanced at Dove for a moment, then turned her head towards Ren and Nora. She drew them close, the three other members of Team Iron huddling together, heads bent, speaking in whispers so that Sunset couldn’t hear them.</p><p>“You don’t have to take this just because they’re offering it to you,” she said.</p><p>A smile played upon Blake’s features. “You want me to stay that badly?”</p><p>Blake’s tone was fondly mocking, almost playful, but Sunset answered her in earnest. “I don’t want you to go.”</p><p>“It’s a good plan from Dove,” Blake insisted.</p><p>“Good for Team Bluebell; I’m not sure I’d say the same about Team Iron,” Sunset replied. “And it’s not-”</p><p>“Not good for me?” Blake guessed. “I don’t think it’s bad for me, either.” She smiled. “You... I’ll always be grateful for you giving me a place to stay when no one else would, but I don’t belong in your bed, or even in your room.” She paused. “Besides, I’m only moving across the hall.”</p><p>“For now,” Sunset said. “Is this what you want?”</p><p>“I… I don’t know what I want yet,” Blake admitted, “but I think that this might be a good start.”</p><p>Team Iron – minus Dove – had finished their impromptu discussion. Yang looked at him. “This is what you want, isn’t it?”</p><p>Dove didn’t reply.</p><p>“Hey,” Yang said. “Be honest. Don’t worry about hurting anyone’s feelings; just go for it.”</p><p>Dove nodded. “This is what I want, not because-”</p><p>“Hey,” Yang said, cutting him off with one raised hand. “You don’t need to explain. You don’t owe me – any of us – a word, and besides, I get it.” She grinned. “So go get ‘em, tiger.” She looked up at the professors on the stage. “We’re willing to take the risk of Blake being away or even leaving. Dove’s right; we can handle it on our own, but…” Now, she turned her gaze and full attention to Blake. “If you want the spot, you can have it.”</p><p>Blake smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “I want the spot.”</p><p>“Of course you do,” Nora cried. “The coolest team in Beacon!”</p><p>Ren bowed his head. “I hope that our duties give us the chance to work together.”</p><p>“So do I,” Blake agreed. </p><p>Yang grinned. “Welcome to Team Iron, Blake.”</p><p>“Thank you again,” Blake said. She offered her hand to Sunset. “And thank you, for putting up with me and for always having my back.”</p><p>Sunset pulled Blake into a hug, wrapping her arms around the other faunus and holding her tight. “Just so you know,” she whispered into Blake’s ear, “there’ll always be a place across the hall for you when you ruin this chance like you did the other.”</p><p>Blake snorted. “I’ll keep that in mind. Don’t joke; I might actually hold you to that.”</p><p><em>I wouldn’t mind at all if you did,</em> Sunset thought.</p><hr/><p>Blake sat down heavily upon her bed. Once all her stuff had been moved into her new dorm room, Team SAPR had insisted – with no possibility of refusal – that she had to come out with them to Benni Haven's for a goodbye, as though she was actually moving to Atlas instead of just across the corridor. Her new teammates had been very accepting about it, and honestly, Blake wouldn’t have refused even if she’d had the chance; it was a nice gesture on their part, one of a series of nice gestures from Team SAPR since her secret had come out and even before it. They had always been there for her, whether she deserved it or not, ever since she had run away from Rainbow Dash; the chance to spend another evening in their good company, with good food to boot, was too, well, too good to pass up.</p><p>And it had been a good night. A very good night. Ms. Haven had even broken with a custom and taken a picture of the five of them with Fluffy, since Blake was – or had been – an ‘honourary’ member of Team SAPR for just a little while. </p><p>Blake didn’t know what the future held for her – either in the sense of her immediate future with Team YRBN or in the sense of her larger future and the choice between Beacon and Atlas that she had yet to make – but she would always be grateful for the kindness of Team SAPR.</p><p>Nobody had been that unconditionally kind to her since… since she had turned her back on her parents. </p><p>The trouble was that the food at Benni Haven's was very, <em>very</em> filling, and her stomach was now feeling just a little bit delicate. </p><p>Yang strode into the dorm room. “Hey,” she said.</p><p>“Hey,” Blake murmured, one hand over her stomach.</p><p>Yang chuckled as she sat down on the bed next to Blake – unlike in SAPR’s dorm room, the beds weren’t arranged by strict name order; Ren and Nora slept side by side, and Yang and Dove had sat on the other side of the room; now it was Yang and Blake. She kicked off her boots and crossed her legs on the scarlet quilt beneath her. “Did you guys have a good time down there?”</p><p>“It was very nice, at the time,” Blake said, with a slight touch of a groan. “The company was wonderful, but-”</p><p>“But you ate too much?” Yang said, with a grin on her face that could have devoured many unpleasant things.</p><p>“When Ruby is begging you to share a chocolate chip sundae with her, it’s very hard to say no,” Blake pointed out.</p><p>Yang let out a bark of laughter. “Yeah, don’t I know it.”</p><p>Blake’s lips twitched slightly. “You’re very lucky, to have-”</p><p>“A sister like her, yeah, I know,” Yang said. “Of course, if I was really lucky, we’d be on the same team together.”</p><p>Blake frowned. “I… I don’t have any siblings, so I can’t imagine what it’s like for you, but Sunset-”</p><p>“Is becoming more of a sister to her than I am.” Yang finished.</p><p>“That’s not true,” Blake replied. “I was going to say that Sunset takes care of her; they all do. Not that she really needs it. She’s brave, capable; you should be proud of her.”</p><p>“I <em>am </em>proud of her,” Yang insisted. “I just…” She paused, staring intently at Blake. “How much have they told you?”</p><p>Blake hesitated. Yang asked how much Blake had been told, but Blake found it difficult to answer without knowing exactly what Ruby had told Yang. Asking <em>that</em> question, however, could seem facetious at best and downright insulting at worst, so she tried – she had no choice – but to guess what it was that Yang knew. She guessed that Ruby would have told Yang everything that pertained to her, but nothing more than that; she wouldn’t have told Yang Sunset’s secrets. “I know about her eyes,” she said.</p><p>Yang nodded. “I thought you might. Hard to keep secrets from someone in the same room.”</p><p>“Do Ren and Nora know?”</p><p>Yang’s smile was a little wan. “I said it was hard, not impossible. Especially when you’ve no one to talk about it with where they might hear. No. They don’t know. I don’t… what would I tell them, that my sister has magic eyes? I like them both, but I don’t want them to think I’m nuts. And I’m not sure that this is their business.”</p><p>“But you were fine with Ruby telling her teammates and making it their business?” Blake asked.</p><p>“Ruby can trust who she wants to trust, and so can I,” Yang replied.</p><p>Blake’s brow furrowed. “Are you trusting me?”</p><p>“Ruby already made that choice for me, a little bit,” Yang declared. “But… yeah, I think I trust you.”</p><p>“Why?” Blake inquired. “I mean… why am I even here? Why do you want me here? Why were you so quick to offer me a place here?”</p><p>Yang affixed Blake with the gaze of her lilac eyes. "Because… because nobody should have to be alone, abandoned. Everyone should have… a place where they belong. A place they can call home. That's how I feel, anyway, and while I can't speak for Ren or Nora, I… I think that they feel the same way that I do."</p><p>"That's… that's incredibly generous of you," Blake murmured, "but all the same, you gave up one of your teammates-"</p><p>"What was I supposed to do? Tell Dove no, we couldn't spare him?"</p><p>"You could," Blake said, thinking to herself that Sunset probably would have said exactly that if Ruby or Pyrrha or even Jaune wanted to switch teams.</p><p>"Maybe," Yang allowed, "but I don't think Dove would have been very happy with me if I did. If this is what he really wants… it's better this way. If he feels that strongly about it, then who am I to stand in his way? I'm his team leader, not his owner."</p><p>"No, I suppose…" Blake trailed off for a moment. "I hadn't thought about it like that before." She paused. "Do you think they'll be okay?"</p><p>"Who?"</p><p>"Dove and Team Bluebell," Blake explained. "Or just Team Bluebell now, I suppose."</p><p>"I don't know about the rest of them, but Dove's got it where it counts," Yang assured her.</p><p>"Are you sorry to lose him?"</p><p>"Nah," Yang declared, and whether she was lying or not, Blake appreciated the fact that she seemed perfectly sincere. "I've seen you in sparring class. You're good. Not as good as me, maybe," she added with a chuckle. "But you're good. You'll do great as part of this team."</p><p>"If my situation allows," Blake murmured. "If… if I… you know."</p><p>"Don't worry about it," Yang said. "You do what you have to do right now, and later, we can worry about what'll happen if you decide to leave. You're really considering it then? Atlas?"</p><p>Blake nodded. "I really am. I haven't made my mind up to say yes, but I haven't made my mind up to say no, either."</p><p>"Why?" Yang asked. "I mean, if you don't want to talk about it, then just say so. I don't mean to pry into your business; I'm just curious, if that's okay."</p><p>"It's fine," Blake said, yet nevertheless, she paused a moment before answering. In fact, she did not answer, save with another question. "Yang, what is it that you want to do when you graduate?"</p><p>Yang shrugged. "The usual huntsman stuff, I guess. Saving people, hunting things; the family business."</p><p>Blake nodded. She had thought as much. "I… no offence, but I'm not sure that's enough for me."</p><p>Yang stared at her. "You're not sure that you can go out beyond the kingdoms to fight the monsters and then come back to find the monsters inside the kingdoms as high and mighty as ever."</p><p>"Exactly," Blake whispered. "If only people who deserved salvation were saved, then Ruby would be wandering the streets of Vale all by herself, but I think that we ought to at least try to make a world that doesn't deserve to be consumed by the grimm."</p><p>"No argument there, but you think Atlas is the place for that?"</p><p>"I think that in Atlas, a huntress can become powerful in ways that she can't in the other kingdoms."</p><p>"You mean in Atlas, a soldier can become powerful," Yang replied. "Because let's be honest, the reason why Atlas is different is that its huntsmen are military."</p><p>"Is that a bad thing, do you think?"</p><p>"I don't know, but you might find it isn't what you're used to."</p><p>"I've been in a military of sorts before," Blake pointed out.</p><p>"Right," Yang muttered. "Of course you have. And I guess you have a point; there isn't so much thing as a bigshot huntress the way that there are generals and stuff in Atlas. And if that's what you want, then… but do you really believe it? No offence, but it's Atlas. Do you think it can happen?"</p><p>"I don't know," Blake admitted. "That's what… I suppose you could say that's what's holding me back. It might be the best way to change the world, it might even be the only way, but I don't know if I have it in me to make that kind of sacrifice for nothing. That… and the fact that it's Atlas, and although the Atlesians I've met have been much better people than I expected, I haven't really met very many Atlesians." She sighed. "I just don't know. I haven't figured it out yet."</p><p>"You will," Yang assured her.</p><p>"Are you sure?"</p><p>"Absolutely," Yang replied. "When the end of the year comes, you'll know where it is you need to go. You might not even make your mind up, but you'll know in your gut." She grinned. "Speaking of the gut, do you have any room in there?"</p><p>Blake's eyes widened. "You want to fill me up more?"</p><p>"What do you think Ren and Nora are doing?" Yang asked. "They're cooking. Well, Ren is cooking, Nora is… keeping him company. Dove's coming back too."</p><p>"Really?"</p><p>Yang nodded. "Ren suggested it: we say farewell to one member of our team and welcome a new one."</p><p>Blake smiled. "That… that sounds lovely," she admitted. "But I can't guarantee that I won't throw up if I eat any more."</p><p>Yang's cackling laughter echoed off the walls.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0040"><h2>40. The Infinite Man</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sunset and Cinder discuss a fairytale.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Infinite Man</p><p> </p><p>“Do you want to grab a table and set up while I grab our stuff?” Sunset asked, as the door of the A &amp; P ice cream café shut behind them. </p><p>Cinder started towards the nearest table – which happened to be one of the ones near the window – even as she said, “I question why we’re here.”</p><p>“You know exactly why we’re here; we’re going to start work on our coursework for Legends class,” Sunset replied.</p><p>“Obviously,” Cinder said. “But why are we doing that <em>here?</em> We could have just as easily started work in the library, or in one of the dorm rooms for that matter.”</p><p>“Neither of those places has ice cream,” Sunset said flatly, because what other explanation was needed, really? “Have you really never gone to a coffee shop or the like to do your homework?”</p><p>Cinder stared at her blankly. “No.”</p><p>“You poor, deprived girl,” Sunset murmured. She had gotten a bit out of the habit of it here at Beacon, if only because it was such a long way to go to get into Vale, but she had come to places like this all the time in Canterlot. There was one particular place that she’d really liked, an open plaza in the Haymarket with a lot of food stalls and the like surrounding it, always quite busy, but if you knew the right time to get there, you could usually grab a seat. Sunset would head over there frequently – not least because it was close to the best antique bookshop in Canterlot – and get ice cream from a stall run by a unicorn named Strawberry Swirl who wore a red and white striped apron and who always acted as though Sunset Shimmer coming round was the best thing to happen to him all day. Sunset had been so egotistical that she’d assumed her presence <em>was</em> the best thing to happen to him all day. It had been a nice place to work, that plaza in the Haymarket. As nice as anywhere else she had put down her books and quill in Canterlot… weather permitting, obviously. </p><p>Sadly, it was a tradition she had found harder to keep up in the Canterlot of Remnant; the looks of disdain had been too much to put up with, in the end. But Vale – that dust shop owner aside – hadn’t been so bad in this regard, so she had hopes for this place. </p><p>If her hopes were disappointed, then Jaune and Pyrrha would be hearing about it in the most strenuous terms. </p><p>Cinder looked as though she were trying to stifle a laugh.  “Yes, truly the wretchedness of my existence has been thrown into stark relief by the fact that I never learnt to do my schoolwork in a café.” She stood over the table, one hand resting lightly upon it but, as yet, making no move to sit down. “You know, the library may not have ice cream, but it does have all the books we may need.”</p><p>“I have books right here,” Sunset said, tapping the pack slung over her shoulder and getting a satisfying thump out of the books contained therein, “and besides, this is just our first session to brainstorm ideas. We don’t need to worry about research just yet.”</p><p>Cinder shrugged. “Space could be an issue.”</p><p>“Space is not going to be an issue,” Sunset insisted. “Honestly, I decide to take you somewhere nice, and all you do is quibble about it.”</p><p>“Oh, so this is your treat?” Cinder asked. Her teeth flashed for a moment. “Well, in that case,” – she sat herself down at the table, leaning back in her chair – “please, don’t let me stop you spending your lien on me.”</p><p>Sunset made a sound that was half sigh, half chuckle. “I knew you’d come around. What do you want?”</p><p>Cinder didn’t even bother to look at the menus above the counter. “I’ll have two scoops of vanilla and a small Atlesiano.”</p><p>Sunset blinked. “That’s it? You know you don’t need to hold back on account of saving me money.”</p><p>“I’m not.”</p><p>“You could have fooled me,” Sunset replied. “That can’t be all you want.”</p><p>“What should I want instead?” Cinder asked. “What’s good here?”</p><p>“I don’t know; this is my first time,” Sunset admitted. “Jaune and Pyrrha went here on a date a couple of days ago; they said the pie was good. I was going to go for a sundae, though.” She grinned. “Do you want to share a sundae? It'll be better than two scoops of vanilla, I guarantee it.”</p><p>Cinder hesitated for a moment, before a slight smile teased its way to the edges of her mouth. “Alright, go ahead,” she said. “Although I warn you, I’ve always had a little bit of a problem when it comes to taking only my fair share. Somehow, a fair share always turns out to be… everything.”</p><p>Sunset chuckled. “I’m sure I’ll hold my own,” she said, pulling her satchel off her shoulder and slinging it over the arm of the other chair, leaving Cinder to watch over it as she made her way to the counter. While she and Cinder had been arguing, someone else had come in and gotten up there first, but Sunset didn’t mind the wait too much because it gave her a chance to study the menus on the wall above. Jaune and Pyrrha had said that this place was nice, and the ice cream on the other side of the glass case seemed pretty nice too, even if Sunset wasn’t entirely sure about the décor. Was there really a need for so many cows? She tried her best to ignore them all and focus upon what was available to eat. The hot drinks were pretty much as she had expected, but some of the hot chocolates seemed as nice as Jaune and Pyrrha had made them sound. She turned her attention to the sundaes, her green eyes widening as she saw that they were offering a vanilla, raspberry whirl, and strawberry sundae. </p><p>That had been her favourite order back in Canterlot, the real Canterlot. To be honest, it had been pretty much her only order, so regular that Strawberry Swirl had known to start getting it ready when he saw her coming. </p><p>It beckoned to her, like a little slice of home. </p><p>“Thank you,” the girl behind the counter – Sunset wondered if this was the same girl that she’d been told about, the girl from Jaune’s past – said to the customer in front of Sunset as he departed with his tray. To Sunset, as she shuffled forwards, she said, “Good morning, how can I help you?”</p><p>“I’ll take a vanilla, raspberry whirl, and strawberry sundae for two, with wafers and chocolate flakes,” Sunset said on instinct, only adding the ‘for two’ in a brief remembrance that this time, she had someone else with her. “And a… medium mocha and a small Atlesiano.” It was a little early in the day for a lavish hot chocolate on top of everything else, and the little touch of coffee would help to keep her wits sharp. She decided that she would respect Cinder’s drink order; they could always get refills if they were here for long enough.</p><p>“Eating in?” the girl behind the counter said.</p><p>“Yeah,” Sunset said, biting back the urge to point out that of course they were eating in; that was why Cinder was sitting down. She didn’t want this girl to spit in her coffee.</p><p>“Okay, if you wait here, I’ll get all that sorted out for you as fast as I can. In the meantime… that’s fourteen lien.”</p><p>Sunset paid, sliding across a couple of cards. “So,” she said, “you’re Jaune’s friend?”</p><p>The girl’s eyes widened. “You know Jaune? Jaune Arc?”</p><p>“I’m his team leader,” Sunset declared. “And you’re Miranda Wells?”</p><p>“Sure,” Miranda said, her tone a little wary without being unfriendly. “Jaune… told you about this place?”</p><p>“I hope it lives up to his recommendation,” Sunset said.</p><p>Miranda laughed. “I’ll try my best,” she said. “So, are you here on a date, too?”</p><p>“A d-” Sunset glanced around at Cinder. “Oh, no, we’re here for a study session.”</p><p>Miranda’s eyebrows rose. “A study session. In here?”</p><p>“You’re a student, right?”</p><p>“A Literature student, yeah.”</p><p>“You’ve never sat in a café and gotten some work done?”</p><p>“I work in a café,” Miranda replied. “I do my work in my dorm room.”</p><p>Sunset rolled her eyes. “So uncivilised.”</p><p>“Hey, if it works for you, then go for it,” Miranda said. “I didn’t mean to… I might even try it myself sometime. I should probably stop talking and get your order before you ask for your money back, shouldn’t I?” Nevertheless, she made no move to actually take their order, but rather lingered at the counter, watching Sunset before she leaned forwards, her elbows resting upon the work surface. “So, you’re Jaune’s team leader? Does that mean you’re sort of in charge of him?”</p><p>“It means exactly that I am in charge of him,” Sunset affirmed.</p><p>“Right,” Miranda said softly, nodding her head absently. “Um, please don’t tell her I said this, but… that girl, Pyrrha… she’s really into him, isn’t she?”</p><p>Sunset folded her arms. “Sure, she’s got it bad, what about it?” <em>You don’t still think you’re in with a  chance, do you?</em> Miranda Wells was pretty enough, and in a small town, she might even be thought of as a beauty, but put next to Pyrrha Nikos, and there was no comparison at all, even if you were so shallow as to only judge by looks. More to the point, if anything – or anyone – did come between Jaune and Pyrrha, then Pyrrha would be heartbroken, and the team would be split in two. Sunset wasn’t about to let that happen. </p><p>“It’s just that… when you really care about someone, it can make you… have you heard of 'unreliable narrator'?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“It’s like that, but with people you love, don’t you think?” Miranda asked. “My point is… is Jaune any good? Pyrrha told me he was, pretty much, but she-”</p><p>“Cares about him too much, is that what you think?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Miranda shrank back a little. “Maybe,” she confessed. “I just need someone more… is he any good?”</p><p>“Even if he wasn’t, I wouldn’t tell you,” Sunset declared. “You see, Pyrrha may be his girlfriend, but I’m his team leader, and that means that when it comes to my team, I’m the most unreliable narrator there is, because I’ve got the best team in Beacon, and I’ll fight any other huntsman who says different.” She grinned. “But you don’t have to take my word for it: come the Vytal Festival, keep your eyes open for Team Sapphire, spelled S-A-P-R, and you’ll see for yourself just how good Jaune Arc is.”</p><p>“'S-A-P-R,'” Miranda repeated. She blinked. “You realise that also stands for Se-”</p><p>“Yes, I know, although I wish I didn’t,” Sunset said rapidly. She considered herself very fortunate that nobody had stooped so low as to make jokes about it. </p><p>“Right, sorry,” Miranda said. “I… I really will get your stuff together now.”</p><p>She turned away, leaving Sunset to watch over her shoulder as Miranda busied herself with the getting of drinks and the making of sundaes. A sundae, anyway. The sundae itself was a delicious-looking concoction of ice creams, whipped cream, strawberry compote, and crushed shortbread biscuit, garlanded with lashings of red sauce and sliced strawberries. It was a riot of red, white, and pale yellow against which the two brown chocolate flakes stood over very starkly, but Sunset wanted them anyway. The two cups of coffee steamed on either side of the cold glass when they were all placed upon the tray.</p><p>"Enjoy," Miranda said.</p><p>"Thanks," Sunset replied, picking up the tray with both hands and carrying it back to the table where Cinder waited. "Feast your eyes on this, Miss Two Scoops of Vanilla," she declared as she set it down upon the table.</p><p>Cinder regarded the sundae for a moment. One obsidian eyebrow rose above a fiery eye. "I had no idea that you had such a sweet tooth," she murmured.</p><p>"Where I come from, everyone has a sweet tooth," Sunset replied as she sat down. "It's culturally illegal not to."</p><p>"Really?" Cinder asked in an arch tone. "How very convenient for you."</p><p>Sunset grinned. "Just try some."</p><p>Cinder picked up one of the small spoons dug into the sloping sides of the sundae and scooped out a small amount of sauce-covered raspberry ripple ice cream onto it. She placed it into her mouth. Sunset took a slightly larger spoonful, incorporating vanilla and raspberry, and let it set her teeth to shivering as she waited for Cinder's response.</p><p>Cinder nodded, although there was no great store of enthusiasm in her voice as she said, "I see why you wanted me to try this." She paused. "You spent a little time talking to the girl up there."</p><p>"She's an old friend of Jaune."</p><p>"Jaune has friends?"</p><p>"Stop it," Sunset said, her tone acquiring a warning edge.</p><p>Cinder chuckled. "You can't take a little mild teasing?"</p><p>"You can tease me; leave them out of it," Sunset told her.</p><p>"Suit yourself," Cinder acknowledged. "All the same, what did you have to talk about with a friend of Jaune Arc?"</p><p>"She wanted an honest assessment of his skill level."</p><p>"Did you give her one?"</p><p>"Of course not, I'm his team leader," Sunset said. "But that's what we talked about. That, and she thought we were here on a date, absurdly."</p><p>Cinder's eyebrows rose. "Is there something absurd about it?"</p><p>"Oh, please," Sunset said. "I'm so out of your league, it's not even funny."</p><p>Cinder smirked. "Of course. We must all know our places and our limitations, mustn't we? What would the world come to if we all set our heights as high as ambition?" She picked up her coffee and drained half of the small cup in a single sip.</p><p>Sunset's eyes widened. "Sun and moon, Cinder, what's your tongue made of?"</p><p>"Hmm?"</p><p>"How did you drink so much of that without burning your tongue?" Sunset repeated.</p><p>"Oh, is it hot?" Cinder asked, with a shrug of her shoulders. "I can't say I really noticed."</p><p>"Okay," Sunset said, slowly and deliberately, before she took a much smaller sip of her own coffee, and only after she'd blown on it first because it was <em>very</em> hot. The contrast of that and the ice cream was very pronounced, going from one to the other, but in a good way, pretty much. Sunset took out her copy of <em>Fairy Tales of Remnant</em> from the satchel hanging off the arm of her chair, her hands glowing as she levitated book, notepad, and pen onto the table in front of her as she pushed the sundae into the middle of the table – where they could both reach it – and her coffee to one side. "You're okay with something from the book, right?"</p><p>"Fine by me," Cinder answered, as she got out her own copy of <em>Fairy Tales</em>. "I'm a little surprised that it's fine by you. I thought that you might want to reach for something a little more… exotic."</p><p>"Wandering into the weeds is fine if you can find your way back again," Sunset explained. "I'm not sure I'm familiar enough with any off-book stories to do them justice in a piece like this." She remembered what had happened to Jaune and Ruby in their history quarter-terms in first semester, when the advanced approach that Sunset had led them on had exposed their weakness on the course basics. She wasn't going to let that happen to her.</p><p>"As I said, it's fine by me," Cinder repeated. "Not least because the story I was hoping we could tackle is in the book."</p><p>Sunset took another mouthful of ice cream. "Go on," she prompted.</p><p>Cinder leaned forward a little. "I was thinking that we could take on <em>The Infinite Man." She drained the rest of her coffee.</em></p><p>"You want another one?" Sunset asked.</p><p>"Not right now," Cinder said. "So, what do you think?"</p><p>Sunset nodded. "It is an interesting story. There are a lot of different ways to look at it, which means that there is a lot to write about it."</p><p>Cinder rested her elbows on the table top. "What do you think about it?"</p><p>Sunset thought about it and covered her thoughts by taking first a sip of her mocha and then a bite out of her chocolate flake, and while she chewed, she pondered the matter. <em>The Infinite Man</em> was the tale a man possessed of… of magic.</p><p>Sunset stopped mid-chew, though she swiftly resumed, lest Cinder notice anything amiss. In the books that Twilight had given her, magical abilities belonged exclusively to women – to four women at a time – but here was a tale of immense magic in the hands of a man. How had he come by it, and what made him so special? Could he be the Old Man in the tales of the prophets? The wizard who had assembled the five heroes to hunt down the Red Queens? Or was it, perhaps, just a story?</p><p>
  <em>Why should I take one set of stories as real and dismiss the other as just a story?</em>
</p><p>Of course, the Infinite Man was not just a powerful wielder of magic – he was also immortal, after a fashion, hence the name – but it was a strange sort of immortality, to Sunset's mind. She was, of course, no stranger to the notion: as every little colt and filly knew, Princess Celestia had lived for over a thousand years and ruled Equestria for nearly as long without appearing to age at all in all that time. But the Infinite Man did not endure forever – it would have been a very different story if he had – rather, he died and then reincarnated with a new face, one that even those closest to him did not recognise.</p><p>That sounded just a little farfetched to Sunset's way of thinking; perhaps it was arbitrary of her to dismiss the possibility, but having seen nothing like it in this world or Equestria – and the fact that, unlike the prophets or red queens or whatever you wished to call them, this man only appeared in one story – Sunset was inclined to call it a little bit of poetic license. Perhaps it had been based upon the sages who recurred throughout mythology, but Sunset doubted they had actually been the same person.</p><p>Cinder cocked her head to one side. "Sunset?" she asked. "Is something wrong?"</p><p>"No," Sunset said quickly, before she started to look even more insensible than she did now. "I was just thinking."</p><p>"A useful way to pass the time," Cinder observed. "What were you thinking about?"</p><p>"I was thinking," Sunset said, "that the Infinite Man considers that he makes many mistakes, but to my mind, he only makes one: the decision to throw the fight." It was, to Sunset's mind, a completely inexplicable moment for all the effort that the story made to explain it. The Infinite Man, over the course of two lifetimes, had established a mighty organisation, a band of followers who were described as being as gods in their own right and who dedicated themselves to the protection of the innocent and the advancement of the cause of righteousness. Yet these mighty warriors, these god-like men and women, had found themselves caught flat-footed when attacked by a crew of lawless resolutes led by a duel-wielding swordswoman bent on defeating a god, presumably for the satisfaction of her own ego. The Infinite Man had striven against her at first, but then, he had willingly laid down his life, baring his throat for her sword on the promise that she would depart and spare his followers.</p><p>Sunset had not been at all surprised to read on and find out that she had not spared the man's followers.</p><p>"He trusted in the honour of his enemy," Sunset continued, "and surprise, surprise, she had none. It was entirely foreseeable – no, it was obvious – that she would betray him like that."</p><p>"You don't think much of the reasons given, I take it?" Cinder murmured.</p><p>"The fear of collateral damage?" Sunset snorted. "Everyone died anyway, how bad could it have possibly gotten?"</p><p>Cinder smirked. "True enough, I suppose."</p><p>"And that's another thing that doesn't make sense," Sunset continued. "This group that the man sets up, they are supposed to be great warriors; it says so, in the story, they trained to become like gods and then they went out and fought the monsters, just like huntsmen do today; their legend grew exponentially over time, their numbers swelled as more and more people flocked to join them. And yet, in a single night of misfortune, they are broken, annihilated even, and by what? A rabble of scum from out of nowhere?"</p><p>"You find that strange?" Cinder asked curiously. "You find that difficult to explain? I'm a little surprised; it makes perfect sense to me."</p><p>"How do you mean?" Sunset asked.</p><p>Cinder was silent for a moment. "I think I will have that refill now," she said and got up from the table, leaving Sunset to wait and finish off some more of the sundae – Cinder wanted to get in quick or there wouldn't be much left – before she returned with another, larger, cup of coffee.</p><p>"Now," Cinder said, "where was I?"</p><p>"You were about to explain the fall of the man's followers," Sunset prompted.</p><p>"Ah, yes," Cinder said, stirring her coffee idly with a long spoon, scraping it across the bottom of her cup with a scratching sound that persisted as she spoke. "In a way, you answered the question yourself: they were just like huntsmen."</p><p>Sunset's eyes narrowed. "I don't follow."</p><p>Cinder continued to stir her coffee, the spoon making a wince-inducing sound as it scraped the cup. "Four academies: Shade, Haven, Atlas, Beacon. I'm sure that when they were founded, the first students to walk through the halls were just like the girl in the fairy tale who first convinces the Infinite Man to teach her: brave, honourable, committed to the fight. I'm sure that the Circle was once as mighty as its reputation suggested, just as the huntsmen who defend our kingdoms were once heroes worthy of song and story. But <em>this </em>story covers a span of generations: the young girl is a middle-aged woman by the time the Infinite Man returns from death the first time, and he lives another life before all that he worked for turns to ashes before his eyes. Look at what has happened to the huntsman academies in only a slightly longer span of time; the halls of these hallowed institutions have become the haunts of spoiled brats, Schnees and Winchesters and Kommeni with nothing to recommend them but family money, only here because they wish to reveal in the acclaim of being huntsmen, to be fawned over for their physical power as much as the power their money can supply. Such, I have no doubt, was the fate of the Circle: its fortress polluted and its strength diluted by mediocrities more interested in sharing in the prestige of membership of such a distinguished order than in working to further its goals, let alone give their lives for it. Such is the fate of all institutions; the iron always rusts, covered with the oxide of complacency until it crumbles at the slightest touch."</p><p>"I'm not sure I agree," Sunset murmured.</p><p>"Is there any particular part you disagree with, or is your dissent general?"</p><p>"I admit that there are some in Beacon whom I wouldn't have let in if I was the headmaster, but I wouldn't say that we're so rusted over yet," Sunset replied. "I'd say there are more good than bad still, at Beacon at least."</p><p>"We'll see," Cinder said. "Perhaps you're right. Perhaps the students of Beacon and the other academies are good for more than preening before the cameras at the Vytal Festival. You have, I admit, demonstrated that you and your team are certainly not without skill." She paused. "There is another possibility, if you find my first suggestion too cynical, which is that the Circle was never actually all that it was cracked up to be."</p><p>"You mean the stories exaggerate their prowess without considering what that means for their fall?" Sunset asked.</p><p>"Perhaps their prowess was exaggerated even during the Circle's existence."</p><p>"You think it actually existed?"</p><p>"I think something like it probably existed, or what inspired the story?" Cinder replied.</p><p>Sunset nodded; it was more likely than the Infinite Man's unlikely mode of immortality. "Okay, but you think they were never as great as the story would have us believe?"</p><p>"I think that they wished to be thought of as much greater than they were; they may even have believed it themselves before war came to their doorstep," Cinder said. "I'm sure they were perfectly capable of despatching grimm, but… well, look at your friends from Atlas and all their toys taking up the skies overhead. Where does this preeminent military reputation enjoyed by Atlas come from? Everyone agrees that they are the mightiest of the four kingdoms, but Atlas has not faced a war since its foundation; we are, as we are incessantly reminded, living in an era of peace. So upon what firm foundation rests all of this northern bravado? What have they done to earn it? If they were to be confronted by a true threat, by a power they could not overawe with the shadow of a single warship, would not all their fine talk turn to dust, and all their arrogance wither into fear?"</p><p>"Don't let Rainbow Dash here you say that," Sunset remarked.</p><p>Cinder snorted. "Don't worry, I won't. I find Atlesians tiresome enough already, as you might be able to tell; present company accepted, of course."</p><p>"Thank you," Sunset said, inclining her head graciously. "You certainly have a lot to say upon this story, no wonder you wanted to choose this one so badly."</p><p>"And you?"</p><p>"Nothing comparable to the amount of thought you've given to it, I'm afraid," Sunset admitted. "Except to say that… either or both of your suggestions has merit." Certainly it matched her Equestrian experience; Sunset had heard no less than Robyn Hill, their captain, admit to the princess that the Royal Guard had atrophied over the generations of peace that Celestia had wrought. That fact had not troubled Princess Celestia herself, who had preferred the peace to any toughening of the guard that might result from conflict, but it showed in the way that Equestria now seemed dependent on Twilight Sparkle and her friends to protect it from all menaces.</p><p>"And the moral of the story?" Cinder asked. "Is the man a hero, a villain, or a fool?"</p><p>Sunset considered it for a moment. "A fool," she said after a few moments. "He doesn't have the strength of character to be either hero or villain."</p><p>"No?"</p><p>Sunset shook her head. "He continuously bemoans his flaws, his unfitness to be a hero, still less a god, and yet he allows the girl to talk him into becoming a leader and sharing his power with others; later he allows his enemy to talk him into dying. Before that, when he died the first time, he comes back and wanders back to his old comrades seemingly for want of anything else to do or anywhere else to go, even though he keeps talking how unfit to lead them he is!"</p><p>"I'm intuiting that you were ever so slightly frustrated with him," Cinder murmured.</p><p>"Leaders should have a proper pride in themselves," Sunset declared, "and they should always put on a brave face amongst their followers." Princess Celestia had never shown Sunset any weakness, and when Sunset had caught her in a position of vulnerability, it was when the princess hadn't known that Sunset was there, watching.</p><p>"Is that how you run your team? With a brave face and a refusal to admit any fault or flaw?"</p><p>"No," Sunset admitted. "But I don't confess to more than I have to. Or at least, I shouldn't."</p><p>"You didn't learn that in Professor Goodwitch's leadership class."</p><p>"I've had better teachers in leadership than Professor Goodwitch," Sunset said. "My point is that, for all his power, the Infinite Man is a slave to the last word in his ear; he can be persuaded of anything; he ultimately shows no convictions at all. That's why he cannot be a hero or a villain, and so, he must be a fool."</p><p>"I agree that he is a fool, but not for those reasons," Cinder replied, "but because to be a hero or a villain, he would have had to have achieved something, to have done or built something that mattered. And yet, the only accomplishment we learn of – the only thing about him that is recorded – is that he built a society that was destroyed in two generations or so, leaving no trace of its existence. He built a fortress, he trained an army, but he did nothing with either of them."</p><p>"He sent them forth to help those in need," Sunset pointed out.</p><p>"Doubtless, they were still in need after his champions departed," Cinder countered. "Did he make himself a lord over the region? What did he do to keep these places safe after he saved them? Nothing. He sat in his fortress while the world grew dark outside until the darkness burst like a tide over his walls and swept him and all the fools who put their trust in him aside. The warrior woman, in destroying his Circle, accomplished more than he did in the end." She smiled. "I'd like to hear her story, find out what drove her to seek out a god and challenge him in battle. Was it simply for the thrill of the combat, or did she have a larger goal in mind?"</p><p>A smile played across Sunset's face. "If you were writing that story, what would your answer be?"</p><p>"I?" Cinder asked, seeming surprised to have been asked. "I… I would have it so that she sought out a god, this great challenge, greater than any that she could have found or faced before in her life… she sought him out because she wished to dance with death, because only in battle… did she feel alive."</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0041"><h2>41. Study Partners</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Pyrrha and Blake, Jaune and Dove, Ciel and Yang, Ruby and Rainbow Dash and Penny and Cardin all hit the books for their Legends coursework</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Study Partners</p><p> </p><p>Pyrrha stepped into the Team YRDN – Team YRBN now, she supposed – dorm room. “How are you finding your new accommodations?” she asked politely.</p><p>Blake was already seated at the desk. “It’s nice to have a bed that I can sleep in without feeling guilty about it,” she said dryly. “How are you?”</p><p>Pyrrha chuckled softly. “You ask me that as though it’s been a while since we last saw each other,” she declared.</p><p>Blake smiled, at least for a moment. “Please, take a seat.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Pyrrha said quietly as she pulled out the chair and sat down along the same bank of desks as Blake, the two of them facing the wall, although they both turned their chairs so that they were halfway to facing each other too. “Are the rest of the team alright with us driving them out of the room like this?”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Blake assured her. “They all have somewhere else to be.”</p><p>“It’s just that Jaune and Dove are using the dorm room across the hall,” Pyrrha explained.</p><p>“It’s fine,” Blake repeated. “It’s nice to spend some time in my own room.” She sighed. “I need to get used to it, for as long as I’m here.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Pyrrha murmured. “Sunset mentioned that you were thinking of transferring to Atlas.”</p><p>“'Mentioned' seems a kind word for what I can imagine her saying,” Blake observed.</p><p>Pyrrha let out a nervous laugh. “Well,” she said, “I think we’d all… if you were to stay here, we would all be very glad of your company,” she added, “but if Atlas is what you want, then, well… who am <em>I</em> to tell you not to cross an ocean in pursuit of your dreams?”</p><p>Blake’s smile returned to her face, a little broader this time. “Can I ask why you did it?” she asked. “Chose Beacon over Haven?”</p><p>“Beacon’s reputation stands higher than that of Haven Academy,” Pyrrha replied. “Everyone knows that there are no better huntsmen than those trained at Beacon Academy.”</p><p>“On average,” Blake pointed out.</p><p>“True, but you cannot have been blind to the allure of Beacon’s reputation when you chose it for yourself,” Pyrrha murmured.</p><p>“Of course not, but I don’t have the power to single-handedly reverse the fortunes of Haven,” Blake said.</p><p>Pyrrha snorted. “You make too much of me.”</p><p>“You don’t make enough of yourself.”</p><p>“A fact that is… not entirely accidental, I assure you,” Pyrrha murmured. Her green eyes locked into Blake’s golden gaze. “At the risk of indulging in a great amount of self-pity, can you imagine what it would have been like for me at Haven? Not only the Invincible Girl but the Princess Without a Crown too? The Champion of Mistral, her pride and glory reborn. There is no doubt in my mind that I could have spent the Initiation dithering hopelessly, and Professor Lionheart would have made me team leader for no other reason than it was expected of him. I would have been indulged in everything I wanted, allowed to break whatever rules I felt like, fawned on and flattered without regard for whether I deserved flattery, let alone for whether I wanted it or not.” She shook her head. “No, that was… that was not what I desired out of my training.”</p><p>Blake nodded. “When I was a little younger, before I came to Vale with… before I came to Vale, I was close to Sienna Khan, the leader of the White Fang. After my parents left for Menagerie, my name no longer carried any weight, but the fact that I was sat at Sienna’s feet meant that there was still no shortage of people who sought her favour through me. I have some idea of what you’re talking about. I don’t blame you for wanting to get away.”</p><p>Pyrrha was quiet for a moment. “Flattery is never pleasant, or I have not found it so, but do you think that it is worse when one knows oneself to be without true friends, or does having real friendship – or more than that – to contrast it against makes it worse when people are obviously insincere when they pretend to care?”</p><p>Blake looked thoughtful. “I don’t think it matters,” she admitted. “It doesn’t make it any less or more insincere than it was before. Why?”</p><p>“Oh, nothing really,” Pyrrha said. “I was just thinking… my mother wished me to return to Mistral and transfer to Haven for the beginning of this semester, because of the danger posed by the White Fang. I was just wondering if everything I just described would have been even worse for me if I had carried my members of Team Sapphire with me when I went there.”</p><p>“I couldn’t say,” Blake replied. “And you’ll never have to find out.”</p><p>Pyrrha smiled. “No,” she said gladly. “No, I won’t.”</p><p>“Is that why you’re not speaking to your mother?” Blake asked. “Because she wanted you to come home?”</p><p>Pyrrha licked her lips. “No,” she said, quietly but firmly. “No, that is because… she tried to come between me and Jaune,” she said, after a moment. “And she did so in a way that… it isn’t easy for me to forgive.”</p><p>Blake might not have fully understood, but she was courteous enough to not ask for any further details. Instead, she said, “I… I can’t say for certain how bad it was, the thing she did to you, and I’m not going to tell you that your anger with her isn’t merited; we have the right to be treated well by those who claim to love us, and we can’t… we can’t let ourselves forget that. But... speaking as someone who hasn’t spoken to either of her parents for too long, eventually the anger burns out, and all you’re left with is their absence from your life… but by then, it can often be too late.”</p><p>Pyrrha pursed her lips together. She reached out and took Blake’s hand. “How long has it been?”</p><p>“Five years,” Blake said. “Since my father stepped down as High Leader and retired to Menagerie.”</p><p>“They were angry at you for staying?”</p><p>Blake shook her head. “I was angry at them for leaving. I… said things that… at first, I didn’t want to unsay them, and then, by the time I changed my mind… assuming that I could have taken them back… it had been too long by far.”</p><p>“I’m sure that isn’t true.”</p><p>“You don’t know what I said.”</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha allowed, “but if your parents love you, then-”</p><p>“Then they’ll forgive me, as you’ve forgiven your mother?” Blake asked.</p><p>Pyrrha’s mouth tightened. “You make a very good point. Two very good points, one of which is that I have no right to lecture you.”</p><p>“I didn’t mean to be harsh or rude or unkind,” Blake said quickly. “Please, forgive me.”</p><p>“There’s nothing to forgive,” Pyrrha insisted. “You were quite right.” She paused, a little hesitant, wondering if she was once again about to pry into Blake’s private affairs, and yet, the glint of the silver armband around Blake’s left arm, the light reflecting off it even as it glimmered off the band of gold and bronze that Pyrrha wore, called silently out to her. </p><p>“That’s a very pretty armband,” Pyrrha observed, somewhat disingenuously.</p><p>Blake glanced at the silver band, where it rested upon the black silk bound around her arm. “It’s not as fancy as yours,” she replied.</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha murmured. “I suppose it isn’t. May I ask, is it an honour band?”</p><p>Blake blinked. “Of course you know what that is,” she whispered. “You’re the first person to ask, but-”</p><p>“I am a Mistralian, after all,” Pyrrha reminded her. </p><p>“So are Ren and Nora,” Blake pointed.</p><p>“Yes, but I think Ren and Nora have had an… unconventional upbringing,” Pyrrha replied. The honour band was an important part of Mistralian culture – there was a reason why the Haven uniform featured a white band around the left arm – but it was specifically the culture of the elite, the warrior aristocrats of old, and neither Ren nor Nora could be said to be that, for all their splendid virtues. “I suppose I’m a little surprised; I never thought of you as being Mistralian.”</p><p>“I’m not,” Blake admitted, “but my parents were, and so was my mentor, and I spent some time in Mistral.” Her hand pulled free from Pyrrha’s grip and went to the band around her arm; whether it was purposeful or reflexive, Pyrrha couldn’t have said. “Did your mother give that to you?” One did not simply choose their own band; it was a gift, and through wearing, it you honoured in deed them who had bestowed it on you. </p><p>“Actually, no,” Pyrrha replied. “My teacher, Chiron, gave this to me when I was sixteen years old and he had nothing left to teach me.”</p><p>A smile played across Blake’s lips. “What words did you choose?” she asked, referring to the inscription that she guessed would be on the inside of the band, invisible but pressing against Pyrrha’s skin.</p><p>Pyrrha traced a circle on the wood of the desk with one gloved fingertip. “With Good Fortune.”</p><p>Blake’s eyebrows rose. “Not what I would have expected,” she confessed.</p><p>“Why not?” Pyrrha asked. “I have been exceedingly lucky throughout my life, from the circumstances in which I was born to… if I had not been born Pyrrha Nikos, I doubt that I would be where I am today.”</p><p>“You might be happier if you had been born someone else,” Blake suggested.</p><p>“Perhaps,” Pyrrha allowed, “but I would not be in such a position to assist the world and I must be thankful for that. I have been lucky in my semblance, too, that has helped me to a few of my victories. Lucky in my teammates, my friends, lucky…” She felt a faint flush of colour rise to her cheeks. “Lucky in Jaune.” She chuckled. “I have been very blessed throughout my life, and I am not unmindful of it.”</p><p>“Well, when you put it like that,” Blake murmured. “Just so long…”</p><p>“Blake?” Pyrrha prompted.</p><p>“Don’t let your thankfulness for good luck make you forget that you… don’t let it convince you that you don’t deserve these things; luck isn’t the only reason you are where you are.”</p><p>“Are you sure I’m the one who needs that advice?”</p><p>Blake snorted. “I’m better at giving advice than taking it.”</p><p>Pyrrha did her the decency of not agreeing with that. “What of you? Who gave you your band?”</p><p>Blake was quiet for a moment, and Pyrrha feared that she would say it was Adam, that brute who seemed to leave such a cruel mark upon all who crossed his path, but she said in the end, “Sienna Khan, after my first battle.” She pressed her fingers against it. “It probably seems perverse of me to keep wearing it, to honour her even after leaving her cause, but-”</p><p>“But she was your mentor,” Pyrrha declared, “and you cannot forget it.”</p><p>“No,” Blake agreed quietly. “I can’t.”</p><p>“And your words?” Pyrrha asked.</p><p>Blake paused for a moment. “M-molon labe,” she said, with a slight tremor of hesitation in her voice. </p><p>Now, it was Pyrrha’s turn to raise her eyebrows. “‘Come and take them’?”</p><p>“I was a kid at the time,” Blake said defensively. “And besides, it was-”</p><p>“The response of the first faunus rebels when they were ordered to lay down their arms at the very beginning of the revolution,” Pyrrha murmured. “I know.” She smiled. “To be perfectly honest, I think it suits you.”</p><p>Blake looked away. “I… I think we should probably get started on our project, or we will have kicked everyone else out of the room only to waste our time.”</p><p>“I don’t regard this time as wasted,” Pyrrha said quietly. “We don’t seem to have spent much time together alone, and I… I regret that.”</p><p>Blake nodded. “I regret that too,” she said, “but I think we still ought to get to work.”</p><p>“Probably,” Pyrrha conceded. “Do you have any idea what story you want to work on for Doctor Oobleck?”</p><p>Blake frowned. “I… I’m not sure,” she said. “I don’t want to impose my tastes upon you.”</p><p>“Well,” Pyrrha said, feeling a little guilty now that she had given some to which tale she would like to tackle. “I was wondering if we might look at <em>The Shallow Sea</em>.”</p><p>Blake blinked. “Did you think that would be a good idea because I’m a faunus?”</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha said quietly. “Because it’s one of my favourites.”</p><p>Blake was silent a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That wasn’t called for. It’s just… well, it’s just that I’m very defensive, as you’ve probably noticed already; it’s something that I need to work on.” </p><p>Pyrrha didn’t say anything; she didn’t want to make Blake feel bad about herself, after all. </p><p>“But it’s also because… <em>The Shallow Sea</em> is a story passed down amongst faunus, orally,” Blake said. “The version in the textbook is the first time that it’s been written down,” she added, with a touch of rancour in her voice.</p><p>“You don’t approve,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>“No,” Blake replied flatly. “Professor Ozpin-”</p><p>“Had good intentions, I’m sure,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>“He explains his intentions perfectly well, but that’s not the point,” Blake declared. “He can’t just decide to appropriate a culture not his own – our culture – because he’s worried that the story will die out otherwise.”</p><p>“And if it does die out?” Pyrrha asked.</p><p>“Then so be it,” Blake said sharply. “That is our choice, to let it die and fade from memory. The story of the men who jumped from the ship into the water because they had faith in the promise of the God of Faunus belongs to those whose people…” She stumbled, momentarily at least, and when she continued, her voice was quieter. “Those whose people jumped from the ships because they knew that death was better than slavery.” Her brow furrowed. “My mother told me that story in the cradle,” she confessed. “As her mother told her and so on. If my mother had decided not to pass it on to me then that would have been her choice, if I choose not to pass it on to my daughter then that’s my choice.”</p><p>“And it was my trainer’s choice to tell me that story when I was a girl,” Pyrrha said, “or was that choice not allowed, because the tale does not belong to me?”</p><p>“Your trainer was a faunus?”</p><p>“A horse faunus, yes,” Pyrrha explained. “He never taught at Haven – he was strictly a private tutor – but nevertheless, he was reputed to be the greatest trainer of warriors in all of Mistral.”</p><p>“'Was'?” Blake repeated. “Is he-”</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha said. “At least… to be honest, I don’t know. He could be, although I hope not. After he declared that he had nothing left to teach me, after he gave me this band,” – it was Pyrrha’s turn to reach up and touch the band of gold and bronze that sat so snugly around her arm – “he left the city. He did not tell me where he was going, or my mother, or… anyone. He simply left. I wish that he had kept in touch, I was very fond of him.”</p><p>“He must have been fond of you too, to tell you that story,” Blake said gently. “<em>The Shallow Sea</em> is… you came by it honestly, and I think that your love for it is honest too.”</p><p>“Whereas if I had first found it in Professor Ozpin’s book, it would have been dishonest?”</p><p>Blake shuffled uncomfortably. “Well… I have to admit that I didn’t get mad at Penny for liking it.”</p><p>“I suspect that if you had, you might not still have all your own teeth,” Pyrrha muttered.</p><p>Blake laughed. “Team Rosepetal <em>are </em>very protective,” she admitted. “Although when I did upset Penny, all I got was a stern talking-to from Ciel.”</p><p>“How did you manage to upset someone so kind and cheerful as Penny?”</p><p>A guilty look settled upon Blake’s face like an airship on the docking pad. “Who do you think gave her the idea that you and Ruby would hate her for being a robot?”</p><p>“Ah,” Pyrrha said. “I see. You were lucky to get away with a stern talking-to.”</p><p>“Perhaps,” Blake acknowledged. “Or perhaps they accepted that I didn’t mean it; I was just… letting my own feelings get in the way. Again. She likes <em>The Shallow Sea</em> too, you know?”</p><p>“Really?”</p><p>“It’s not surprising,” Blake said. “Now that you tell me about it, it doesn’t surprise me that it’s a favourite of yours either. Transformation into something more than people think you can be, being seen for what you really are.”</p><p>Pyrrha laughed self-deprecatingly. “You have no idea how many nights I lay awake wishing that some god would transform me into my true self, so that I could be seen – really seen – by everyone.”</p><p>“Being seen,” Blake said, “isn’t always all that it’s cracked up to be.”</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha murmured. “I suppose… I can see that it isn’t for everyone.” Blake had, after all, spent several weeks hiding who and what she was.</p><p>“But then again,” Blake continued, “I had the chance to hide what I was, and although a part of me hoped that if I hid what I was, then I might be seen for who I was… another part of me kept on picking fights with Rainbow Dash until my secret came out, so how much did I really want to hide, and how much… how much did I really want to be seen, too?”</p><p>“I… I understand why you wanted to hide,” Pyrrha murmured. “Or rather, I don’t understand, I can never understand because – as we’ve established – I was born blessed with good fortune, or, as we might say, unutterable privilege in every single respect. Anyway, my point is, I don’t blame you for wanting to hide a part of yourself, but I’m not sure that we can ever be seen for who we are…”</p><p>“If we are hiding what we are?” Blake suggested.</p><p>Pyrrha looked away. “I’m talking about things I have no right to speak of.”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Blake said. “You might even be right. Since I… I’ve made more friends since I started being honest with people.”</p><p>“That might be a coincidence,” Pyrrha pointed out.</p><p>“Or it might not,” Blake replied. She hesitated. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not do our essay on <em>The Shallow Sea</em>. It isn’t one of my favourites.”</p><p>“No?” Pyrrha asked. “I thought you said your mother told it to you?”</p><p>“That doesn’t mean I have to have a continued fondness for it,” Blake said.</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha conceded. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>Blake waved her apology away with one hand. “It doesn’t matter, it’s just… like I said, my feelings on being seen for your true self are a little more ambivalent than a fairytale princess.”</p><p>“Did you just call me a fairytale princess?”</p><p>Blake shrugged. “They may call you the Princess Without a Crown, but we both know a storybook princess doesn’t need one.”</p><p>“They need virtues-”</p><p>“Which you have, in abundance,” Blake declared, “but if you don’t like it, then I won’t bring it up again.”</p><p>“I, um,” Pyrrha hesitated. “It’s… very kind of you, I’m sure, I just… I suppose I just don’t think of myself that way.”</p><p>“Fine,” Blake said quickly. “Another argument against the <em>The Shallow Sea</em> is that there’s not much to it; there’s the central metaphor, and you could possibly talk about courage and faith, but other than that… what is there to say?”</p><p>“What about the religious elements?” Pyrrha asked. “I mean… isn’t he…?” She found, a little suddenly, that asking ‘isn’t he your god?’ made the act of enjoying this story on a metaphorical level seem a little, well, as culturally appropriative as Blake had accused it of being. </p><p>“Very few people worship the god spoken of in that particular story nowadays,” Blake replied, “and most of those who do live on Menagerie.”</p><p>“I can see why,” Pyrrha replied. “The island promised to your people.”</p><p>“That’s one of the reasons I don’t like that story all that much,” Blake muttered. “It’s all very well to speak of Menagerie as our birthright, but the truth is that it wasn’t bestowed upon us by any god, but by men who wanted to get rid of us. The whole world should be our birthright; we have as much right to all of Remnant as any man.” Blake pinched the bridge of her nose. “Sorry, I… didn’t mean to get on the stump like that.”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Pyrrha assured her. “Your passion is admirable, and a little enviable, to be perfectly honest.”</p><p>“You wouldn’t think so if you had to live with it,” Blake informed her. “The point is, in all my life, I’ve only met one person who took <em>The Shallow Sea</em> for the truth of how we came to be. There is a… a cult around the God of Animals, and in the White Fang, it is quite popular, but it’s the god of the <em>The Judgement of Faunus</em> whom they worship.”</p><p>“May I ask,” Pyrrha said, “why it is that faunus stories have no endings? They don’t conclude so much as they… just stop.”</p><p>The corners of Blake’s lips twitched. “Has your life ended now that you’re with Jaune?”</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha said. “Of course not.”</p><p>“And that’s why our stories don’t end,” Blake explained. “Because life doesn’t work like that. Our stories don’t end; even at the end of our lives, we’re lucky to have accomplished everything that we set out to do, if we even find out what it is that we were meant to do. Mostly we… just stop.”</p><p>“I can’t help but feel that’s rather bleak.”</p><p>“If we’re lucky, we pass on our work to the new generation to carry it forward,” Blake continued. “Our story stops, but the story of our people carries on, and it hasn’t ended yet. We haven’t even found our destiny, as they would put it in Mistral. And neither have I.”</p><p>“Atlas or Beacon,” Pyrrha whispered.</p><p>“Atlas or Beacon,” Blake agreed. “Are there any other stories that you like that we could take as our subject instead?”</p><p>“Well,” Pyrrha said, “<em>The Girl in the Tower</em> is another favourite of mine.”</p><p>“Are you sure you’re not a fairytale princess?” Blake asked.</p><p>“Please stop,” Pyrrha begged, but warmly and with a hint of amusement in her voice.</p><p>“I’m sorry, but… it’s quite adorable, really. The story of a lonely girl imprisoned by her cruel father, longing for a hero to appear and rescue her from the drudgery of her existence.”</p><p>“I’m sure that every young girl feels that way, about her parents and her lot in life,” Pyrrha murmured. “The difference is that most of them grow out of waiting for a beautiful boy to ride in on a white horse and sweep them off their feet.”</p><p>“There’s no need to reproach yourself,” Blake informed her. “Just because you can fight ten men single-handed-”</p><p>“I’ve never actually done that.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t bet against you,” Blake said. “Although, I must confess, when I was young, I always wondered why the princess didn’t rescue herself.”</p><p>“Some prisons, you can’t fight your way out of,” Pyrrha replied. “Certainly not alone.”</p><p>“No,” Blake whispered. “I… understand that a little better.”</p><p>“I don’t want to bring up any bad memories,” Pyrrha told her. “If you would rather write about something else then-”</p><p>“No,” Blake said. “<em>The Girl in the Tower</em> is fine. It’s a pretty story, and there’s space to talk about different aspects of it.”</p><p>“You think so?” Pyrrha asked. “I was a little worried you would find the metaphors quite blunt; the husband literally killing the father, the heroine writing the story, that sort of thing.”</p><p>“I didn’t say that all the aspects were subtle, but there are a few of them,” Blake said. “An essay’s worth, at least.”</p><p>Pyrrha nodded. “I just hope…” she chuckled. “I just hope that we don’t end up writing all the wonder out of it.”</p><hr/><p>Across the hall, in the Team SAPR dorm room, Dove took a seat next to Jaune. “Thank you for having me,” he said stiffly, but then, Dove Bronzewing could be stiff about things in Jaune’s experience.</p><p>Which was… a little limited, Jaune had to admit. Considering that they had eaten opposite Team YRDN for a whole semester, Jaune knew very little about their recently departed teammate. Which wasn’t entirely his fault; Dove wasn’t loud enough to make himself heard over Yang and Nora, but with Ren around, he couldn’t be ‘the quiet one’ either. </p><p>But all the same, it made Jaune a little nervous having to work with the guy and even more nervous that he would soon be having training sessions with him. </p><p>That nervousness, or getting over it, was probably the point of Doctor Oobleck setting them this exercise. If they were going to be huntsmen, they were going to have to be able to work with all kinds of people and not be prissy about it. </p><p>“Don’t mention it,” Jaune said, trying to sound at ease. “We have to work somewhere, right? Besides, I should be thanking you for agreeing to become my sparring partner.”</p><p>Dove laughed. “You don’t need to be dating Pyrrha to know that Lyra’s getting much more out of this deal than you are.”</p><p>“To a point,” Jaune said, “but Pyrrha thinks it will be good for me, and I trust her.”</p><p>“She thinks it will be good for you to beat me,” Dove said. “I hope you don’t mind if I don’t make it easy for you.”</p><p>“Of course not,” Jaune replied rapidly. “I’m not… I don’t want victories to stroke my ego. I want to get better so I can stand alongside Pyrrha and Ruby and Sunset. It’s just-”</p><p>“Hard to see how you’re making progress sometimes,” Dove finished for him. “Lyra complains about the same thing. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that sparring with Pyrrha will help her very much in that.”</p><p>Jaune winced. “Probably not.” He hesitated. “I… maybe I could-”</p><p>“I’m not sure that’s a good idea either,” Dove told him. “It’s generous to offer, but…”</p><p>Jaune frowned. “What? I’m not good enough?”</p><p>“That’s not what worries me,” Dove admitted. “You’ve been training with Pyrrha, and I’ve watched you in sparring class; you’re getting better. Considering that you started off worse than Lyra, I’m worried that if you were spar with her – and I admit I’m sort of dreading sparring class for this reason – and win, then… she’ll get discouraged.”</p><p>“I can get that,” Jaune murmured. When your dream seemed out of reach, when it seemed as though the mountain to climb was more of a sheer wall with no handholds, then it was very easy to give up hope and give up trying too. If it hadn’t been for the support of Pyrrha – and Sunset giving him a bit of a kick up the ass when he needed it the most – then he would never have made it this far. “I got… really lucky, with my teammates. I got the most talented girl in the school to help me.”</p><p>“Mhmm,” Dove murmured. One eyebrow rose. “And not just to help you, right?”</p><p>Jaune laughed nervously. “Right. I got lucky there, too.”</p><p>Dove nodded. “Don’t waste it.”</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>Dove’s face became sad, the corners of his mouth descending, his brow furrowing, his head falling forwards a little bit. “Don’t… you’re serious about her, right?”</p><p>Jaune thought about it for a moment. “I… I can’t imagine what I’d do without her.”</p><p>Dove’s smile was melancholy, touched by frost. “Then hold tight to her,” he said, “and don’t let her go. If you do, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”</p><p>Jaune didn’t know what to say to that; Dove certainly seemed to be speaking from personal experience here, but that didn’t help Jaune decide what to do about it; he didn’t know Dove well enough to know how he was supposed to react. </p><p><em>Does it matter? If he needs help, then he needs help, no matter who he is.</em> “Do you… want to talk about it?”</p><p>Dove shook his head. “No, I’d rather… we should get to work; that’s what we’re here to do.”</p><p>“Sure,” Jaune said. “But you know, if… but yeah. So… any ideas?”</p><p>Dove half rose out of his seat so that he could get a better look at the bookshelves. “I can’t see <em>The Song of Olivia</em> anywhere around here,” he said, sounding a little disappointed.</p><p>“Ruby took it with her,” Jaune explained.</p><p>“Ah.”</p><p>“Were you thinking of doing our report on it?” Jaune asked, slightly nervously.</p><p>“Why not?” Dove replied. “I have read it about fifteen times. I remember most of the important bits.”</p><p>“I haven’t read it at all,” Jaune said, “so I’m a little worried that there’s not much I’d be able to contribute.”</p><p>“That’s a fair point,” Dove muttered. “I suppose I’m just one of those people who tries to do all the work themselves. Ruby enjoys it, then?”</p><p>“Oh, yeah, she loves it,” Jaune assured him. “That was a great gift you gave her. Especially when you didn’t have to.”</p><p>“Hmm?”</p><p>“Come on,” Jaune said. “Everyone knows that it was Lyra and Bon Bon who spilled everything about Sunset and Pyrrha having it out, and you covered for them when you didn’t have to.”</p><p>“Were they angry?”</p><p>“Sunset was… a little annoyed,” Jaune conceded.</p><p>“Then I had every reason to cover for them,” Dove declared. “Huntsmen are supposed to stand between danger and-”</p><p>“And those who can’t protect themselves, believe me, I get it,” Jaune interrupted, “but Lyra and Bon Bon are training to be huntresses as well; they don’t need your protection. I want to stand alongside Pyrrha and Ruby and Sunset, but I would never say that I want to stand in front of them.”</p><p>“My grandfather taught me to protect women.”</p><p>“I grew up with seven sisters; if I’d suggested that they needed protection, they would have killed me,” Jaune replied.</p><p>“Fair enough,” Dove muttered. “I mean, obviously I know that girls like Yang and Nora don’t need someone like me to keep them safe, but not every girl is Yang or Nora.”</p><p>“And not every guy is you or Ren or even me,” Jaune said. “I’m not sure the grimm care about chivalry. I want to become a huntsman so I can protect everyone.”</p><p>“So do I. I just…” Dove trailed off, groaning as he ran his hands through his golden-brown birds nest atop his head. “I just… something about Lyra – and Bon Bon too – it… I want to keep them safe.”</p><p>“Is that why you transferred onto their team?”</p><p>“They needed a fourth man,” Dove insisted. “Some teams can manage with three; other teams… Lyra is a natural support, if only she could admit it, but that leaves them with only two people on the front line, and Bon Bon and Sky… I know that I’m not the greatest student in the year, but I’m the best on offer for them, and I want to be there for them, if I can.”</p><p>“You don’t need to explain yourself to me,” Jaune told him.</p><p>“You’re friends with Blake,” Dove reminded him. “I know that they haven’t exactly treated Blake well, and I didn’t want her to think that I… it’s nothing to do with her.”</p><p>“I know,” Jaune said. “And so does Blake.”</p><p>“Good,” Dove said. “Good, because I… I wouldn’t want her to think that I… I know that Sunset thought that I… how did you do it?”</p><p>Jaune frowned. “Do what?”</p><p>“You came from a small town, right? The same as me?”</p><p>Jaune nodded. “Yeah.”</p><p>“So how were you not weirded out by the faunus?” Dove asked. “When I arrived here, I’d never seen anything like them; it was… weird. Sure, I stared, and it probably didn’t make them feel good, but come on, I was seeing something strange; I’m not Cardin! So how did you… not do that?”</p><p>“I…” Jaune shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t say I’d ever seen any faunus before I left home either, but… I don’t know.”</p><p>“Thanks, that’s a big help.”</p><p>“Sorry.”</p><p>“One more question and then we can get down to work,” Dove promised. “How do you… your semblance, it boosts other people’s aura.”</p><p>“Right.”</p><p>“So you support your teammates?”</p><p>“Right again.”</p><p>“How do you deal with it?” Dove asked. “Don’t you want to be the hero?”</p><p>Jaune leaned on the desk. “Why do you ask?”</p><p>“Lyra’s semblance is similar, in some ways,” Dove explained. “She can use her music to boost the abilities of those around her. I tell her that she ought to focus on that, on using her semblance to strengthen the team, Bon Bon tells her the same thing, but she doesn’t want to hear it. She wants to be out in front, striking down monsters. She’d rather use the sword she struggles with than the harp she excels with. I don’t know how to open up her eyes, and I was hoping that you might… I was hoping you could tell me how you got over it.”</p><p>“Gradually, by degrees,” Jaune told him. “Sure, I wanted to be the hero when I first came to Beacon. Is there anyone who comes to Beacon who doesn’t want to be the hero?”</p><p>“Nora,” Dove told him. “She’d happily stand in Ren’s shadow for the rest of her life, I think, as long as she could watch him shine.” He paused. “Of course, the irony is that she’s a lot more talented than he is.”</p><p>“You think so?” Jaune asked. “Ren always struck me as really determined.”</p><p>“He is, but that doesn’t mean that he can do much with it,” Dove replied. “I’m not saying he’s bad, but Nora has him beat by just about any measure, and I say that with the admission that she has me beat too. But anyway, how did you do it?”</p><p>Jaune shrugged. “I… saw some stuff,” he said. “I realised that this wasn’t a game, that there were lives at stake – the lives of my friends, the lives we fight to protect – and I realised that I needed to stop worrying about glory and what people thought of me and focus on doing the best I could, however I could. But saying it like that makes it seem like I’m all over it; there are times when… when I still get a little jealous that the thing I’m best at it is making other people stronger.”</p><p>“It takes sun and rain to get a harvest,” Dove reminded him.</p><p>“I know, I grew up on a farm too,” Jaune told him, “but nobody wants to be the raincloud. I… don’t know how to help with Lyra.”</p><p>“It’s not your job to help me with my problems,” Dove said. “But thanks for trying.” He clasped his hands together. “Now, if you don’t want to study <em>The Song of Olivia</em>, then what do you want to write about?”</p><hr/><p>“<em>The Song of Olivia,</em> huh?” Rainbow inquired, as she looked down at the antique volume on the table in front of her. “What’s that about?”</p><p>“It’s so disappointing that more people haven’t heard of this,” Ruby said softly. She and Rainbow Dash were sat in the library, and she guessed that it wasn’t a coincidence that they were sat in a position that let them – that let Rainbow Dash – keep an eye on both Penny where she was working with Cardin and Twilight where she was working with Neptune. </p><p>Ruby didn’t blame Rainbow for setting things up that way – and it wasn’t just Rainbow either; on the balcony above, Ruby could see Ciel and Yang with a good view of everything and everyone beneath them – because to be honest, she was a little worried about Penny and Cardin herself. Not just, or not even, because Penny was a robot, but because Penny was a sweet, kind, innocent girl with a good heart, and Cardin was, well, Cardin. </p><p>Ruby didn’t want to see Penny get hurt even more than Rainbow did.</p><p>She wondered if Cardin realised how many people he would have to answer to if he did upset Penny in any way. </p><p>On the other hand, there didn’t seem to be much to worry about when it came to Twilight and Neptune. They were too far away for Ruby to hear what Neptune had just said, but it had put Twilight in stitches; she was covering her mouth demurely as he giggled, her eyes closed and her body shaking. </p><p>“Ugh,” grunted Rainbow.</p><p>“What’s wrong?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“Nothing,” Rainbow said quickly. “I just… you can keep a secret, right?”</p><p>“I’m keeping a few already, so you’d better hope so,” Ruby said with a slight smile.</p><p>Rainbow snorted. “Yeah, I guess that’s about the sum of it, isn’t it? The truth is… now, you can’t tell Twilight this, but the truth is…” She leaned down and sideways so that her head was almost touching that of Ruby's sat beside her. “The truth is that I’ve never liked any of Twilight’s boyfriends. Every time she goes out with a guy, I have to pretend to like him, and it’s really hard sometimes.”</p><p>Ruby frowned. “But Twilight and Neptune aren’t going out; they’re just-”</p><p>“Give it a minute; he’ll ask her out by the time this coursework is done,” Rainbow assured her. </p><p>“What makes you so sure?”</p><p>“<em>Everyone </em>asks Twilight out,” Rainbow replied. “Everybody’s into her, and she always gives them a chance, even though none of them deserve her-”</p><p>“What about Flash?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“Flash… okay, she didn’t give Flash a chance,” Rainbow allowed. “But to be honest, I think she might have if it hadn’t been so obvious that he was just latching onto the first girl to be nice to him after he broke up with Sunset.”</p><p>“You make it sound like breaking up with Sunset hurt him,” Ruby said, “but it was him who broke up with her, wasn’t it?”</p><p>Rainbow’s brow furrowed. “What’s Sunset told you about that?”</p><p>“Nothing,” Ruby confessed. “She doesn’t talk about it at all; that’s how I know it really hurt.”</p><p>“Because Sunset likes to talk, huh?”</p><p>Ruby grinned. “Kind of, in a nice way.”</p><p>Rainbow snorted. “That’s… well, you’re not wrong, but… look, just because Flash was the one who ended it doesn’t mean that he got away without any scars. Dude was a mess, Twilight helped put him back together – we all helped, but Twilight did most of it because, well, she’s Twilight – and he… well he thought that… anyway, my point is that if he’d waited a year and then asked her out, she might have gone on a date with him because she gives these guys a chance more often than not, and I just don’t get it.”</p><p>Ruby shrugged. “What’s there to get?”</p><p>“The fact that they’re all losers,” Rainbow said. “Just like that guy over there, the only thing they have going on is that they’re cute; none of them deserve Twilight.”</p><p>“A lot of people would say that Jaune doesn’t deserve Pyrrha,” Ruby pointed out.</p><p>“And a lot of people would be right, what’s he got going on?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>“Don’t you dare say that again!” Ruby snapped, so loudly that she caught Yang looking down on her out of the corner of her eye. “Jaune may not be cool or confident; he isn’t charming like a storybook prince or suave like some movie star, but he’s sweet and kind, and he’s got a good heart and a big one too. He’s never mean, and he never sets out to hurt anyone, and he’s always there for his friends, and-”</p><p>“And you like him, don’t you?”</p><p>“No,” Ruby said quickly. “Why would you say something like that?”</p><p>Rainbow sniggered. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Your secret’s safe with me.”</p><p>“I don’t have a secret like that,” Ruby muttered petulantly.</p><p>“And if it helps, I won’t say another word against him,” Rainbow said. “He’s not a bad guy, I get it. I just… you’re right, it takes all kinds, and the heart wants what the heart wants and all that stuff. I guess that’s why Rarity and Applejack and the others never had a problem with any of Twilight’s guys.” She ran one hand through her multi-coloured hair. “Anyway, we should get back to it.” Rather than get back to it, however, she instead looked across the library to the backs of Cardin and Penny. “How do you think they’re doing?”</p><p>Ruby stared at the pair of them. It was hard to tell what was happening, but it seemed to be going okay. Penny was being quiet, which was a bit unusual, but that might be because Ciel had impressed on her that libraries were supposed to be quiet. </p><p>That seemed like the sort of thing Ciel Soleil would do. </p><p>“They seem fine,” she ventured.</p><p>“Hmm,” Rainbow murmured. “So,” she added, tapping one finger upon Ruby’s treasured copy of <em>The Song of Olivia</em>, “what’s this about, and why should I let you choose a book I’ve never read for our essay topic?”</p><p>“Because it’s great!” Ruby cried. “It’s got so much going on in it! And you don’t need to read it. I’ve read it, and I can give you all the details. I can tell you what happens, and then you can tell me what you think, okay?”</p><p>Rainbow hesitated a moment before she nodded her head. “Okay.”</p><p>“Right,” Ruby said. “So, there’s this shepherdess named Olivia, right? And she watches sheep for her father hundreds of years ago, when Vale was still being founded and there were little kingdoms up and down the coast. Anyway, Olivia watches sheep for her father, but she dreams of becoming something way more than that, a knight in the service of the King, battling the creatures of grimm on behalf of all mankind.”</p><p>“Like a huntress?”</p><p>“Exactly like a huntress, only they didn’t call them huntresses then,” Ruby explained. “Anyway, when one of her sheep goes missing, Olivia follows its trail into the grimm infested forest, where she is attacked by a beowolf-”</p><p>“Does she kill it?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>“No,” Ruby admitted. “She’s saved by the wizard Osfred and his apprentice Nimue. They kill the beowolf, but the wizard sees that Olivia has a good and valiant heart, and so Nimue unlocks her aura while Osfred arms her with a magic sword, Durandal, and an enchanted shield, Svalinn, which she uses to slay the ursa major she finds menacing her lost lamb. When Olivia comes out of the woods with the lamb, she tells her father she will be a shepherdess no longer and leaves home to pursue her dream of-”</p><p>“Of becoming a shepherdess.” Rainbow interrupted.</p><p>Ruby stifled a chuckle. “I’ve sometimes thought that too.”</p><p>“You were the one who said that she wanted to be basically a huntress,” Rainbow pointed out. “That’s what we are, we’re-”</p><p>“Shepherds of the people?” Ruby ventured.</p><p>“I’ve never heard that one before.”</p><p>“It’s something Pyrrha says.”</p><p>“I was going to say sheepdogs, but what you said works too,” Rainbow allowed. “Except that a shepherd won’t bite your face off if you look at the flock funny.”</p><p>“To be fair, neither will huntsmen,” Ruby replied.</p><p>“True, we’ll blow their faces off instead,” Rainbow said. “It does seem like a pretty cool story so far, except why does she need to get a magic shield and an enchanted sword to strike out and follow her dreams?”</p><p>Ruby grinned. “Sunset asked that when Pyrrha was reading it out to us.”</p><p>“Good for her,” Rainbow muttered. “What’s the answer?”</p><p>“Pyrrha said it was a metaphor,” Ruby explained. “She said it’s symbolic of her being found worthy by… by higher powers, by fate, or just by the world. Although, to be honest, I think she proved herself worthy when she went into the forest to rescue that lamb even though she knew there were grimm around.”</p><p>Rainbow nodded. “So what do you think?”</p><p>“I think… I think it’s just about the fact that sometimes we need a little help to get us started,” Ruby said. “I always wanted to be a huntress, but for a while, it seemed like that wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t coordinated; I couldn’t use any weapon they tried to set me up with at Combat School; I was a total mess. Then my Uncle Qrow took me under his wing, and suddenly, I was top of the class and stopping robberies and getting invited to Beacon early and… and I owe it all to him.”</p><p>“Like I owe everything to Twilight,” Rainbow agreed. “Without her… I mean, I could sit here and talk myself up, but the truth is that Twilight built my wings, and General Ironwood gave me the chance to fly, so… so I guess they’re my wizard and his apprentice, huh?”</p><p>“I guess,” Ruby agreed. “I had a feeling you’d like this story.”</p><p>“You did?” Rainbow asked. “Why?”</p><p>“Because it’s not only about dreams, but about duty too,” Ruby said. “Once Olivia arrives at the court, she becomes a knight in the service of the king, and from then on… well, she doesn’t really get to set the rules for herself. Ever. She falls in love with the prince, but they can’t be together.”</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>“Because he’s the prince, and she’s a shepherd.”</p><p>“But she’s also a knight by then, right?”</p><p>“She becomes a knight, sure, but a knight who used to be a shepherd,” Ruby explained. “And I guess that meant a lot back in the old days. Anyway, even though they’re in love, the king orders his son to marry a princess to join their two kingdoms together without a war, and… and he does, because even though it’s not what they’re hearts desire, it is the right thing to do, and because if he breaks his betrothal, they’ll be at war, and people will die, and… and it’s not worth it just so they can be happy.”</p><p>“So what does she do?” Rainbow asked. “When the man she loves marries someone else?”</p><p>“Her duty,” Ruby replied. “She goes where she is ordered to go and fights grimm and robber knights and any evildoer she comes across. She goes where her king sends her and fights his battles and leads his armies.”</p><p>“That doesn’t sound much like a huntress,” Rainbow said. “That sounds more like an Atlesian specialist to me.”</p><p>“Really?”</p><p>“Yes, really, you didn’t notice that?” Rainbow asked. “She doesn’t decide her own jobs; she gets given them by her boss. She serves in his army, at the forefront of the battle. That’s what we do; that’s what I’m training to be; the only difference is that it’s a general instead of a king.” She paused. “A general who is kingly, but he doesn’t have a crown.”</p><p>Ruby frowned. She couldn’t help but think that the Atlesians – not only Rainbow Dash but Ciel too – put rather too much faith in General Ironwood. She hadn’t met the man, so she couldn’t really say, but she found it hard to believe that he could possibly be as noble and wise and all other things as they seemed to think. She didn’t really understand where Sunset was coming from with her distrust of Professor Ozpin, but she thought it might be healthier than the unabashed worship that General Ironwood enjoyed from those who served him. She wondered if he encouraged it, if it made him feel big to have everyone look up to him. </p><p>She kept these thoughts to herself; she sensed that they would not be welcome. </p><p>“Are you okay with that?” she asked. “Giving up what you want, your dreams and your desires, to become an instrument of someone else’s will?”</p><p>Rainbow’s answer was a short sharp nod. “Someone has to look at the big picture,” she said. “Someone has to see the whole board and see how to get everybody moving in the same direction for the greater good. A pawn can’t see that; we don’t have the height for it. We might think that we’re doing the right thing rushing to fight a fire in one place, only to find out that that fire was a distraction from the inferno that was about to start behind us. That’s why we need the General to look at everything that’s going on, decide what needs to be done, and then have us do it.”</p><p>“But what if he gets it wrong?” Ruby replied. “What if… what if he turned evil?”</p><p>Rainbow’s eyebrows rose. “General Ironwood isn’t going to turn evil, and why would you even ask something like that?”</p><p>“Because he’s just a man; just because he can see the big picture doesn’t mean that he can’t make mistakes.”</p><p>“So can I,” Rainbow replied. “So can any of us. We trust the General to make the right call, just like he trusts us to pull it out of the bag when the jaws slam shut. It doesn’t mean he’ll always get it right, and it doesn’t mean we’ll always win; it just means he’ll always do what he thinks is right, and we’ll always give it our best shot and come out swinging.”</p><p>“But what if you don’t agree with him?” Ruby demanded. “What if you think he’s wrong about something?”</p><p>Rainbow nodded towards the book. “Does Olivia ever think that the king is wrong about something?”</p><p>“A couple of times, yeah.”</p><p>“And what does she do about it?”</p><p>“When she’s young, she rides off and does what she believes is best,” Ruby explained. “The next time, when she’s a little older, she meets with the king – who was the prince she was in love with – and persuades him to change his mind.”</p><p>“And that’s what we do,” Rainbow told her. “We ask him to change his mind; maybe we even beg if that doesn’t work. I wasn’t supposed to bring Penny to Vale – she decided to do that all by herself – but when I decided that her being here was the right thing to do, I didn’t break my scroll and write General Ironwood a ‘screw you’ letter. I persuaded him to let Penny stay.”</p><p>“And if he’d still said no?” Ruby demanded.</p><p>Rainbow’s jaw tightened. “Then I would have hoped that he knew what he was doing.”</p><p>“Why should he know what he’s doing more than you?”</p><p>“Because he’s older than I am and because a lot of good, important people trust him to know what he’s doing,” Rainbow replied. “Because I’ve seen him make the right call. Because sticking together and following orders is how we win.”</p><p>“We win by doing what’s right and saving everyone we can,” Ruby insisted. “The fact that Olivia never gets to choose her own missions is one of the things that disappointed me about this story once I got to read it. She saves so many innocents and slays so many monsters, but the summaries all made it sound like she was much more… that she got to decide much more where she went and who she fought.”</p><p>“You won’t be transferring to Atlas any time soon then?” Rainbow asked cheekily.</p><p>Ruby shook her head. “You know Sunset would actually kill you if she heard you suggest that.”</p><p>“I’m not scared of Sunset Shimmer,” Rainbow said lightly. “She can give it her best shot if she likes.”</p><p>“But seriously… I could never give up that much the way you have to to become Specialists in Atlas. I could never let someone else dictate what battles I fought or whether I fought at all.”</p><p>“You couldn’t trust anyone that much?”</p><p>“It’s not about trust; it’s about…” Ruby trailed off. Maybe it <em>was </em>about trust, or maybe she just didn’t know how to say it. “It’s about what we’re fighting for. It’s about who we’re fighting for. I’m fighting for all of humanity-“</p><p>“I’m not just fighting for General Ironwood,” Rainbow replied. “I fight for my friends, for my-”</p><p>“If General Ironwood ordered you to abandon your friends to die, would you?” Ruby asked.</p><p>Rainbow fell silent. She clenched her jaw. “I… you know that I’m repeating First Year, right?”</p><p>Ruby nodded. “I know you’re eighteen, yeah.”</p><p>Rainbow glanced away from her. “I… my old team, Team Raspberry, we were on a field mission. Not all first-year students get those in Atlas, but the General trusted me, so off we went. Me, Applejack, Pinkie’s sister Maud, and Spearhead. The mission was to clear out a nest of sabyrs, search and destroy. Only, there turned out to be more sabyrs than we’d been expecting. A lot more. Spearhead’s aura broke, one of the grimm took his arm off, so I left Applejack and Maud holding a defensive position while I carried him back to the Skyray. The professor remotely supervising the mission told me to bug out, abandon Applejack and Maud and get Spearhead to medical.”</p><p>“But you didn’t.”</p><p>“No,” Rainbow admitted. “I patched Spearhead up to stop the bleeding, and then I left him a gun and went back for my teammates.” She hesitated. “But that guy was an ass, and he got fired. General Ironwood would never order me to do something like that.”</p><p>“But what if he did?”</p><p>“He wouldn’t!”</p><p>“But what if he did?” Ruby repeated.</p><p>Rainbow Dash did not reply. Not for a moment at least. Her brow furrowed. At last, she spoke, “When Olivia gets given the orders she doesn’t like the second time, why doesn’t she just ride off the way she did the first time?”</p><p>Ruby shrugged. “Because she’s older?”</p><p>Rainbow shook her head. “That’s not it. Well, it might not be part of it, but it’s not the main thing. The main thing is that she’s served her king for years by that point, right?”</p><p>Ruby nodded. “Most of her life.”</p><p>“And she’s eaten in his hall and all that old-time stuff?” Rainbow asked. “She doesn’t just love him anymore, she knows him, and because she knows him so well, she can trust him, even if he isn’t making the same decision she would have made. And it’s the same way with me and General Ironwood. I’ve known him since I was a kid, he’s who taught me most of what I know, I’ve been to his house. I… I know his heart, the same way that Olivia knew her king. And I know it’s a good heart, the kind of heart that wouldn’t… I know him, and because I know him, I can trust him, without any reservations.” </p><p>“I guess I’m just not willing to risk it,” Ruby said softly. “That’s just… that’s just not how I see my duty lying.”</p><hr/><p>Yang, only somewhat reluctantly, turned her gaze away from looking down on her little sister from the upper gallery and focussed her attention upon her partner for this project. </p><p>Ciel Soleil. She was… to be honest, if uncharitable, she was kind of what you expected an Atlas student to be like: the manners of a robot and the personality of a brick wall. </p><p>Okay, that was more than a little unkind, and maybe it was just the fact that Yang didn’t know her that well, and she was really a total hoot at parties… but she couldn’t help but remember some of the things that Uncle Qrow had to say about the Atlesians and their commander when he got going. Stick up the butt didn’t even begin to cover it. Sure, he’d probably been joking when he said that he’d disown either of his nieces who even thought about going to the northern academy… but he probably hadn’t been completely joking. </p><p>And this assignment was going to be hard enough even with a partner she could get along with.</p><p>To say that Yang wasn’t looking forward to this would be an understatement. </p><p>“So, hey,” Yang said, discomfort borne of nerves seeping into her voice. “So… yeah. I guess the first thing that we should do is choose a story to work on, right?”</p><p>Ciel had taken off her beret, placing it on the table in front of her. Now, she smoothed out her hair with both hands. “Indeed.”</p><p>Yang hesitated for a moment, waiting to see if – hoping that – more was forthcoming. It wasn’t. “So… any ideas?”</p><p>Ciel was silent for a moment. “I… regret not,” she said. “I am afraid I have never had any great fondness for fairy stories.”</p><p>Yang sucked in the air between her teeth. “Me neither,” she confessed. “It’s not that I don’t like them; it’s just that… I used to read them to Ruby all the time when she was a kid, because she couldn’t get enough of them. Almost every night, before she’d got to bed, I used to read her a story or two; it was like she couldn’t sleep without one.”</p><p>“Or she would not,” Ciel suggested.</p><p>Yang snorted. “Yeah, maybe,” she agreed. “Ruby… Ruby loved those stories, but I just found that reading the same stories over and over again until I could recite them from memory… it kind of killed my enthusiasm, you know?”</p><p>“Indeed,” Ciel repeated. “It is much the same with me. Of my younger brothers, only Aurelien is truly devoted to such stories, but all of them were willing, at least, to listen to them. Like you, repetition and familiarity brought with them a degree of staleness.”</p><p>Yang found a faint smile coming to her face. “You have younger brothers?”</p><p>“Six.”</p><p>Yang’s eyes widened. “'Six'? Your mom has seven kids? Was that planned?”</p><p>“We have not discussed it,” Ciel replied, “but the Lady blessed her with so many children, and who is my mother to question such?”</p><p>Yang blinked. “'The Lady'?”</p><p>“The Lady of the North,” Ciel explained. “A hero of our land from times long, long ago, whose deeds were so tremendous that she was granted immortality and divine status upon her death and whose spirit has continued to protect the northland and guide its people from that day down to this.”</p><p>Yang leaned forward, her elbows resting upon the desk. “Sounds like a cool story; maybe we could-”</p><p>“No,” Ciel said flatly. “My faith is not just a story; it is revealed truth, and it will not be subjected to critical analysis as if it were simply another piece of literature. At least, not by me.”</p><p>Yang up one hand. “Sure thing, it was just an idea; I didn’t mean to offend you or nothing. I’ve just never met anyone religious before; I didn’t realise you’d take it so seriously.”</p><p>“I take more things seriously than not,” Ciel declared.</p><p>“Yeah, I guess that’s true, but I’m glad you said it, not me,” Yang said, a touch of amusement in her voice. “I really am sorry.”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Ciel said. “I know that you spoke from ignorance rather than malice.”</p><p>Yang was silent for a moment. “So… six little brothers, huh? And you the big sister of them all?”</p><p>“Indeed.”</p><p>“I can’t imagine what that must have been like,” Yang said. She couldn’t help but wonder, if Mom had stuck around, whether she and Dad would have had more. Her mind conjured the image of a host of little Rubies all running around and Yang herself desperately trying to keep hold of all of them. It might well have proven too much, even for her… but then, if Mom had stuck around, then she wouldn’t have had to do it all by herself, would she?</p><p>“It was an arduous task, at times,” Ciel admitted, “but by the time the younger children were born, the elder were old enough to provide me some assistance.”</p><p>Yang chuckled. “Yeah, I guess they didn’t all come at once, did they?” She paused. “How about your mom and dad, were they… I mean, are they-?”</p><p>“They are alive, thanks be to the Lady,” Ciel said, “but my father has spent his whole career about cruisers and carriers, and my mother went from being a dropship pilot to a flight instructor; as you may realise, those careers did not leave them as much time to be active in the lives of their children as would be ideal.”</p><p>“Meaning you were the one who had to walk them to and from school, make breakfast, make dinner, and put them to bed?” Yang guessed.</p><p>“From when I became old enough to do so,” Ciel replied. “Fortunately, Combat School was very accommodating of my circumstances.”</p><p>“But you still thanked God for after school clubs anyway, right?” Yang said, the fact that Ruby had somewhere she could hang around until Yang could come and pick her up at the end of <em>her</em> day had been a big boon in the couple of years until Ruby had gotten old enough to start at Combat School herself. “I mean, um-”</p><p>“I was grateful,” Ciel agreed, without making an issue of what Yang had just said. “Without them, and the support of my teachers, I would have been placed in a very difficult position.”</p><p>Yang nodded. “I’m really lucky with Ruby,” she said. “As much as I get a little worried about how much trouble she’s gotten into already, with her team – and yours – I’m really lucky that she got into Beacon early. It means I don’t have to worry about her being at home all by herself.”</p><p>“Your father?”</p><p>“Dad…” Yang trailed off. She didn’t really know Ciel well enough to point out that Dad had enough trouble taking care of himself, let alone his children. “Dad’s a teacher and a huntsman. Like you said, it doesn’t always give him as much time with us as he’d like.”</p><p>“Of course,” Ciel murmured. “As you say, you are fortunate to have your sister here… even if aspects of her learning experience leave you anxious.”</p><p>Yang chuckled. “You got that right. What about you, any of your brothers old enough to go to Combat School yet?”</p><p>“None of them wish to attend,” Ciel replied. “None of them wish to become huntsmen. Tyson has a great deal of mechanical aptitude and is considering enlisting in that capacity, but none of them seek to follow in my footsteps.”</p><p>“That’s gotta hurt.”</p><p>“Not particularly,” Ciel replied. “Those that are old enough to have their own plans and ambitions have them, and the fact that they diverge from my own… they know what they want, and I am glad of that. The fact that it is not what I want… why should that upset me?”</p><p>“I guess it shouldn’t, but you almost made it sound like they didn’t want it because it was what you did.”</p><p>“Then I misspoke and apologise for it,” Ciel said.</p><p>“It’s fine,” Yang said. “And, I mean, if Ruby wanted something else out of her life, I’d totally support that too.”</p><p>“My impression is that Ruby has never considered anything other than the path she is on,” Ciel declared.</p><p>Yang grinned. “Your impression is right, Ruby’s always been obsessed with this. Getting into Beacon, becoming a huntress, it’s all she’s ever wanted. I don’t think she’s ever wanted to be anything else, not even for a second.”</p><p>“And you?”</p><p>Yang shook her head. “Nah, my family was always too cool for me not to want to be just like them. You ever want to become a pilot like your mom?”</p><p>“I… I want to become an officer, the first in my family to do so,” Ciel declared.</p><p>“Oh, okay. Nothing wrong with ambition, I guess,” Yang replied. She hesitated. “You miss your brothers?”</p><p>“I will see them again, before the Vytal Festival begins,” Ciel said, “but, yes. I would need a much harder heart not to.” Her lips twitched. “For good or ill, the composition of my team means that I still feel like someone’s older sister.”</p><p>Yang snorffled as she glanced down over the balcony to where Penny was sitting beneath them. “Well, now that you mention it… I guess, at least you’ve got experience.”</p><p>“Indeed,” Ciel agreed. “And if my comment seemed unhappy, that was not my intent. Penny is… wonderful,” she said, after a moment. “It is my privilege to help and guide her, as best I can.”</p><p>Yang couldn’t help but wonder why it was that Penny needed to be helped and guided that way, but she didn’t ask. It wasn’t her place to ask, and if the answer turned out to be some kind of mental condition, then she’d feel like a jackass for bringing it up. Penny might be a little odd, but she was sweet and kind, and she was Ruby’s friend, and that was good enough for Yang. </p><p>She didn’t need to know any more than that. </p><p>“We should probably pick a story, shouldn’t we?” she said.</p><p>“Yes,” Ciel said. “We probably should.”</p><p>They sat in silence for a few moments.</p><p>“You can’t think of anything, can you?” Yang asked.</p><p>“No.”</p><hr/><p> “Hello, Cardin Winchester!” Penny said brightly. “I’m excited to begin working with you.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Cardin murmured. This Penny girl was, not to put too fine a point on it, weird. It was Cardin Winchester’s opinion that the Atlesians were an odd bunch in general; either they acted like robots, or else they didn’t seem to have an ‘off’ switch anywhere, and that was without getting into all of their cultural issues, but even taking that into account, Penny Polendina was weird. She acted like more of a kid than Ruby Rose, who actually <em>was</em> a kid, and a particularly sickly sweet kid at that. Skystar’s cousins, who were actual kids, acted more grown up than Penny did. It was strange, and he didn’t know what to make of it. </p><p>To say that he wasn’t looking forward to this was… about accurate, actually. He was aware that he could have gotten much worse partners – Sunset, Blake, Jaune – but at the same time, he could have gotten much better partners too. Like Penny’s team leader, who might be a faunus – why she had been made team leader, he didn’t know; he’d been given to understand that for all their faults, Atlas at least knew where faunus stood in the pecking order – but knew her place. Penny… how was he supposed to work with Penny?</p><p>He would have to find some way to work with her, because his grades were kind of below average at the moment, and while that wasn’t his fault – the teachers showed favouritism to the likes of Sunset Shimmer and Blake Belladonna even though they were only faunus – knowing that didn’t actually push his grades up at all. </p><p>His parents were already disappointed by his performance so far, and deaf to his excuses besides, which meant that he needed to take this chance to pull his grades up a little in order to at least show some potential for improvement.</p><p>Either that or find some way to distinguish himself in the field during training missions, but there was no guarantee that they would get the kind of mission that would let him show what he could do. In terms of field assignments too, Team WWSR was labouring under the cloud of noxious favouritism shown by the faculty: Team YRDN had gotten a mission in their first week at Beacon, while Team SAPR had been assigned a mission without even needing a professional huntsman to supervise them, in the course of which mission they had captured Roman Torchwick! </p><p>His parents didn’t want to hear it, but to Cardin, it was undeniable that Team SAPR were Professor Ozpin’s favourites, and while it was true that a team with Pyrrha Nikos on it was always going to attract attention, that didn’t change the fact that it was a team led by a faunus and including a deadweight like Jaune Arc on it. Team WWSR had a Winchester and a Schnee on it, and they couldn’t seem to get any attention at all! </p><p>What was the world coming to when money couldn’t buy you success any more?</p><p>“Let’s… let’s just get on with it shall we?” he muttered. </p><p>Penny smiled. “I was hoping we could do our project on <em>The Shallow Sea</em>.”</p><p>“<em>The Shallow</em>- no!” Cardin growled. “We are not writing our report on some faunus garbage.”</p><p>Penny leaned back in her seat, leaning away from him. “What’s wrong with the faunus?”</p><p>“Do you even have to ask?” Cardin demanded.</p><p>“Yes,” Penny said. “That’s <em>why</em> I asked.”</p><p>Cardin’s mouth hung open catching flies for a moment before he rallied to say, “Well… everyone knows that they’re just a bunch of animals who-”</p><p>“I don’t think everyone does know that,” Penny replied. “Ruby doesn’t seem to know that, and neither does Pyrrha, considering that they don’t treat Sunset or Blake like an animal that I’ve noticed. And then there’s Jaune, and Ciel, who obeys my team leader Rainbow Dash without-”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah, I get it, you don’t have to list everyone you know who-”</p><p>“Who proves you wrong when you say everyone knows that faunus are animals?” Penny suggested.</p><p>Cardin narrowed his eyes at her. “You’ve got kind of a smart mouth on you, you know that?”</p><p>“Really?” Penny replied. “Thank you, Cardin.”</p><p>Cardin groaned. He rubbed the gap between his eyebrows as he felt a headache coming on. He wasn’t blind to the fact that he was under observation by two out of three members of Penny’s team – Twilight Sparkle seemed engrossed – and so there was nothing he could really do right now. “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you? Did Sunset Shimmer put you up to this?”</p><p>Penny blinked. “Put me up to what?”</p><p>“All of… all of this!” Cardin declared, gesturing up and down.</p><p>“You just gestured to all of me.”</p><p>Cardin clenched his hands into fists. “You know what? Fine! We’ll do <em>The Shallow Sea</em> if it’ll get you off my back about this. What’s so great about it anyway? Even the faunus don’t believe this garbage.”</p><p>“I think it’s pretty,” Penny said quietly. </p><p>Cardin frowned. “'Pretty'? Pretty how?”</p><p>“Blake says it’s about being seen for who you really are,” Penny said.</p><p>Cardin wasn’t sure what to make of that. Was Penny not being herself? How much more herself could she possibly get? The funny thing was, though, that that wasn’t the first time he had heard that explanation. He’d overheard Silverstream saying the same thing to Terramar once, when he’d come over when Skystar was babysitting her cousins. </p><p>So maybe there was something in it, even if he didn’t get why that seemed to hold an attraction for Penny Polendina. </p><p>“Maybe it is,” Cardin muttered. “But being seen for who you really are isn’t always all that it’s cracked up to be.” He seemed to get along much better with people who didn’t know who he really was – like Skystar – than he did with people who did. He often thought that he might have had a much better time here at Beacon if he had done what he did with Skystar and hidden away certain parts of himself that some people seemed to find… unappealing.</p><p>“You mean like those faunus children who don’t know that you hate them?” Penny asked.</p><p>“How do you- oh, right, you were there,” Cardin muttered. Of course she’d been there. They’d all been there. It was a miracle that his secret had held for so long. “I don’t hate Silverstream and Terramar.”</p><p>“But you said that faunus were-”</p><p>“I know what I said, and it doesn’t… there are exceptions to every rule, okay?” Cardin declared. “Like grammar or something. Silverstream and Terramar are okay.”</p><p>Penny blinked. “So you hate all faunus… except for the faunus whom you like?”</p><p>“Ye- no! I don’t… it doesn’t… some of them are alright, and some of them are ass.”</p><p>“Isn’t it the same with people?”</p><p>“They’re terrorists!” Cardin snapped.</p><p>“Some of them are, and some of them aren’t.”</p><p>“Yeah, well, they… they look stupid,” Cardin said. “With their little animal ears and tails and stuff, and they walk around like they own the place, and… you wouldn’t understand.”</p><p>“No,” Penny said softly. “I don’t understand.” She was refreshingly silent for a moment before she had to open her mouth again. “Blake told me that people always hate the things that aren’t like them; Rainbow and Twilight told me that wasn’t true, but is that why you hate the faunus? Because they’re not like you? Is that why you don’t mind Silverstream and Terramar, because they are like you?”</p><p>“Why do you care?” Cardin demanded. “What does any of this matter to you?”</p><p>“Because I want to understand,” Penny said. </p><p>“Well, I don’t want to sit here explaining myself to you.”</p><p>“Is that because you can’t explain it?”</p><p>Cardin stared at her for a moment. A part of him very much wanted to pick her up and throw her across the library. </p><p>Another part of him thought that the reason he wanted this was because she was right. </p><p>
  <em>Some of these faunus are real jackasses. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>So is Jaune Arc.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I hate him too.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But not because he’s a faunus. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>So maybe I just hate assholes?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>These faunus don’t belong here. They don’t have the right background.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But some of them do…</em>
</p><p>Cardin shook his head. What was he thinking? Why was he wasting time with this? This was giving him a headache. </p><p>Maybe the headache was trying to tell him something.</p><p>“Let’s just work, okay,” he grunted.</p><p>“Okay,” Penny agreed. “But thank you for talking.”</p><p>“Let’s get on with it,” Cardin growled. </p><p>He tried to get on with it, he tried to focus, he tried to get rid of everything that the odd Atlesian girl had said. </p><p>But try as he might, he just couldn’t get it out of his head.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0042"><h2>42. Victim</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sunset sees another side of Cinder; Cinder remembers something important, and offers her aid.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Victim</p><p> </p><p>Sunset and Cinder had just left A &amp; P – in fact the door had just shut behind them – when their attention was arrested by a cry of anger from just a little down the street. </p><p>“How <em>dare</em> you speak to me, you stinking wretch!” the angry shout came from… it took Sunset a moment to remember her name: Phoebe, that was it, Phoebe Kommenos, the girl who had tried to hassle Pyrrha on the day the Atlas students had arrived at Beacon. </p><p>She was standing only a few feet away from them down the street, dressed in a red dress with a ruffled neckline – with white at the edges – that swooped downwards to expose the beginnings of her cleavage; the ruffled sleeves were short, exposing her arms to the summer sun. An emerald bracelet hung languidly from off her right wrist, while on her left arm, a bracelet of rubies or red diamonds – Sunset couldn’t tell the difference from sight – was clasped more tightly against her skin. Her hair was down, dangling down her back towards her waist. A goat faunus in an Atlas uniform, horns growing out of her forehead, followed behind her, and she was accompanied by a group of well-dressed young ladies, none of them without some golden bangle or sparkling necklace or pair of earrings peeking out from beneath their hair. </p><p>
  <em>So much for the valour of the north.</em>
</p><p>It was not just the materialism on display here that prompted that thought from Sunset, but the fact that Phoebe’s angry cry had been directed towards the homeless fellow sitting not far away from the café, begging a few spare lien from passersby. Cinder had ignored him on their way in, but Sunset – who felt a kind of squirming embarrassment whenever she left someone like that empty-handed – had tossed him a couple of lien to ease her conscience and enjoy her coffee and ice cream with peace of mind. </p><p>Phoebe seemed to have taken his importuning as a personal affront. The man cringed before her anger as she glared down at him. </p><p>“Sorry, Madame,” he said quickly. “It’s just that I only need a few lien to help me-”</p><p>“You’re still speaking, insolent dog!” Phoebe snarled, and one hand – the emeralds upon it sparkling as they caught the sun – lashed out to strike him upon the side of the head, drawing a cry of pain. She turned to her ladies and laughed. “The nerve of him, to address <em>me</em>. I’m surprised that Vale allows such idle scum to litter its streets, harassing decent people like that.”</p><p>Sunset folded her arms. “The pride of Atlas,” she declared. “How fortunate this city is to have such stalwarts here to defend it from the evils of homelessness and destitution.”</p><p>Phoebe’s eyes – all their eyes – turned to Sunset. Her painted lips curled into a sneer. “Is there a problem?”</p><p>Sunset glanced down at the homeless man, curling up protectively into a ball, his hands raised to protect his face from further abuse. One of the Atlesian girls had grabbed his little mongrel dog and was holding the creature by the neck as it squirmed and wriggled in a futile effort to escape. </p><p>Ruby, Sunset was certain, would have fought for the man, would have demanded that they back off and leave him alone. Jaune would have done the same, but with a  tremor in his voice as he did so, while Pyrrha would probably have asked them nicely, at first. All of them would have stood up for an innocent man in trouble, just like Ruby had stood up for that old shopkeeper against Torchwick and his goons on the night that Sunset and Ruby had first met. </p><p>It was what a true huntress ought to do.</p><p>But Sunset wasn’t Ruby, or Pyrrha, or even Jaune. She was Sunset Shimmer, and there were seven of them, and while she might win a fight, depending on how useless these vapid rich girls were, Sunset thought she knew who would get in trouble for starting a fight, and it probably wouldn’t be Miss Hoity-Toity over there. </p><p>Sunset didn’t look at the homeless man. “No,” she said. “There’s no problem here.”</p><p>Phoebe’s gaze slid off Sunset to the left. “Then what are you staring at?” she demanded.</p><p>She wasn’t talking to Sunset; she was talking to Cinder, who seemed – who was – frozen in place, staring at Phoebe with both her eyes wide. Those eyes, which seemed usually to smoulder like flame, seemed dimmer now, like dying embers cooling amidst the ashes of a burnt-out fire. </p><p>Cinder said nothing, though her mouth was half open; if there were words, they had stuck in her throat, held fast by some power greater than Cinder’s strength. Her hands shook. Her whole body trembled. She was rooted in place, and yet, she shook like a tree assailed by the storm. </p><p>She was scared. It took Sunset a moment to recognise it because it was so unlike Cinder to behave this way, but she was scared. Scared of… of Phoebe? What was there to be scared of? What was there in Phoebe Kommenos to make Cinder Fall blanch so?</p><p>One of Phoebe’s cronies, a willowy girl with curled pink hair, called out encouragement to Phoebe as the latter stalked towards them, her six-inch heels clicking upon the pavement. The tips of her hair, Sunset could see as she got closer, were blonde; that must be her natural colour showing through the dye. </p><p>She glowered as she advanced on Cinder. “I asked you,” she snarled, “what you were looking at.”</p><p>Cinder didn’t respond. She didn’t seem capable of responding. She looked as though she wanted to retreat but didn’t seem capable of that either. Miniature flames sparked at the tips of her fingers, before she clenched her hand into a fist to quench them. It was all that she seemed capable of doing.</p><p>“Well?” Phoebe demanded. “Say something? Are you some kind of moron? Or are you one of those deaf-mutes? I swear they’ll let anyone into the academies these days. Well?”</p><p>“That’s close enough,” Sunset growled, putting herself between Phoebe and Cinder. She had to look up into the face of the taller girl, made taller by her heels, but she didn’t show any fear. “In fact, that’s more than close enough. Back off.”</p><p>Phoebe glared down at her. “And who are you to tell me to do anything?”</p><p>“I’m Sunset Shimmer,” Sunset said. “Now back off.”</p><p>Phoebe was silent a moment. “I remember you,” she said. “You’re one of Pyrrha’s friends, aren’t you?”</p><p>“I’m Pyrrha’s team leader, as it happens,” Sunset said.</p><p>“Well Pyrrha’s not around to protect you now-”</p><p>“I don’t need Pyrrha’s protection,” Sunset snarled. “What I need is for you to get out of the faces of me and my friend and be somewhere else.”</p><p>“Uh, Phoebe?” ventured the same of her cronies who had spoken before, “perhaps we should go. That… that’s the pony from the video.”</p><p><em>The video? Oh, right, the fight with Pyrrha. Did people actually watch that? Cool.</em> What was especially cool was the way in which, their attention having been drawn to who she was, the girls now seemed wary of her. A couple of them even looked frightened. </p><p>Phoebe’s eyes widened a little. </p><p>“That’s right,” Sunset muttered. “I’m the one. Of course, Pyrrha beat me in the end, but…” She held up her hand, showing the green glow that burned around it as a spear of magic formed in the air above her. “You’re not Pyrrha, are you?”</p><p>Phoebe stared down at Sunset for a moment, her face contorting through several different expressions of rage, her roughed lips scowling and snarling wordlessly, before she seemed to calm herself with a visible effort. She laughed, that laugh that was already becoming oh-so-annoying to Sunset. “Ohohohoho. I’m so sorry. I had no idea your girlfriend would have such a strong reaction to my presence. Don’t feel too bad, little girl; many people are intimidated by me.” She laughed again, turning upon her high heels. “And forgive me, sir, for my behaviour.”</p><p>The homeless man blinked rapidly, his ragged blanket shuffling around him as he straightened up a little. “It’s quite alright, madame, I-”</p><p>“Oh, please, I feel simply terrible. You must let me make it up to you somehow.”</p><p>“I just need a few lien-”</p><p>“I’m not talking about money,” Phoebe declared extravagantly. “Let’s get you cleaned up, into some fresh clothes. Ladies, help this poor man up and onto his feet. We’ll take some time out on the way to the salon to… do a good deed.”</p><p>Something was not right about this. As Sunset watched two of Phoebe’s girls pick the man up by his arms, holding him as though he were their captive and not someone they were going to help, she knew in her bones that something was wrong. This was not going to end well.</p><p>That was in front of her, but as Phoebe and the others dragged the man and his dog away, Sunset was aware that Cinder was behind her, still trembling, still rooted to the spot. </p><p>And so she turned away from Phoebe and the homeless man alike and focussed her attention upon Cinder as they took the man and his dog away. </p><p>“Cinder?” Sunset asked, her voice gently, barely more than a whisper. “Cinder, it’s okay.” She placed one hand upon Cinder’s shoulder and delicately reached out to take her hand. “It’s okay, she’s gone. I’m right here.” She slipped her fingers into Cinder’s open palm and began to close them.</p><p>Cinder jerked away, the fire in her eyes beginning to burn once more. “Don’t touch me!” she snapped, clenching both hands now and retreating from Sunset. Her glass slippers clinked upon the paving stones. She glanced away from Sunset, towards the abandoned blankets that the homeless man had left behind, the lien cards sitting in a decaying plastic cup, and then she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Sunset, you didn’t deserve that, but… I don’t need… don’t touch me.”</p><p>Her chest rose and fell as she turned away, wrapping her arms around herself. </p><p>Sunset followed at a discreet distance, leaving a couple of steps between Cinder and herself. “I’ve never seen you like that before,” she said.</p><p>“And you won’t see it again,” Cinder declared. “I wasn’t… prepared.”</p><p>Sunset frowned. “Do you know her?”</p><p>“Your company is welcome, Sunset, but your questions about my past are not.”</p><p>“I suppose I can understand that,” Sunset replied. “Is… is there anything that I can do?”</p><p>“No,” Cinder said as her hands fell down to her sides. “Because I need no help from anyone. I’m fine.”</p><p>“You didn’t seem fine a moment ago,” Sunset pointed out.</p><p>“Well, I am,” Cinder barked. She took a deep breath, and a sigh escaped. “You realise… I’m fine.”</p><p>Sunset hesitated for a moment. “You know that you can tell me the truth, right? You don’t have to pretend with me.”</p><p>Cinder laughed bitterly, “Why not, because we’ve known each other for such a very long time?”</p><p>“Because we’re friends,” Sunset said, “and friends can be honest with one another.”</p><p>“'Friends,'” Cinder murmured. “<em>Are</em> we friends?”</p><p>“Aren’t we?”</p><p>Cinder was silent for a moment. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I suppose we are.” She fell silent, speaking again only as she glanced over her shoulder. “I… you won’t tell anyone about this, will you? It would do no good at all for my reputation.”</p><p>Sunset grinned. “Your secret’s safe with me.”</p><p>“I’m delighted to hear it,” Cinder drawled, and when she turned back to face Sunset, her expression was once more composed, much more what Sunset expected of Cinder than what she’d been shown not too long ago. “Oh, and by the way, it slipped my mind before, but Emerald was able to find out who graffitied that awful symbol on your door.”</p><p>Sunset raised her eyebrows. “It slipped your mind?”</p><p>Cinder nodded silently.</p><p>Sunset rolled her eyes. <em>Of all the things to ‘slip your mind,’ honestly.</em> “Well, go on, don’t leave me in suspense.”</p><p>“Bon Bon,” Cinder said.</p><p>Sunset stared at her, silently, processing the two little words that had just popped daintily out of Cinder’s mouth. “Bon Bon?”</p><p>“Indeed,” Cinder said. “A little surprising, no? I thought it would be that Cardin boy.”</p><p>“So did I,” Sunset muttered. <em>He must be scared of losing his relationship.</em> “You’re sure it was Bon Bon?”</p><p>“Emerald has ways of getting the truth,” Cinder assured her, “and she would never dare lie to me.”</p><p>Sunset’s jaw clenched. She felt a fire rising up inside of her, brighter than the flames which burned in Cinder’s eyes. “Little…” She bit back something unsuitable for genteel company like Cinder. “I’ll have her guts for this, you see if I don’t.” </p><p>The nerve of that girl! Who did she think she was? What right did she have to look down on Blake, to treat her like that, to treat <em>Sunset</em> like that? She had defaced the wrong door, Sunset thought as she turned away from Cinder and began to stomp off in the direction of the skydock. She had messed with the wrong team leader. She might think that Sunset had become tame and timid, well, she thought wrong! Just because Sunset’s track record for revenge wasn’t brilliant, just because her schemes had blown up in her face at Canterlot didn’t mean that she could tweak Sunset’s nose with impunity, certainly not by dragging Blake through the mud and bringing up her association with the White Fang! The nerve of it!</p><p>Cinder caught up with her, Cinder’s glass slippers clinking rapidly as she jogged to draw level with the shorter girl. “So, I ask you again the same question that I asked the day after Blake’s arrest: what are you going to do about it?”</p><p>“I know what I’d <em>like </em>to do about it,” Sunset growled.</p><p>Cinder waited a moment. “Well, go on, don’t leave me in suspense,” she repeated.</p><p>Sunset’s pace slowed. “Let me rephrase,” she said, “I know what I would like to do, but I don’t know if I have the skill to pull it off.”</p><p>“There’s a skill that you don’t possess? I’m astonished.”</p><p>Sunset glared at her. Cinder smirked. </p><p>“Come on,” she said. “You’ve seen me as no one else at Beacon has ever seen me. The least you can do is share your plans for revenge with me. I might even be able to help.”</p><p>“You might not want to get caught up in this if it goes badly.”</p><p>“If you let me help, it won’t go badly,” Cinder said.</p><p>Sunset hesitated for a moment, walking along the streets with Cinder beside her. “What I would like to do,” she confessed, “is get into her scroll and air her dirty laundry to the whole school. But I’d never get away with it.”</p><p>“What makes you so sure?”</p><p>“Because I didn’t get away with it the last time I tried something similar,” Sunset said sharply. “If only Twilight wasn’t here, but…”</p><p>“This sounds like a fascinating story.”</p><p>Sunset glanced at her.</p><p>“Once again, I remind you that you have seen another side of me,” Cinder said. “I can’t help but feel that entitles me to a little… compensation from you.”</p><p>There was a certain logic to that, a certain fairness that Sunset had to concede. “Okay,” she said, with a slight trace of a huff in her voice. “I’ll tell you.</p><p>“I arrived at Canterlot Combat School as a young m- girl,” Sunset explained. “Young, but not naïve. Not any more. That had been knocked out of me by…” <em>By the world in which I found myself. </em>“By the nature of Atlesian society.”</p><p>“Say no more,” Cinder said. She paused. “Except do, because you haven’t really said anything.”</p><p>Sunset grinned, shaking her head as her tail swept from side to side behind her, curled up a little at the tip so that it didn’t touch the ground. “My naiveté had been driven out of me by Atlas,” she repeated, “but my ambition had not. I arrived at Canterlot Combat School determined that I would triumph over all the prejudices that confronted me and establish my ascendancy over the whole school. No matter who I had to step on to do it.”</p><p>Cinder smirked. “I wish I could have known you then. You sound a lot of fun.”</p><p>“Are you saying that I’m not fun now?”</p><p>“I can’t imagine you being willing to step on just anybody to get to the top now.”</p><p>Sunset’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve realised that you can get further sometimes by stepping with people rather than on them.”</p><p>“Perhaps,” Cinder conceded. “Not always as amusing, though.”</p><p>“Do I need to be worried about a knife in my back?”</p><p>“Oh, no,” Cinder said quickly. “If I stab you, Sunset, it will be in the front, I promise.”</p><p>Sunset stared at her out of the corner of her eyes, silent for a moment, before a snort exited through her nostrils. “Thank you, for your honesty.”</p><p>“Thank you for appreciating my candour,” Cinder replied. “We’re friends, but let’s not forget that we’re also rivals at the end of the day. And if I find myself facing you across the Amity Colosseum, then don’t expect me to hold back on account of our friendship.”</p><p>“Right back at you,” Sunset replied. “Although if you want to make it to the one-on-ones, you should hope that you don’t run into me in the Amity Colosseum.”</p><p>“You’re not going to put yourself forward for the singles round?”</p><p>“No, I’m going to send Pyrrha,” Sunset replied.</p><p>“Of course,” Cinder drawled. “Who else but the Champion of Mistral? One might almost say that she’s entitled to it.”</p><p>“She’s a tournament fighter; we’re talking about the greatest tournament in Remnant,” Sunset replied. “Lady Nikos expects Pyrrha to get the chance to shine upon this, the most prestigious of stages.”</p><p>“And you wouldn’t want to disappoint Lady Nikos, would you?”</p><p>“No, I would not,” Sunset affirmed. “She has been good to me.”</p><p>“This is what I’m talking about, by the way,” Cinder declared. “I can’t help but think you would have been even better company when you didn’t care about anyone but yourself.”</p><p>“You realise that the me that didn’t care about anyone but herself would have only seen you as a threat, right?”</p><p>“I’d have taken my chances,” Cinder murmured, “but I do apologise for these constant interruptions. Go on.”</p><p>“Like I said… what did I say?”</p><p>“You were going to step on people to get to the top.”</p><p>“Right,” Sunset grunted. “I wanted to be the queen bee. I wanted to be looked up to and respected. I wanted to be feared. I wanted everyone to acknowledge that I was the one to watch, the one to look out for. Unfortunately for me, by the time I got there, Canterlot already had a princess.”</p><p>“Rainbow Dash,” Cinder ventured.</p><p>“Twilight Sparkle,” Sunset corrected her. “Rainbow Dash was… let me put it like this: Twilight was the heart of their merry little band, and Rainbow Dash was the soul. Does that make any sense?”</p><p>“Assume that it doesn’t and explain better.”</p><p>Sunset chewed on her bottom lip, her tail swishing back and forth as she thought about it how she could put it in such a way as to make sense to Cinder. “Think about my team, Team Sapphire,” she said. “Ruby is the heart of Sapphire, she’s the one that we all adore and who adores all of us, the one who guides us with her conscience, her morals. But Pyrrha is the one who defines our purpose, who articulates what we’re about, what we’re doing here, the best of us, the one who exemplifies our team. Heart and soul, see?”</p><p>“And what does that make you?”</p><p>“Oh, I’m the head, I keep the other two in check,” Sunset explained. “But do you get it now? Twilight was the glue that held them all together, everyone’s best friend, the one that everyone at school looked up to. She was the one who was unanimously voted Princess of the Spring Fling because everyone agreed that she deserved it. Rainbow Dash couldn’t have done that, she didn’t have that quality that brings people together, but Twilight didn’t exemplify what it meant to be an Atlesian combat school student the way that Rainbow Dash did. Heart and soul.”</p><p>“I… will take your word on that,” Cinder murmured.</p><p>“Together with their friends, they were the elite of Canterlot, even though they were only in their second year. They formed a clique, except it didn’t seem like a clique because they’d worked hard to dissolve the cliques before I got there. I found out that for some time, there had been tensions between the students on the combat track – the ones who were aiming for Atlas after graduation – and the ones who were taking the less rigorous aura training courses. The genuine combat school students looked down on the rest as dilettantes, but Twilight and her friends had put a stop to that by sheer force of personality… and probably a song or two. They had a glamour about them that no other student possessed, made even stronger by the fact that they didn’t even act like it. They were always so… helpful, to everyone, even the people beneath them, which was everyone. I couldn’t understand it.”</p><p>“Do you understand it now?” Cinder asked.</p><p>Sunset hesitated for a moment. “Not really, no,” she muttered. “It wasn’t like they were close to half of these people or anything. The point was, it didn’t take me very long to work out that I would never be on top while Twilight and her friends were ruling the school, and I wasn’t willing to wait until my last year when they graduated and left me alone. So, there was only one thing to do: I challenged Twilight for Princess of the Fall Formal. And then, to make it a sure thing that I would win, I decided to divide Twilight from all of her friends and, in that way, divide the school as well. I was certain that without Twilight’s friends as a shining beacon of cooperation and unity, the rest of Canterlot would fall apart, and all the old cliques and rivalries they were suppressing would reassert themselves.”</p><p>“Divide them,” Cinder murmured. “Yes… I can see the logic to that. After all, we are always being told by Professor Ozpin and all the rest that the strength of humanity lies in unity. It stands to reason, then, that division leads to weakness.” She grinned. “And weakness can be exploited, by an opponent with the foresight to do so.”</p><p>“My thoughts, precisely,” Sunset declared. “But how to do it? That was my problem. They were such good friends; as much as they didn’t suspect how much I hated them – when I put my name down for princess, Twilight actually wished me luck – but that didn’t mean it was going to be easy to turn them against each other. I knew that if I got caught, I would not only make their friendship stronger, but also earn the enmity of everyone who liked and looked up to them, which, as I’ve just said, was everyone.”</p><p>“So what did you do?” Cinder asked. “How did you square that circle?”</p><p>“I didn’t,” Sunset replied. “You already know this story doesn’t have a happy ending. Not for me, anyway.”</p><p> “But you tried something?”</p><p>“Yes, I tried to clone their scroll profiles so that I could make messages from me look like they were coming from other people. Once I’d done that, I sent them conflicting messages that would lead to conflict amongst the group until their friendships couldn’t take it anymore,” Sunset said. “So, I found out that Rainbow Dash had agreed to bring the softball team along to Applejack’s bake sale; I then sent Rainbow Dash a snotty message from Applejack’s scroll telling her that she wasn’t needed after all; that way, Rainbow Dash would feel insulted, and Applejack would be incensed that Rainbow had lied to her and made a liar out of her for telling everyone the softball team was coming to the bake sale. I sent Pinkie Pie a message from Fluttershy’s scroll that she – Fluttershy – wanted a big party instead of a silent auction to raise money for the animal shelter, which was exactly what Fluttershy <em>didn’t</em> want. And I… and I, um… I’m really not proud of what I did to try and break up Rainbow and Twilight’s friendship.” </p><p>She had known that they had the strongest relationship out of any members of the six, and she had also suspected that underneath the way she acted like she was a human just like the rest that Rainbow Dash was insecure about being a faunus in Atlas. So she had sent her emails which Twilight had ‘accidentally’ copied her into along with the rest of her friends, laughing about how they were pulling the wool over Rainbow’s eyes, pretending to be her friend, and filled with racist terms besides. None of what she had done or sought to do had been nice, but what she had tried to do to Rainbow Dash… that had definitely been the act of a bitch. </p><p>“Of course,” she went on, “it didn’t work, because-”</p><p>“They talked to one another?” Cinder suggested. “Because, to be perfectly honest, that plan seems doomed to fall apart the moment they had an in-person conversation and revealed that they didn’t send those messages.”</p><p>“Actually, that’s not how I got caught,” Sunset said. “You might think that would be how I got caught, but once someone is upset enough, then denials from the person they’re upset with just seem like exactly that: denial. No, I got caught because Twilight’s better with computers than I am, and she was able to prove that I was the source of all the messages and emails… with the predictable results.”</p><p>“They closed ranks,” Cinder murmured.</p><p>Sunset nodded. “Their friendship emerged stronger than ever before, and Rainbow Dash called me out on the carpet for it in public so that the whole school knew what I’d tried to do, and to say they didn’t see the funny side would be an understatement. Twilight won the Fall Formal crown by a landslide.” Flash had been the only other person to vote for Sunset besides herself. “To cut a long story short, my plans to dominate the school never really got off the ground after that.” In fact, things had only gotten worse from that point on, what with the Anon-a-Miss incident which she had been wrongly blamed for, Twilight and her friends becoming heroes as a result of the Canterlot Wedding, and eventually, Flash breaking up with her. It had all been downhill for Sunset Shimmer, from that very first failure. </p><p>"And that's why Bon Bon dared to deface your door like that," Cinder added. "She saw you bested and humiliated, and so, she doesn't fear you." She smiled. "Why don't you show her how wrong she is to think so little of you, to presume that she may trifle with you and with those dear to you?"</p><p>"Oh, I would, and gladly," Sunset growled. "But how? And how to do it without being caught, what's more?"</p><p>"Do you need her to know that it was you?"</p><p>"Ideally, but not in such a way as she can prove it," Sunset replied. "If I get punished for what I did to her in response to the thing that she skated off for, then I've come out of this worse than she has, and I may as well not have bothered."</p><p>"There's no risk of that if you take my advice," Cinder declared. "I know a few things about computers myself, maybe even more than the great Twilight Sparkle. I think I could help you get in just about anywhere you liked, and no one would ever be able to prove that you were there."</p><p>Sunset looked at her. "Really? You'd do that?"</p><p>"So surprised?"</p><p>"I'm wondering what's in it for you."</p><p>"Sunset, I'm hurt, really," Cinder replied. "What was in it for you when you put yourself out to help Blake?"</p><p>"Nothing much," Sunset admitted. "It just… felt like the right thing to do, I suppose."</p><p>"Precisely," Cinder said. "Isn't that, as they say, what friends are for?"</p><hr/><p>The tramp cowered against the dumpster that would soon be his tomb.</p><p>Phoebe Kommenos loomed over him. The little dog was dead at her feet – her bare feet; she had kicked off her stylish but rather impractical heels for this – and there was a light smattering of blood on her knuckles already. His blood, of course.</p><p>She was alone, now. Her girlfriends had gone, or rather, she had sent them away when she sensed that her desire for amusement was about to outstrip their own. Her mother had taught her to be aware of when her predilections were going beyond society's indulgence of the same; some things you had to hide if you wanted to be accepted in polite society.</p><p>That was why she had used to vent her frustrations on Ashley, behind closed doors where no one could see and no one could hear but mother and Philonoe, neither of whom cared. Ashley was dead now, of course, along with mother and her sister; the little idiot had left a fire burning and gotten them all killed. She missed them all. She missed her mother, and she missed her sweet, dear sister who had been so much a better person than Phoebe and yet had never judged her or reviled her. But she missed Ashley most of all. She missed having someone upon whom she could vent without consequence or without having to be careful.</p><p>Not even Mal afforded her that luxury; there were some things her teammates wouldn't ignore, some things that General Ironwood wouldn't tolerate, even if she was just a filthy faunus. But then, he had a fondness for those animals, didn't he?</p><p>And so Phoebe had to be careful. She had to hold it in. She had to hide, to control herself. But there were times… there were times when she just needed to let it out. And nobody was going to miss some vagabond from off the street or ask too many questions when he turned up dead. Nobody cared about riffraff like this.</p><p>That damned faunus had humiliated her, and for the second time! Humiliated her in front of her teammates on the day they arrived and in front of her friends today. Phoebe would pay her back someday, somehow, the same way that she knew with absolute certainty that she was going to pay Pyrrha back for all the humiliations that Phoebe had suffered at her hands.</p><p>And in the meantime, this would make her feel so much better.</p><p>Her hands clenched into fists as she advanced upon the helpless man before her.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0043"><h2>43. Anon-a-Miss Strikes Back</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sunset gives in to her impulses</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Anon-a-Miss Strikes Back</p><p> </p><p>Sunset and Cinder hadn’t gone to the skydock; for what they were about to do – for what Cinder was about to do for Sunset – it was best not to go to the school library or the CCT Tower where someone who knew them both might stumble across them and spot what they were doing. </p><p>No, heading back into Vale, they had dived through the streets and stalked along the boulevards until they found a modest public library, occupying one wing of a brick-built leisure centre that also boasted a swimming pool. While Cinder lingered outside, making a call on her scroll, Sunset dived in, grabbed a book at random from one of the nearby shelves, and grabbed a computer terminal, ignoring the glare that the pinch-faced librarian was giving her as she waited for Cinder to come in. Sunset’s gaze flickered up to the window, out of which she could see Cinder talking on her scroll before flickering down to the book that chance had led her to. </p><p>It was a work of science fiction, some kind of media tie-in to something, about soldiers fighting in outer space; these particular soldiers appeared to have lost their planet somehow, and so they wandered from battle to battle like ghosts with no home to return to. It wasn’t high art, by any means, but the pages were quite turnable as Sunset waited for her companion to join her. </p><p>Soon enough, Cinder swept into the library, a slight smile playing upon her face. “Perhaps when we’re done here, we can go swimming?” she suggested.</p><p>“Another time, maybe; I don’t have my suit with me,” Sunset replied.</p><p>“Yes, that is probably a bit of an obstacle,” Cinder conceded, as she sat down in front of the terminal. “Found something good to read?”</p><p>“It’s alright; I don’t know about good,” Sunset said, putting the book to one side on the table before them. “So, what happens now?”</p><p>“Now, you watch,” Cinder said, plugging her scroll into a socket on the right of the terminal, “while the magic happens.” She grinned and got to work. </p><p>Sunset recognised some of what she was doing; despite having come to Remnant from a world where computers were far, far less ubiquitous than they were here, she was not unfamiliar with them and the way they worked. When she first arrived in Remnant, Sunset had been fascinated by the technology that humans used to make their lives easier in place of the magic that ponies used to accomplish the same goal: the heating grids that allowed Atlas to manipulate the weather in absence of any pegasi, the airships that let them fly, the chemicals in which they drenched the soil and the machines that cultivated their crops. And, of course, the ways in which their technology had surpassed the magic of Equestria by being available to more than just a select few: the equivalent of Sunset’s magic journal that everyone in Remnant carried around in their pocket. She had been fascinated, and in her fascination, she had sought to learn the secrets of these wonders. And, although she couldn’t have described in detail how a combine harvester worked or all the systems in a skyliner, she did know a bit about scrolls and computers and the CCT. She knew enough to have an idea of what Cinder was doing – she could tell that she was using her scroll to form a passive connection to Bon Bon’s scroll, which connection she was attempting to exploit for backdoor access – but at the same time, she couldn’t really follow how Cinder was doing it because she was doing it all so fast. Her fingers, lithe and nimble, skittered lightly across the keyboard, tapping lightly from button to button, silent as they passed through the holographic simulacra of keys. </p><p>Letters and numbers appeared on the screen, forming lines that briefly flickered before disappearing as Cinder hit the ‘enter’ key, or at least the image of the same. She didn’t say anything while she worked; she ignored Sunset completely. For her part, Sunset didn’t try and interrupt Cinder; she let the other girl work at her own pace. </p><p>However, she couldn’t help but notice that, as she worked, Cinder was starting to look a little concerned; the easy smile had disappeared from her face, and her smooth forehead was creased by a frown. </p><p>At some little length, she spoke, her voice smooth and calmer than her frown might suggest. “Now isn’t this interesting?”</p><p>Sunset leaned in a little to get a better view of the screen. There was a lot of code visible, and she would have had to spend some time working out what it all meant. It was easier to just ask, “What?”</p><p>“I can’t get access,” Cinder explained. “Bon Bon is using some very high quality firewalls to prevent access to her device.”</p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose. “Better quality than most scrolls?”</p><p>Cinder chuckled. “I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, Sunset, that security on school scrolls is really rather laughable.”</p><p>“Well, this <em>is</em> my first time trying to gain access to another student’s scroll,” Sunset pointed out. “Do I want to know how you know that?”</p><p>“I know that because I checked,” Cinder said quickly, “and fortified my own scroll so that my secrets would stay, well, secret. I advise you to do the same if you haven’t already.”</p><p>“A little paranoid, don’t you think?”</p><p>“Says the girl who wants to hack into another student’s scroll and use the information contained therein against them.”</p><p>“Good point,” Sunset muttered and made a mental note to do something about the security of her own device when they were done here. “So, Bon Bon has protected her scroll. You can’t break it?”</p><p>“Not if I don’t want her to know what I’m doing,” Cinder replied. “Which I would rather keep between us, if it’s all the same to you.”</p><p>“Oh, believe me, I agree with you one hundred percent,” Sunset said. “I’m surprised that she had the wherewithal to think of something like that… but I’m surprised she had the guts to do what she did to my door as well.” She frowned. “If she’s that smart, why didn’t she hack our scrolls if she wanted to screw with Blake?”</p><p>“Perhaps she wanted to make a public statement?” Cinder suggested.</p><p>“I aim to make a pretty public statement with hacking,” Sunset said. “If that’s possible.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Cinder murmured. “I’m afraid that Plan A might not be workable under the current circumstances. However…”</p><p>Sunset waited for her to continue. She did not. “However… what?”</p><p>Cinder leaned back in her chair. “It’s hardly for me to say, is it? This is your revenge, after all, not mine.”</p><p>“You’re the one doing the work.”</p><p>“For you,” Cinder reminded her. “It isn’t for me to decide how to go about it. You direct; mine are simply the hands guided by your mind.”</p><p>Sunset snorted. “Okay, if that’s how you want to play it.” She bowed her head just a little, her ears descending into her mass of fiery hair. She cupped her chin with her fingers and pondered for a moment. If she couldn’t get access to Bon Bon’s device, then how to make her pay? It was possible that all plans built around electronic warfare were similar busts, and she would have to find a completely new approach, but Sunset was loath to give up so easily. </p><p>
  <em>Of course, there are other ways to hurt someone than with their own secrets, as Anon-a-Miss taught me very well. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Anon-a-Miss…</em>
</p><p>“What about Lyra’s scroll?” Sunset asked. “Can you get in there, or has Bon Bon protected that as well?”</p><p>“Lyra…”</p><p>“Heartstrings,” Sunset clarified. “Lyra Heartstrings.”</p><p>“A friend of hers.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Sunset said. “Can you do it?”</p><p>“Give me one second,” Cinder said, her fingers flying across the holographic interface. Sunset once more fell silent, letting her work, but she noticed that there was none of the growing consternation in Cinder’s look that had preceded her announcement of her failure to breach Bon Bon’s defences. Instead, she seemed perfectly at ease before she announced, “I’m in.”</p><p>Sunset smirked, shaking her head sadly. <em>Bon Bon, Bon Bon, Bon Bon; that was very naïve of you, wasn’t it?</em></p><p>“So?” Cinder asked. “What now?”</p><p>“Now,” Sunset said, “how about you let me drive for a little bit?” </p><p>Cinder pushed her chair away. “Be my guest,” she purred. </p><p>Sunset pulled her chair forwards, until she was sitting right in front of the screen. She took a moment to silently familiarise herself with what she was seeing on the screen in front of her. She was a little rusty with some of this stuff, but it swiftly came back to her. </p><p>She cracked her knuckles. “Okay, Miss Heartstrings,” she whispered, more to herself than to Cinder, “let’s see what you’ve been hiding.”</p><p>Cinder’s fingers had thumbed through the holographic display representing the different ‘keys’ on the board; Sunset’s fingers danced over them, a little more slowly but with more deftness, barely ‘touching’ the light and yet still controlling the flow of data as she sifted through all the details of Lyra Heartstrings’ life that stood revealed to her. </p><p>
  <em>What is it that you believe in, Lyra? That there is another world populated by – okay, let’s leave that be for now and find something that won’t affect my life so much to share with the class. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Actually, let’s stick a pin in the main reason why I’m here and find out how in Remnant you found out about Equestria.</em>
</p><p>“Is everything alright?”</p><p>“Of course,” Sunset replied. “Why wouldn’t everything be fine?”</p><p>“Because your ears have flattened,” Cinder observed.</p><p>Sunset looked pointlessly upwards, even though she couldn’t see her ears and had never been able to do so. “Well,” she said, trying to force them back up again, “that’s because they’re a little tired, that’s all.”</p><p>Cinder stared at her flatly. “Your ears are tired?”</p><p>Sunset looked at her. “Do you really want to have a conversation about honesty after what just happened with you?”</p><p>“Ah, touché,” Cinder replied, smirking a little. “Please, continue with whatever it is that is not concerning you.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Sunset said firmly, diving a little further into Lyra’s ill-informed speculation about the existence of a magical other world that just so happened to be accurate. </p><p>What she found was a melange of just about every nonsense going – plus the one thing that was true. Lyra, it transpired, believed in just about everything: parallel universes, giant alien robots, magical horses. Apparently, the last belief originated with a woman named Megan Williams, a farmer from Canterlot in the old kingdom of Mantle days before the Great War, who claimed to have visited the magical land of Equestria and helped the inhabitants there, the ponies and the princess who ruled them, to defeat a great evil. Sunset was rather sceptical about that; she had never heard of this Meghan Williams as she surely would have done if she had become a hero of Equestria, but she could believe the part about travelling through the mirror. It couldn’t be closed from the Equestrian side, after all, and there was nothing stopping anyone from blundering through it except the fact that most normal people didn’t try to run into the plinths of statues. </p><p>It appeared that, for whatever reason, Ms. Williams had played coy about the location of the portal that she had used to reach Equestria, which was the subject of much speculation by the handful of believers who had taken her words to heart. Lyra herself had-</p><p>“Oh, wow,” Sunset said, a grin splitting her face. “Oh, <em>wow</em>.”</p><p>Cinder leaned forward. “Something interesting?”</p><p>“When Lyra was thirteen,” Sunset said, “she was arrested trying to break into the Atlesian R&amp;D test bed at Crystal City because she thought they were hiding portals to other worlds there, along with the existence of aliens.”</p><p>Cinder’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”</p><p>“Really,” Sunset repeated. “Her scroll is full of notes about what went wrong and how she can do better next time.”</p><p>“She’s planning a next time?”</p><p>“Apparently,” Sunset replied. “She’s a true believer, after all; she won’t rest until the truth comes to light.”</p><p>Cinder chuckled. “'The truth'? And what truth is that?”</p><p>Sunset shrugged. “That we’re not alone amongst the stars, that there copies of our own world, filled with versions of ourselves that are not quite the same as us as close as a touch and as far away as the moon.”</p><p>“Well, isn’t that an idea,” Cinder murmured. “That would be… quite something, wouldn’t you say?”</p><p>“It would be something; I’m not sure that it would be something good,” Sunset muttered. “Imagine if you met the other you, and they were more successful than you are?”</p><p>Cinder thought about that for a moment. “I’d have to kill them,” she declared.</p><p>“You might not be able to, if they were better than you,” Sunset pointed out.</p><p>“You make an excellent point; it sounds positively dystopian,” Cinder conceded. “Although…”</p><p>“Although?”</p><p>“Surely you can’t deny that there’s a certain fascinating appeal to the idea of being able to see the road not taken?” Cinder asked. “Assuming for a moment that we didn’t have to interact with any other versions of us who might not be able to resist the urge to gloat, if we could just see what our other selves could have done or been if they’d made different choices.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t want to know,” Sunset declared.</p><p>“Really? Not even a little curious?”</p><p>“Why should I care? It’s not my life,” Sunset replied. “My life is the one I’m living, the one affected by my choices. Any choices that I didn’t make aren’t mine any more; they belong to someone else.” The unicorn who had remained in some other Equestria, a dutiful student of Princess Celestia, might yet bear the name of Sunset Shimmer, but she wasn’t her. </p><p>Not least because she suspected it would make her jealous. </p><p>Cinder shrugged. “Evidently, this Lyra doesn’t share your views upon the matter.”</p><p>“Judging by this, Lyra’s a sucker for just about any story that gets told to her,” Sunset said.</p><p>“I can’t say I’m too surprised,” Cinder observed.</p><p>“You don’t even know her.”</p><p>“I know the kind of person who trains to become a huntsman or huntress,” Cinder said. “Would-be heroes, people looking for a story to tell that will put them at the centre of great, world-shattering events, people hoping that the road ahead will give meaning to their lives, people who so desperately want for their choices to matter.”</p><p>“I hope you’re including yourself in this assessment,” Sunset said sharply. “Because as things stand, you sound a moment away from calling us all pathetic.”</p><p>“Oh, perish the thought,” Cinder murmured. “No, indeed, I’m no different… except, perhaps, in the scope of my ambitions. Trust me, I have no less desire to leave my mark upon the world than anyone here, and more than some. My point is simply that those who choose this path often have a certain way of thinking; it doesn’t surprise me that they are susceptible to believing certain things, especially if they think that they might attain greatness by revealing those things: uncovering the truth, toppling the conspiracy that has kept the world in shadow, freeing us all from the shackles of our ignorance.” She laughed, covering her mouth with one hand.</p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose in silent question.</p><p>“Oh, it’s nothing,” Cinder assured her. “It’s just… oh, poor girl, imagining that those are the dark secrets hiding in the shadows of the world.”</p><p>“You think they are… more prosaic than that?” Sunset said softly.</p><p>“I think if there is a conspiracy, it’s not hiding the existence of aliens,” Cinder declared.</p><p>Sunset’s brow furrowed. “I…” She hesitated, unsure of whether or not she ought to trust Cinder with this. “I know what you mean,” she said lamely, a neutral statement if ever there was one, but one that gave away no one’s secrets.</p><p>Cinder cocked her head a little to one side. “About what?”</p><p>“A lot of things,” Sunset said. “But… let me ask you something: do you believe in something like that? Not parallel worlds or alien life, but something… something dark, maybe, something that other people might find hard to credit.”</p><p>Cinder’s face was impassive. “Are you trying to tell me something, Sunset?”</p><p>“Maybe.”</p><p>“Go on then, tell me something,” Cinder urged. “What do you believe in?”</p><p>“I don’t know yet. I just know that I believe in something,” Sunset muttered. She hesitated. “I… I don’t trust Professor Ozpin.” That was about the limit of what she felt able to tell Cinder, and strangely, she thought that Cinder might be more receptive to it than any of her other friends, if only because Cinder was a Haven student.</p><p>Not that that would necessarily prevent her from being blinded by the reputation of the headmaster of Beacon.</p><p>Cinder stared into Sunset’s eyes for a moment. “I think you might be right to distrust him.”</p><p>“You do?” Sunset asked, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice. “Why?”</p><p>Cinder chuckled. “You’re astonished that I agree with you?”</p><p>“I’m curious why you agree with me,” Sunset said. She couldn’t help but add, “No one else does.”</p><p>“I’m not most people,” Cinder replied. “Like you, I have a bad feeling about that man. They say he has favourites: not every year, but some years, teams that he takes especial interest in. Team Coffee believe that they are among that number, but I’m not so sure. I think it’s Team Sapphire, and I’m not the only one who sees it that way, especially after your mission – your unsupervised mission. You haven’t heard it, but you’re the talk of the school.” She smiled, if only for a moment. “I worry for you. History shows that the old man’s favourites have a high mortality rate.”</p><p>“I know,” Sunset agreed. “It worries me too. I just don’t know what to do about it.”</p><p>“Keep your eyes open,” Cinder urged. “Keep your mind sharp. Make the smart choices when the time comes.” She grinned. “And in the meantime, take your revenge. What are you actually going to do, by the way, now that you know the truth about Lyra Heartstrings and her idiosyncratic beliefs?”</p><p>Sunset pursed her lips, allowing herself to be distracted away from the question of Professor Ozpin and other pastures that offered up a little more scope for action.</p><p>"When I was in my third year at Canterlot," she said, "and Rainbow Dash was in her fourth year, a lot of embarrassing little secrets started coming to light; someone going by the name Anon-a-Miss started sharing them across the school."</p><p>"And that was you?" Cinder asked.</p><p>"No," Sunset said firmly. "Of course, everyone <em>thought</em> it was me; Sunset Shimmer, up to her old tricks again. Sunset Shimmer, won't she ever learn? Sunset Shimmer, what's her problem?" <em>Sunset Shimmer, what can you expect from a faunus?</em> Sunset scowled. Even Flash had believed it was her, or affected too. He had left her around that time; her popularity had been plumbing new depths as a result of the false accusations made against her, and she wasn't worth the trouble to him anymore. "Eventually, the leaks stopped – and I never did find out who it was – but the damage was done by then. Everyone – and I mean <em>everyone</em> – believed that I'd set out to humiliate them all… and to be honest, I kind of wish I had sometimes. If they all believed that it was me, then perhaps-"</p><p>"Perhaps you should have been the monster they all thought you were," Cinder murmured. "A position that is not unreasonable."</p><p>"Stupid all the same," Sunset muttered.</p><p>"Not so stupid," Cinder replied. "After all, you're going to become that person now, aren't you?"</p><p>Sunset hesitated for a moment. A slow smile spread across her features. "It has… a certain appeal, don't you think? Taking the name they used to smear me and making it my own." She didn't know what, exactly, had inspired Bon Bon to trespass against her like this, or rather, she knew what had inspired it, but she didn't know what had made the other girl think that she could get away with it. Perhaps she thought that Sunset Shimmer had gone soft, rendered nice and cuddly by the friendship of nice and cuddly people until her claws had been quite filed down. Perhaps she thought that, after two times of it blowing up in her face, Sunset wouldn't have the nerve – or would have too much sense – to come back to the well a third time. But this wasn't Canterlot, and there was more at stake here than Sunset's ego or her desire for acclamation or even her jealousy of Rainbow and Twilight. Bon Bon had trespassed against Sunset, she had offended against Blake, and Sunset wasn't about to stand for that.</p><p>So she would do the thing that she had been accused of long ago, and Bon Bon would be reminded to know her place and keep her mouth shut.</p><p>"Oh, yes," Cinder purred. "It's positively delicious."</p><p>Sunset chuckled. "Get ready, Lyra," she said softly. "You're about to get exposed by Anon-a-Miss."</p><hr/><p>Rainbow stared down at her scroll, then snapped it shut hard.</p><p>
  <em>Anon-a-Miss. Great. Just great.</em>
</p><p>Twilight's gaze flickered down to her own scroll, then back up to Rainbow Dash. "What do you think?"</p><p>"You're the genius; you tell me what you think," Rainbow replied. "Is it even possible to have a parallel universe?"</p><p>Twilight's eyes narrowed. "That's not what I meant."</p><p>"I know, but I'd rather listen to you geek out about science than talk about this."</p><p>"Considering how bored you get listening to me talk about science, that says a lot," Twilight replied.</p><p>"I do not get bored listening to you."</p><p>"When I tried to describe the principles of your Wings of Harmony to you, you fell asleep!" Twilight reminded her.</p><p>Rainbow shifted uncomfortably. "Only the first time," she muttered defensively. "And that was because… I was really tired."</p><p>"Uh huh," Twilight said flatly. She waved her scroll. "What do you really think?"</p><p>Rainbow took a moment to think it over. She and Twilight were in the RSPT dorm room, standing by their beds; Penny and Ciel had gotten the message from Anon-a-Miss too – everyone had – but since neither of them had any history with it, Rainbow had left Ciel supervising Penny in the library while she and Twilight came back to the dorm to talk over the implications. "She told me that she didn't do it."</p><p>"At Canterlot?"</p><p>Rainbow nodded. "When we first got to Vale, when Penny met Ruby and Pyrrha, when Sunset eventually caught up with this at the arcade, she was terrified that I would tell her teammates about the stunts she pulled at Canterlot. She told me that she wasn't behind Anon-a-Miss."</p><p>Twilight nodded her head a little. "I must admit… I never bothered to chase down the source of the leaks the way I did when Sunset started sending us all of those messages. I just assumed, since she'd been responsible before… that feels like an oversight on my part now."</p><p>Rainbow waved that away. "That was years ago, Twilight, ancient history. We all assumed that Sunset was the one behind it; you can't blame yourself."</p><p>"Can't I?" Twilight asked. "Maybe I should. Maybe we should. Those accusations, the presumption of guilt… they ruined Sunset's life-"</p><p>"They ruined two years of Combat School, tops," Rainbow corrected. "Sunset's a team leader, she has great friends, and she's a top student; in what sense has her life been ruined?"</p><p>"She doesn't have Flash anymore," Twilight pointed out.</p><p>"Nobody ruined that relationship but Sunset," Rainbow insisted. "Just like nobody is stopping Sunset getting over it but Sunset. These things happen, we deal with it, and we keep moving forward. Like Sunset has… mostly. I don't think even she'd say that Anon-a-Miss ruined her life anymore."</p><p>"But you believe that it wasn't her?" Twilight asked. "At Canterlot, I mean?"</p><p>Rainbow shrugged. "It wasn't like she denied everything that she did. Just that one thing. I guess I don't see the point unless it was true."</p><p>"And now?"</p><p>"Oh, it's definitely Sunset now," Rainbow declared. "Who'd know about Anon-a-Miss except someone who was at Canterlot at that time?"</p><p>"Coincidence?" Twilight suggested.</p><p>"The General says there are no such things as coincidences, only connections you haven't made yet," Rainbow said. "It wasn't you, it wasn't me, Lyra wouldn't do this to herself, and Bon Bon wouldn't do it to her. So who does that leave? Flash? Ditzy? They're not the kind of people to do something like that."</p><p>"Trixie might," Twilight said quietly.</p><p>Rainbow had to nod her head at that. Trixie Lulamoon was a more or less amiable blowhard, but she could have a vindictive streak a mile wide if you crossed her. She'd held a grudge for an entire year after Twilight had beaten her in the talent contest, although nobody had known it until nine months later when Twilight's locker had exploded in her face and Trixie had popped out of hiding to yell 'Now we're even, Twilight Sparkle!' "Okay, maybe she would do it, maybe she even did it the last time, but why now, and to Lyra?"</p><p>"Why would Sunset do this to Lyra?" Twilight responded.</p><p>"Because Team Bluebell kicked Blake out?" Rainbow suggested. "Because they didn't stand by her?"</p><p>"Do you think it bothers her that much?"</p><p>Rainbow shrugged. "I don't know; she likes Blake."</p><p>"I know, but…" Twilight trailed off for a moment. "Let's not rush to judgement about this, okay? If what Sunset said in the arcade is true, then we already tarred her with the brush of false accusation once; I'd rather not put her through that again."</p><p>"Lyra might not keep her mouth shut," Rainbow said.</p><p>"No," Twilight agreed. "But even if it's only for the sake of our own consciences, I think we should."</p><p>Rainbow nodded. "Okay, you're right," she said. "We don't know that Sunset has done this, and for what it's worth, I believe she didn't do it the last time. But I'm going to go talk to her."</p><p>"What for?"</p><p>"To ask her if she did it," Rainbow said. "She told me the truth before; maybe she'll tell me again now. And maybe she'll even tell me why."</p><hr/><p>Rainbow Dash was waiting for them on the docking pad when they got off the Skybus, her arms folded and her expression verging upon a scowl. </p><p>“We need to talk,” she said bluntly, glowering at Sunset ever so slightly. </p><p>Cinder smirked. “So stern.”</p><p>Rainbow’s cerise eyes flickered momentarily towards her. “Who are you again?”</p><p>Cinder’s whole body stiffened. Her eyes widened momentarily. When she spoke again, her voice had lost all playfulness, and her words came in short, sharp snaps. “No one worthy of the notice of the Ace of Canterlot, it seems.” She took a step forward, glancing at Sunset. “I’ll leave you to it,” she hissed before stalking away down the path towards the school. </p><p>“Thank you,” Sunset said quietly. “For… all your help today.”</p><p>Cinder stopped, silent, her back to Sunset. “Anytime,” she said, her voice only softening a little. She resumed her course, her glass slippers clinking. </p><p>Sunset watched her retreating back for a moment as she grew smaller and smaller in Sunset’s sight. “It’s Cinder, by the way. Cinder Fall, you’ve met her before.”</p><p>“Right,” Rainbow said, her tone neutral. “Like I said, we need to talk.”</p><p>“What about?”</p><p>“Don’t be cute,” Rainbow snapped. “You know what.”</p><p>Sunset sidestepped around Rainbow Dash, forcing the Atlesian to follow her back towards the school. “Assume that I don’t.”</p><p>“No,” Rainbow said firmly. “I’m not going to play games with you; you know what we need to talk about.” She paused. “I thought you’d changed. I thought you were different.”</p><p>“I have changed,” Sunset insisted. “I am different.”</p><p>“Yeah, you weren’t Anon-a-Miss before, according to you-”</p><p>“I told you that I wasn’t Anon-a-Miss, and I meant it!”</p><p>“But you are now, aren’t you?” Rainbow demanded, stopping walking and squaring up to Sunset. </p><p>Sunset stopped too, thrusting her hands into the pockets of her jacket. Her tail swished behind her. She scuffed the toe of one boot upon the ground. The sun was setting, and their shadows were lengthening  “Yeah.”</p><p>Rainbow shook her head. “What the hell, Sunset? I thought-”</p><p>“I’m not the same person that I was!”</p><p>“No, you’re doing the things that you didn’t do before!”</p><p>“Get off my back for a second,” Sunset snapped. “I’m not doing this because I want to be Fall Formal Princess or because I need it to be on top or any of the other stupid reasons I did what I did back in Canterlot. Do you think I’m threatened by Lyra Heartstrings? Do you think I feel the need to bring her down for the sake of recognition? I’m the leader of Team Sapphire, for crying out loud, the world has its eyes on us, and who is she? Who’s Team Bluebell?” She took a deep breath, her chest rising and falling. “This was for Blake. This was for my friend. <em>That’s</em> how I’ve changed, <em>that</em>’s how I’m different.”</p><p>Rainbow frowned. “What does this have to do with Blake? Is this about the team? Are you going to go after each of them in turn?”</p><p>“I probably should; they deserve it,” Sunset replied. “But no. Bon Bon is the one who put that White Fang symbol on our door while we were away. She insulted Blake, she insulted my team, she insulted me, and she has to pay for it. For Blake’s sake.”</p><p>Rainbow blinked rapidly. “Bon Bon? Are you sure? <em>Bon Bon</em>?”</p><p>“That’s what I just said.”</p><p>“Why would she even… are you sure? How do you know?”</p><p>“Cinder told me.”</p><p>“Okay, how does Cinder know?”</p><p>“I trust her,” Sunset said. “I believe her.”</p><p>“But Bon Bon?” Rainbow said. “She never… why?”</p><p>“Why wouldn’t she take Blake back?” Sunset demanded.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Rainbow admitted. “She never had a problem with me.”</p><p>“Or she didn’t dare show it because you were the pride of the school,” Sunset suggested.</p><p>“Did she ever give you a hard time?”</p><p>“<em>Everyone</em> gave me a hard time,” Sunset reminded her. </p><p>“Right,” Rainbow muttered. “But even if it was Bon Bon, why go after Lyra?”</p><p> “The security on Bon Bon’s scroll was too tight; I couldn’t get in.”</p><p>“What’s Bon Bon doing with beefed up security on her scroll?”</p><p>“I don’t know, although I am a little curious to find out.”</p><p>“That’s not the point,” Rainbow said quickly. “The point is that you couldn’t get into Bon Bon’s scroll, so you decided to go after Lyra instead?”</p><p>Sunset shrugged. “They’re close; it will hurt Bon Bon to see Lyra upset.”</p><p>“Come on, Sunset, surely you can see how not cool that is!” Rainbow snapped. “Lyra didn’t do anything, to you or Blake; did you even ask Blake what she thought about all this before you did it?”</p><p>“No, why should I?”</p><p>“Because I’m pretty sure that she wouldn’t want this,” Rainbow growled.</p><p>“Blake doesn’t know what she wants, and what she wants isn’t always what’s best for her.”</p><p>“Oh, but you know what’s best for her, do you? And what’s best for Blake is humiliating someone who didn’t do anything to her. You know that, right?”</p><p>Sunset pouted. “Are you going to tell her?”</p><p>“Maybe I should,” Rainbow muttered. “But no. I’m not going to tell anyone. Anyone else who was at Canterlot – including Lyra <em>and</em> Bon Bon – will know it was you, but I won’t agree with them and they can’t prove it. But this is it, Sunset; Anon-a-Miss retires again, and this time, she stays retired, right? If this is just the start of you trying to stir up something-”</p><p>“I told you, that’s not who I am any more,” Sunset said sharply. “That’s not what this was about.”</p><p>Rainbow looked into Sunset’s eyes. “And that’s why I won’t say anything. But if this is all… if this keeps up, then I’ll air all your dirty laundry to Ruby and Pyrrha and Jaune and see what they think of you then.”</p><p>Sunset swallowed. Her chest felt tight, and her stomach felt cold. “And if Lyra responds, or Bon Bon?”</p><p>“Then you brought it on yourself,” Rainbow said sharply. “What Bon Bon did wasn’t right, and if she makes a big deal out of it, I’ll try and persuade her to let it go, but… if you’ve changed, then you have to act like it.”</p><p>“You mean you want me to take it?” Sunset demanded. “You want <em>Blake</em> to take it?”</p><p>“We’re faunus; sometimes we’ve got no choice but to take it,” Rainbow hissed. “You know that better than I do.”</p><p>“When was the last time you took it, Rainbow Dash?” Sunset demanded.</p><p>Rainbow didn’t reply. She clenched her jaw and said nothing. She looked away, scratching the back of her head with one hand. “That… that’s fair enough, I guess,” she admitted. “But that doesn’t change the fact that Lyra’s innocent. If you have to get back at Bon Bon, then challenge her to a duel or something, kick her ass in the ring.”</p><p>“I can kick her ass in the ring any time I want; revenge ought to be something special.”</p><p>“Well, that’s too bad,” Rainbow snapped. “I’m serious, Sunset, no more. Unless you want me to think that you haven’t changed as much as I thought.”</p><p>Sunset hesitated. She didn’t want to give her word to Rainbow Dash on this, if only because she thought that she might not be able to keep it. She might not <em>want</em> to keep it. Like Rainbow said, those – like Lyra and Bon Bon – who had been at Canterlot would associate her with Anon-a-Miss; that was why she’d chosen the name, so that they would know it was her, even as they couldn’t prove it. If Bon Bon sought revenge for Sunset’s revenge, or if Lyra wanted payback, then she didn’t want to handcuff herself out of all freedom to respond. </p><p>But Rainbow still had the potential to make life difficult for her; even now. Ruby, Pyrrha, and Jaune might not initially believe the things that she had done – actually, Jaune probably wouldn’t have much trouble with it – but once Twilight showed them the proof… she still needed Rainbow Dash on her side. </p><p>“I saved Twilight’s life,” Sunset reminded her. “You said you owed me.”</p><p>“You really want to use that now?” Rainbow asked. “Over this?”</p><p>That was a very good point. There was no telling when having Rainbow in her debt might come in handy. “No,” she conceded. “I really did this for Blake, you know. This wasn’t about me. This was about… she didn’t deserve it.”</p><p>“I know,” Rainbow said. “Just like I know she wouldn’t want this.”</p><p>“Fine,” she said, because she didn’t have a lot of other choices. “This is the end of it.”</p><p>She just hoped that Bon Bon felt the same way.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0044"><h2>44. Consequences of Anon-a-Miss</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Bon Bon is consumed with thoughts of revenge</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Consequences of Anon-a-Miss</p><p> </p><p>There was a knock on the bathroom door. </p><p>“Go away!” Lyra said. She hesitated. “Unless you really need to go, in which case, could you not look at me when you come in?”</p><p>“No, Lyra, I don’t need to use the bathroom,” Dove said patiently. “I want to talk to you.”</p><p>“Talk to me about what? About how much of a freak I am? About how I’m a total space cadet and a loser?” Lyra demanded.</p><p>There was silence from the other side of the door for a moment. “No. I want to talk to you about how you’re holding up.”</p><p>“How I’m holding up?” Lyra repeated. “I’ll tell you how I’m holding up-”</p><p>“Well, if you want to talk, can we both be in the same room while we do it?” Dove asked.</p><p>Lyra hesitated, pouting for all that Dove couldn’t see her doing it… and that was the thing, wasn’t it? Dove couldn’t see her. He couldn’t see her, and he’d gotten her to respond in such a way that she almost had to let him in, whether she wanted to or not.</p><p>She crossed her arms. “Fine. Come in. But just you.”</p><p>“Are you sure?” Dove asked. “Bon Bon-”</p><p>“Just you,” Lyra repeated.</p><p>“Okay,” Dove said, his voice gentle and soft. “Just me.” </p><p>The handle to the bathroom door turned slowly, and Dove stepped into the room cautiously, with a soft tread that could barely be heard upon the tiles. He shut the door after him and sidled across the bathroom until he was standing above where Lyra sat upon the side of the bath.</p><p>He cast a shadow over her. She didn’t meet his eyes; she didn’t even look at him. She didn’t dare to look at him, for fear of what she might see there. </p><p>Dove knelt down in front of her. “Lyra, will you please look at me?”</p><p>Lyra did not look. “Why should I?”</p><p>“Because… because it wounds me to think that you fear me, when you need not. You have no need to fear my judgement, not ever.”</p><p>Dove Bronzewing was a bit of an odd duck. Sometimes, he could be pompous and stuff; sometimes, he could be completely clueless about the most basic things… and then, other times, he could come out with stuff like that with a completely straight face – no, not just a straight face; Dove wasn’t managing to sound sincere while he said these things, he <em>was</em> sincere, and that… people didn’t talk like that any more. Sure, it was a little odd, but it was also kind of wonderful too. Like being in a story.</p><p>Like being in a better class of story than the one it felt like she was trapped in right now. </p><p>Lyra looked at him. Dove’s blue eyes were as sincere as his tone. There was no judgement there, no mockery. He didn’t care what she believed. He only cared how she was. </p><p>Amber, whoever she was, wherever she was, was really a very lucky girl. If she still lived, then she was a fool to have left a boy like this behind. </p><p>“Hey,” she murmured.</p><p>“Hey,” he replied, his voice barely a whisper. “How are you doing?”</p><p>Lyra sighed and looked down at the scroll she was holding in one hand. “Someone has set up a site that allows anyone to report sightings of alien robots, and it will send notifications to my scroll. I’m getting bombarded with anonymous tips; most of them are reporting sightings of a weirdo who believes in alien robots. I’m a laughing stock.”</p><p>“With who?” Dove asked.</p><p>“'With who'?” Lyra repeated. “With the schools, who else? With the whole student body of four academies!”</p><p>“People you don’t know and were probably never going to know,” Dove replied. “Does it really matter what strangers think of you?”</p><p>“Yes, it matters!” Lyra replied. “This was… yes, I believe in that, and I believe that there are other worlds out there with other versions of ourselves, and in one of those other worlds, the versions of us are magical talking horses, but that doesn’t mean I wanted everyone to know that’s what I thought! I didn’t even want you guys to know! Not even Bon Bon knew half of this stuff! Plus, everyone knows I have a criminal record now.”</p><p>“A juvenile record,” Dove said. “It’s not like you were in the White Fang.”</p><p>“You wouldn’t know that from some of these messages telling me I’m not fit to be a huntress,” Lyra replied. “Maybe they’re right. I mean, it’s not even like I’m that good at it.”</p><p>“You’re getting better,” Dove assured her.</p><p>“Am I?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Then why is Jaune pulling ahead of me?”</p><p>“Because he’s got Pyrrha Nikos to teach him; you’re stuck with me,” Dove said.</p><p>“Am I stuck with you?” Lyra asked. “Still?”</p><p>Dove frowned. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“It doesn’t bother you?” Lyra asked. “You don’t think I’m crazy?”</p><p>Dove was silent for a moment. “Amber… she once told me that her mother was a witch. She insisted on it. I never believed her, but it never bothered me that she thought so. I don’t believe you; I can’t imagine… but that doesn’t mean you’re wrong, just like it didn’t mean that Amber was wrong. I don’t believe, but I don’t assume that I have all the answers.” He reached out and took her hands. “The only thing I do know is that no one who really cares about you will be driven away by this. Your real friends, the ones who support you, will stay by your side, no matter what.”</p><p>Lyra sighed once more. “Thanks, Dove,” she said. “I just… I just wish that was enough to make me feel better. I mean, it does, a little, but… how am I supposed to face the rest of the school on Monday?”</p><p>“With us?” Dove suggested.</p><p>Lyra smiled, albeit a little wanly. “Thanks, Dove, but I don’t… I’m not sure that’s going to be enough.”</p><p>Dove squeezed her hands. “I’m sorry for that, not least because it’s all I’ve got. I’m sorry that there’s nothing more that I can do, nothing else that I can do, but I promise that, no matter what, I’ll be right here.”</p><hr/><p>“You.”</p><p>Rainbow’s ears pricked up. It was Saturday morning, and Team RSPT had – for the second time – usurped the place at the breakfast table usually reserved for Team YRDN. Or Team YRBN now. Whichever team they were, even if Blake was part of that team now, Rainbow wasn’t feeling guilty about it. If they wanted their seats to be free at breakfast, they ought to get up earlier. </p><p>The shadow falling over her breakfast – scrambled egg on toast – made Rainbow twist around in her seat. Bon Bon loomed over her, dressed in a white blouse with a blue frilly collar and an equally frilly white skirt with blue and yellow stripes just above the hem.</p><p>It was honestly making her attempts to glower seem a lot less intimidating than her intent.</p><p>She was not glowering at Rainbow Dash. Her gaze passed over her head and onto Sunset Shimmer sitting opposite her at the table. </p><p>
  <em>Big surprise, huh?</em>
</p><p>Sunset took a theatrically long time chewing on her current mouthful of grapefruit before swallowing. “Can I help you?”</p><p>“You’ve helped enough,” Bon Bon snarled, fists clenched by her sides.</p><p>Rainbow didn’t like it – or like to admit it – but Sunset managed to look reasonably innocent as she spread her hands out on either side of her. “What did I do?”</p><p>“You know exactly what you did!” Bon Bon snapped. “Did you think you could just use the same name, and we wouldn’t remember?! Do you see Lyra over there with us?!”</p><p>Rainbow followed Bon Bon’s pointing hand. Dove and Sky were waiting over at the other table, but there was no sign of Lyra. </p><p>“She doesn’t want to be seen because everybody thinks she’s crazy, thanks to you!”</p><p>“Well, she does believe some pretty out there stuff,” Sunset muttered.</p><p>“Sunset,” Pyrrha said reproachfully. Her face was disfigured by a frown. “What happened to Lyra was very cruel, but you can’t mean to accuse Sunset-”</p><p>“Anon-a-Miss,” Bon Bon snapped. “She even went by Anon-a-Miss just like she did in Canterlot!”</p><p>“Sunset?” Ruby asked, her voice soft and quiet. “What is she talking about?”</p><p>Rainbow couldn’t help but wonder how hard – or not – it was for Sunset to pretend to be outraged at being accused of something that she knew full well that she had done. Her ears flattened down onto the top of her head, and she bared her teeth as she rose to her feet, knuckles resting upon the tabletop. “She’s lying, Ruby. She’s repeating false accusations made against me.” She practically spat the word false in Bon Bon’s face. “You’ve got a lot of nerve to come here, in front of my teammates, repeating lies and slanders made against me.”</p><p>“I know it was you,” Bon Bon replied. “Everybody knows that it was you.”</p><p>“Everybody was wrong.”</p><p>“This is a very serious accusation to make without proof,” Ciel said.</p><p>“I agree,” Pyrrha said, quietly but firmly. “Do you have any proof?”</p><p>Bon Bon froze, her eyes widening a little. “I… everyone knows!” she cried. “Rainbow Dash, Twilight, tell her!”</p><p>Rainbow got to her feet. “Let’s take a walk, huh, Bon Bon?”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Come on,” Rainbow said, taking Bon Bon by the arm and tugging her gently but irresistibly towards the exit from the dining hall.</p><p>“Rainbow Dash, what are you doing?” Bon Bon demanded. “Let go of me!”</p><p>Rainbow did not let her go, nor did she say anything in reply until the two of them had, one of them more reluctantly than the other, gotten outside of the cafeteria, and into the morning sunlight. </p><p>Rainbow pulled Bon Bon out of the path of the other students staggering in for breakfast; only then did she release her grip on Bon Bon’s arm. </p><p>“Thank you!” Bon Bon snapped. “What the hell are you doing?”</p><p>“Getting you out here where we can talk in private,” Rainbow said. “Or at least not in front of everybody.”</p><p>Bon Bon’s eyes narrowed. “What do we have to talk about, except maybe why you didn’t back me up back there?”</p><p>“Because Ciel’s right; it is a big accusation to make against someone without proof.”</p><p>Bon Bon let out a bitter laugh. “Oh, come on! You were as loud in accusing Sunset as anyone.”</p><p>“That doesn’t mean that I was right,” Rainbow replied.</p><p>“So you really think that she didn’t do it?” Bon Bon demanded. “More to the point, do you really think that she didn’t do that to Lyra? Who else would it have been?”</p><p>“What happened to Lyra was a jackass move,” Rainbow said. “But… drop it, Bon Bon.”</p><p>“Why should I?” Bon Bon demanded. “Lyra didn’t deserve that.”</p><p>“And Blake didn’t deserve to have the White Fang symbol painted on her door,” Rainbow said sharply.</p><p>Bon Bon’s eyes widened. “How… is that what this is all about?”</p><p>“So it <em>was</em> you?”</p><p>“And it <em>was</em> Sunset,” Bon Bon growled. “Are you… covering for her?”</p><p>Rainbow was silent for a moment. “I can’t prove anything,” she said, and kind of hated herself for how much of a weasel thing to say that sounded like.</p><p>“And you don’t want to, do you?”</p><p>Rainbow met Bon Bon’s gaze levelly. “Why did you do it?” she demanded.</p><p>“Because she’s White Fang, in spite of what people say!”</p><p>“Blake was an undercover Atlesian-”</p><p>“Oh, the hell she was!” Bon Bon snapped. “She’s White Fang-”</p><p>“She’s a faunus; there’s a difference!” Rainbow growled.</p><p>“I’m not a racist, Dash.”</p><p>“Really? You’re starting to sound a little bit like one to me.”</p><p>“You hate the White Fang more than any human I know, so why do you care about Blake Belladonna all of a sudden?”</p><p>Rainbow folded her arms. “Because I think… I think that she’s got what it takes. I think she’s made of the right stuff, okay? I’m trying to convince her that us Atlesians aren’t a bunch of prejudiced jerks, and I’m really glad that she doesn’t know what you did because it really wouldn’t help.”</p><p>“And that justifies what Sunset did to Lyra?”</p><p>“No, but… and why do you have special security on your scroll?”</p><p>“Why is that any of your business?”</p><p>“I don’t know. I just feel like I don’t know you anymore.”</p><p>“Maybe you never knew me at all!” Bon Bon yelled. She took a deep breath. “Tell Sunset that this isn’t over.”</p><p>“What are you going to do?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>“I’m hardly going to tell you, am I?”</p><p>Rainbow was silent for a moment. “I can’t stop you,” she said, “but I’m going to ask you to leave Blake out of it. She’s a good person, and she’s not our enemy. She doesn’t deserve to get hounded for mistakes that she made.”</p><p>“But Lyra does?”</p><p>“I didn’t say that,” Rainbow said firmly. “Please, Bon Bon, let it go. I’m sorry, but if you both put this behind you, then…”</p><p>Bon Bon hesitated. “I… wish that I could trust you, Rainbow Dash,” she said, “but you…” She frowned. “I’m sorry,” she said, and turned away, walking briskly away from the dining hall and towards the dorm rooms. </p><p>Rainbow’s gaze followed her as she retreated. </p><p>She had a very uncomfortable feeling that this wasn’t over yet.</p><p>And she didn’t like it one bit. </p><hr/><p>Bon Bon closed her eyes for a moment as she walked away. She really did wish that she could trust Rainbow Dash. She wished that she could believe that Blake was harmless. But she was too enmeshed in web upon web of conflicting loyalties to blithely believe that someone who had once been White Fang was now free of all loyalties to them, and Rainbow Dash was far, far too close to General Ironwood to be trustworthy. She would never believe the things that Bon Bon already knew to be true. </p><p>And even if she did believe, she might well side with him anyway. </p><p>Bon Bon had undertaken this mission because she believed in what she was doing, but there were times when she lamented the toll that it had taken on her: the secrets, the lies, the service to a cause with murderous designs, the fact that she might have to help carry those designs forward. The fact that Lyra was in harm’s way. </p><p>Of all those regrets and misgivings, the fact that she couldn’t trust anyone was quite a minor one, and yet, it was the one that she found herself focussing on as she walked away.</p><p>That, and her anger at Sunset Shimmer. She… she didn’t know what she was going to do about her. Or what she was supposed to do about her. Was she allowed to retaliate? Was she supposed to retaliate? There were times when Bon Bon thought that Sunset might be bulletproof, but then she’d been instructed to graffiti the SAPR door with the White Fang symbol. Not that Bon Bon had minded; Blake Belladonna didn’t belong here after all, but it had been a strange request nonetheless. </p><p>And it had gotten Lyra hurt in consequence. </p><p>
  <em>Sunset tried to hack my scroll, found she couldn’t, and so she settled for hurting Lyra to get to me.</em>
</p><p>It was deeply unfortunate, but it wasn’t as though Bon Bon didn’t need to keep her scroll secure. There were secrets there that would do more than embarrass her if they came out. </p><p>But what to do about it? </p><p>What to do now?</p><p>“Bon Bon!” Dove cried, his footsteps pounding on the pavement as he ran after her. “Wait!”</p><p>Bon Bon turned to face him. She put a smile on her face. “Hey, Dove. Are you done already? You probably shouldn’t have left Sky in there all by himself, you know?”</p><p>Dove stopped. The two of them were almost of a height, and so he was able to look directly into her eyes without looking down on her. “You don’t have to fake a smile if it’s not what you feel,” he said. “Not for me, or anyone else. You don’t need to be ashamed of how you really feel.”</p><p><em>I can’t tell anyone how I really feel, any more than I can tell them who I really serve.</em> “What makes you think I’m faking this smile?”</p><p>“I don’t see how you could be smiling so soon after yelling,” Dove pointed out.</p><p>Bon Bon chuckled. “Well, you’ve got me there, Dove.”</p><p>Dove’s face was crinkled with worry as he put one hand on Bon Bon’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”</p><p>“It’s not me who got attacked,” Bon Bon pointed out.</p><p>“No,” Dove agreed. “But all the same, are you okay?”</p><p>Bon Bon hesitated for a moment. “No,” she admitted. “I’m angry.”</p><p>Dove frowned. “I don’t… I’m not sure that revenge… I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said. “I’m not sure that it ever ends well, but… if there’s anything that I can do, you only have to ask.”</p><p>Bon Bon’s eyebrows rose. “You think that it would be a bad idea for me to do anything, but if I ask you to, you’ll help me do it anyway?”</p><p>“Of course,” Dove said, as though it was her bemusement that was strange and not his offer. “Because you’re my teammate, and my friend, and I won’t abandon you, however much I might disagree with what you’re doing.”</p><p>The smile returned to Bon Bon’s face, and this time, it was genuine. “You’re a really sweet guy, you know that?” Maybe he wasn’t the smartest guy, but in Bon Bon’s opinion, he was definitely the nicest. They were lucky to have him on their team now. “But you don’t need to get mixed up in this. I don’t want to turn this into a feud between Team Bluebell and Team Sapphire. Or Team Iron. Or Team Rosepetal.” <em>If this is between anyone, it’s between me and Sunset. Or Blake. Or both.</em> “I can handle this.”</p><p>“Are you sure?”</p><p>“Yes,” Bon Bon assured him. “The last thing I want is to cause trouble for you guys.” She reached up and took his hand, pulling it gently off her shoulder, clasping it between her palms. “It was very chivalrous of you to offer,” she declared, with absolute sincerity. “But this… this is my business, and mine alone.”</p><p>“Right,” Dove said. “Are you…?” He stopped himself. “Right. I trust you. I just wish there was something I could do to help Lyra feel better.”</p><p>“Just be yourself,” Bon Bon told him. “Now go finish breakfast and keep Sky company.”</p><p>Dove nodded. “Right. Good luck.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Bon Bon said as she watched him head back the way that he’d come, at a slower and more dignified pace. </p><p>She lingered on the spot for a moment, wracked with indecision, uncertain of what she ought to do, of what she was expected to do, of what she would be allowed to do. </p><p>And of what she wanted to do, which ought to have been the most important thing but somehow was not. </p><p>“It’s terrible the way they fool everybody, isn’t it?”</p><p>Bon Bon turned around, just in time to see Cardin Winchester step out of the shadows of the corner around which he had, apparently, been hiding.</p><p>Bon Bon took a step back. “What do you want?”</p><p>“What, do I smell?” Cardin asked. “Come on, I just want to talk.”</p><p>Bon Bon stared at him. She had never had anything to do with Cardin Winchester before, and she wasn’t certain that she wanted anything to do with him now. “What do we have to talk about?”</p><p>“Blake,” he said. “Sunset.” He hesitated. “When I arrived here, I didn’t think that faunus belonged anywhere at Beacon. Now… here’s what I know right now: a White Fang terrorist has absolutely no business at Beacon, no business bearing arms, no business walking free anywhere in Vale. There’s nothing I can do about the last two, but if she can be gotten out of Beacon, that’s good enough for me.”</p><p>Bon Bon was silent for a moment. “And Sunset Shimmer?” she prompted.</p><p>Cardin shook his head. “I don’t know how those two have gotten everyone believing they’re so good,” he said. “I don’t know why more people don’t see them for what they really are. Sunset might not be a terrorist, but she’s got a mean streak in her. Petty. Vindictive.” He snorted. “It takes one to know one. You’ve just had a taste of it, haven’t you?”</p><p>“Maybe,” Bon Bon said warily.</p><p>“And you want to do something about it, right?” Cardin asked.</p><p>“Maybe.”</p><p>“I’m going to need a yes or no answer on that one,” Cardin said, with a degree of exasperation.</p><p>Bon Bon hesitated. <em>Well, that video </em>was<em> supposed to get Blake out of the way.</em> “Yes,” she said. “I want Blake gone, and I want Sunset… Sunset hurt someone I care about.”</p><p>Cardin nodded. “Good,” he said. “I’m glad I’m not the only one around here who sees sense.”</p><p>“Do you have a plan?” Bon Bon asked.</p><p>Cardin smirked. “You know, I just might.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0045"><h2>45. Saturday Night Combat Club</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Professor Goodwitch ruminates; Pyrrha and Yang fight.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Saturday Night Combat Club</p><p> </p><p>Glynda Goodwitch had broken her fast in her office – instant porridge, made in the plastic bowl that it had come in, with water from the kettle that she kept in one of her desk drawers. Now, she dumped the bowl, and the plastic spoon that had come with it, in the bin and rested her hands upon her desk. </p><p>She had a decision to make. </p><p>She’d been putting it off for a week already, ever since Miss Xiao Long had come to see her after the end of her mission. </p><p>
  <em>The door hit the wall with an audible bang that would have startled someone with more sensitive nerves than Glynda Goodwitch. She looked up in time to see Miss Xiao Long, faint trails of smoke rising from the top of her hair, standing in the doorway. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Goodwitch raised one eyebrow. “Generally, students knock on my door before they come in, Miss Xiao Long, and then they open the door with a little less brute force.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yang stood in the doorway, the smoke continuing to rise from out of her hair, which was gleaming a little brighter than usual. Her eyes flashed red; at least, they did for a moment before she closed her eyes, screwing them up tight. The smoke ceased to rise, and when Yang opened her eyes again, they were her usual lilac shade. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Can I come in, Professor?” Yang asked, in a voice that she was keeping calm and controlled with what must have taken a lot of effort for her. </em>
</p><p><em>Goodwitch gestured to the seat in front of her desk. “Please, Miss Xiao Long, come in and take a seat.” She wasn’t all that happy about the damage that had probably been done to her wall – indeed, as Yang walked in and shut the door behind her, Glynda could see a dent in the plaster – but it wasn’t something she was going to get upset about. For all that the students here were training to be the defenders of the world, they were still young men and women, with all that implied. Sometimes, they got upset; sometimes, they got </em>very<em> upset; sometimes, they even had reason to be out of sorts, and when they did, the best thing a teacher could do was be sympathetic. Even when the reasons were not so good, they were simply acting as they had been fashioned by the gods. There was little point in railing against the fact. </em></p><p>
  <em>Yang said nothing as she walked inside Goodwitch’s office and sat down on the other side of the desk. Her hands, clenched into fists, were the only sign that she was not as calm as she was now trying to seem. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Now, Miss Xiao Long,” Goodwitch said, “what is it that you wanted to see me about?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em> “I want to know what the hell’s going on, Professor!” Yang cried, her voice rising once again as control of it slipped out of her grasp. She winced, possibly at that same loss of control, and her voice became quieter. “I want to know why Team Sapphire were sent on a mission without a huntsmen supervising them, and I want to know why a mission to repair a railway line ended up with them tangling with Roman Torchwick and the White Fang.” She took a deep breath. “I want to know if that was meant to happen, and why.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Glynda thanked the gods that she had a good poker face; she kept it thoroughly expressionless as she looked Yang over the top of her spectacles. “I must advise you, Miss Xiao Long, that complaints about so-called special treatment received by another team-”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“This isn’t about me being jealous, Professor!” Yang cried. “This is about me wanting to know the truth. This is about my sister. This is about the fact that the world seems a hell of a lot more dangerous than it was when the year began, and it seems like Ruby is in the middle of it!” She took a deep breath. “I want to know what’s going on, Professor.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Goodwitch hated the way her voice sounded as she replied: rote, mechanical. Unnatural. Devoid of feeling. And yet, she could make it sound no other way as she answered in an utterly disingenuous fashion. “Team Sapphire were assigned a training mission to accompany a Valish Railtrack repair team and protect them in the course of their work. Upon their return journey, they were ambushed by members of the White Fang and by Roman Torchwick.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yang frowned. “With all…” She trailed off, licking her lips. “That’s half the story, Professor, and you know it. Why wasn’t Team Sapphire accompanied by a licensed huntsman like we were?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Goodwitch felt mildly ill, as if something had disagreed with her stomach. “The danger was not thought severe enough as to require it,” she said softly.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Not dangerous enough? With the White Fang operating in the Forever Fall?” Yang’s chest rose and fell with her breath. “And they weren’t coming straight home after the job was done. They met up with Team Rosepetal, and they came back together on an Atlesian military train. They were hoping to get ambushed, weren’t they? They were hoping to get into a fight so they could capture Torchwick.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You would have to ask the members of Teams Sapphire and Rosepetal-”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I don’t need to ask; I know my sister,” Yang declared. “What I have to ask is… did Professor Ozpin mean for all of that to happen?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Even if Glynda had been able to be completely honest with Yang, she would still have struggled to answer that question truthfully. She had worked with Professor Ozpin for many years, for longer than Miss Xiao Long had been alive, and she still wouldn’t claim to know the workings of his mind. Nobody truly understood the way he thought; how could they? The best that they could do was guess. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Her brow furrowed just a little. “Where did you get that idea from, Miss Xiao Long?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yang shuffled uncomfortably on her seat. Her fist clenched even tighter, which Glynda wouldn’t have believed was possible. Her voice became a little hoarse as she replied, “Just before the semester started, Raven came to see me.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Goodwitch’s eyebrows rose. “Your mother-”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“My mother’s name was Summer Rose, Professor, and she’s been dead more than ten years now,” Yang declared.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Of course,” Goodwitch murmured. “I apologise, Miss Xiao Long.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“It’s okay, Professor; I shouldn’t have… it’s just a touchy subject, you know?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I understand,” Goodwitch said, her voice soft and calm. “But, to be sure I understand you correctly, Raven Branwen was here? In this school?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yang nodded. “She spoke to me, and Ruby.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I see,” Goodwitch murmured. “And what did she say to you?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yang looked up, and met Glynda’s gaze once more. “She warned me,” she said, “warned both of us, about Professor Ozpin. She said that he’d start using Ruby the way that he used Mom. She said… she said that it would start with training missions and favours. And so… thinking about what happened… I can’t help but wonder, you know? Professor, is this what Raven warned us about?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Glynda was silent for a moment, collecting her thoughts without giving voice to any of them. “It is not my place, Miss Xiao Long, to tell you what to think about Raven Branwen. All I can say is that there is no one in the faculty of this school who harbours any ill intent towards Ruby, or any of her teammates, or any of our other students here. What happened on Team Sapphire’s mission was unfortunate, but it was never intended. Not by Professor Ozpin, and certainly not by me.”</em>
</p><p>She had sent Yang away without an answer. She had, as much as she disliked thinking about it now, played upon Miss Xiao Long’s trust and persuaded her that there was nothing to worry about.</p><p>There was, she hoped, less to fear than Raven might have thought; shame had made her paranoid, in Goodwitch’s opinion as a psychologist… but that was not the same thing as there being nothing to fear.</p><p>She, for instance, feared – a little – that Professor Ozpin had intended precisely this. Mister Arc forced to take a life, Miss Shimmer come close to sacrificing hers. Yes, the capture of Torchwick had been an accomplishment, but could it not have been left to some of James’ vaunted specialists? </p><p>For that matter, what was James thinking, throwing his own students into the fire like this?</p><p>Glynda shook her head. James would do what he thought was best; he always did. The same could be said of Professor Ozpin, but the difference was that she worked for Professor Ozpin; her strength was his, and his honour was hers, as they said in Mistral.</p><p>These were her students too. Their fate would rest upon Glynda’s shoulders as much as upon those of Professor Ozpin. </p><p>Especially now that Miss Xiao Long had come to see her, asked for the truth from her, and trusted her when she said that there was nothing to be afraid of. </p><p>An answer that Glynda had cause to reconsider every day since she had given it. </p><p>She got up from her desk and left her office. Left the main school building in which she had her office, walking across the courtyard towards the Emerald Tower that dominated the skyline and loomed above the rest of Beacon. It was a Saturday, traditionally a day on which the students might enjoy a lazier morning than that was usually afforded to them, and so, the courtyard was not as crowded as it might otherwise have been. Nevertheless, there were still some students, from what academy could not be told, as they were out of uniform, headed this way or that, or simply sprawled out at leisure upon the stone like lizards sunning themselves in the heat of the day. None of them paid Goodwitch any mind, nor did she stop to interact with any of them as she walked briskly, her cape billowing out a little behind her and her heels tapping upon the stone. </p><p>The number of Atlesian guards upon the tower had increased since the arrival of Ironwood’s forces, but the guard detail knew her well enough not to hinder her progress – the tower was open to the public, in any event – as she climbed the steps and entered the glowing green interior of the tower. </p><p>She entered one of the elevators and clasped her hands behind her back as it began the climb upwards towards the highest level, where she had no doubt that she would find Professor Ozpin. He didn’t leave his office much, not nearly as much as he ought to have done, if truth be told; despite all the duties that she had willingly accepted to ease his burdens, he still had far too much to do for any one man. </p><p>And yet, she could not help him any more. </p><p>In fact, she was on her way up to add to his burdens, not to relieve them. </p><p>She had lied to Miss Xiao Long. She would have been lying to herself if she had said that Professor Ozpin had no especial interest in Team SAPR. He saw them as gifted, extraordinary. Glynda could not deny their skill – either individually or as a team – although she felt their synergy was less than the sum of its parts. Professor Ozpin did not see it that way, or else it didn’t concern him. She could not claim to know his whole mind, but she knew enough to say that he saw the four of them as the future. </p><p>She had not spoken entirely falsely to Miss Xiao Long. Professor Ozpin’s interest in Team SAPR was, as yet, of a rather distant kind. He had not used them as he had used Team STRQ; he had not sought to take a personal hand in any of their educations as he had with Team STRQ. He had watched them, but from a distance… even the late mission that had Yang so concerned had been first at their own initiative. He knew that they had been talking with James’ Team RSPT, and so, he had provided them with a means to get involved. </p><p>It was not what Raven feared it was – yet. She might say that it was bad enough, and in the future. </p><p>Glynda’s mind turned to murky depths, to shadowed rooms, and to a girl in a glass coffin. </p><p>
  <em>Not yet. Not… yet.</em>
</p><p>The elevator juddered to a halt, and the doors opened to admit the light from the great windows on the other side of the office. </p><p>Professor Ozpin was exactly where she had expected to see him: at his desk, his back bent as he pored over some report or other. It was a standing joke amongst the faculty that Glynda did all the real work of running the school, but if that was true, it was only to allow Professor Ozpin to concentrate his energies upon running the defence of Vale and the world. </p><p>He looked up, alerted to her presence by the sound of her boots upon the office floor. “Ah, Glynda,” he said. “What a pleasant surprise.”</p><p>“I hope that I’m not interrupting anything important, Professor,” Glynda said.</p><p>“Actually, I was just finished with this particular task,” Professor Ozpin replied. “It appears that contact with Badger’s Drift has been lost. Their relay tower isn’t responding.”</p><p>“Technical issues?” Goodwitch asked.</p><p>“Hopefully, that’s all it is,” Professor Ozpin agreed. “But… Badger’s Drift was one of the places reporting grimm concentrations nearby. A huntsman agreed to take on the job of guarding it, but…”</p><p>“Of course,” Goodwitch replied softly. Sometimes, a huntsman was simply not sufficient. “You’re going to send someone to investigate?”</p><p>“Someone will have to,” Professor Ozpin agreed. “I thought that it might make a suitable training mission: get in, discover the truth, get out again.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Goodwitch murmured. “And did you have a team in mind?” she asked.</p><p>Professor Ozpin hesitated. “I had considered Team Sapphire,” he admitted.</p><p>Goodwitch pursed her lips. “I… don’t think that’s a good idea. Not yet.”</p><p>Professor Ozpin leaned back in his chair. “I don’t doubt you, Glynda, but I’d be interested in hearing your reasoning?”</p><p>“To begin with, they only returned from a mission last week,” Glynda reminded him. “Mister Arc is still working through what happened to him there, and I rather wish Miss Shimmer would pay me a visit too. From what Mister Arc has let slip, I think she’s been more affected by encounters with the White Fang than she would like to admit.”</p><p>“You can’t force her to get help,” Professor Ozpin said.</p><p>“Unfortunately not, but I can say that I think it’s too soon to send them back out into the field. Besides, it isn’t usual for any one team to monopolise the mission roster like this. People will start to talk.” She hesitated, torn between the desire to maintain confidentiality and the need to get through to Professor Ozpin. “Some people have started to talk already.”</p><p>Professor Ozpin blinked. “Who?”</p><p>“You know I can’t tell you that.”</p><p>“No, of course not, that would be unethical,” Professor Ozpin agreed. “Less unethical than much else that we do, but, nevertheless… I apologise.”</p><p>“The point is that the favours that Team Sapphire have already received have not gone unnoticed. If you were to accord a few other teams the treatment that you have shown them, it would go a long way towards dispelling those concerns.”</p><p>Professor Ozpin rested his elbows upon his desk and clasped his hands together. “Perhaps you’re right,” he murmured. “Perhaps I am moving too quickly.”</p><p>“When the year began, you said you didn’t want to make them your agents, as you had Team Stark,” Glynda reminded him. “Even after the battle at the docks, that was not your intent.”</p><p>“Events have only escalated since the battle at the docks,” Professor Ozpin said. “I fear that we are running out of time.”</p><p>“Move too quickly, and you may lose them,” Glynda said. “As you lost Raven.”</p><p>Professor Ozpin closed his eyes. “I’m aware of the danger,” he murmured. “You don’t think they’re ready?” He shook his head. “Don’t answer that. I know that they’re not ready. Just as I know that nobody is ever ready. This is not what I want.”</p><p>“I never said it was,” Goodwitch said, “but is the hour really so late?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Professor Ozpin said wearily. “I… I just don’t know. I have too many fears and far too little information. As you say, I will not offer this particular mission to Team Sapphire. I will find other students able to take on the task.”</p><p>“That’s probably for the best,” Goodwitch said. She considered telling him about Raven, but was unable to think of a way to do so that would not betray Miss Xiao Long’s confidence. “My next request may seem perverse in light of what I have just said, but… I would like to give Miss Nikos and Miss Xiao Long some extra tuition.”</p><p>Professor Ozpin’s eyebrows rose. “You chide me for taking too much interest in Team Sapphire, and then you wish to take a much greater interest in two students? Perverse comes close to the mark, Glynda.”</p><p>“They are two of the best students in my combat class,” Glynda told him. “The two best students in my class who are, in fact, Beacon students. And Miss Nikos is one whom you will want to…”</p><p>“Make use of,” Professor Ozpin said. “I will not be offended by your speaking the truth, as unflattering as it may paint me.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Glynda said. “The point is, Miss Nikos may have to confront more dangerous enemies than her fellow students before too long.”</p><p>“And Miss Xiao Long?”</p><p>“Is as fit as any member of Team Sapphire; they are the only two students in <em>this</em> academy who I think can reliably challenge one another. As such, I fear they are both plateauing. You know that Miss Nikos spends every night training Mister Arc?”</p><p>Professor Ozpin nodded. “I have seen them. It is very admirable of her to devote so much of her time to him.”</p><p>“She is in love with him, or believes herself to be, at least,” Goodwitch said, unable to keep the sniff out of her voice. </p><p>Professor Ozpin chuckled. “Ah, youth. Nevertheless, regardless of her exact motivations… it speaks well to her kind heart and gentle spirit. I… I fear she is most well-suited to the task.”</p><p>Goodwitch did not wish to think about that overmuch; therefore, she pressed on before her thoughts could dwell upon the notion. “Nevertheless, she isn’t learning anything in the process. I think, I hope, that some instruction from me might benefit them both.”</p><p>“There is some force in what you say, Glynda,” Professor Ozpin conceded. “Very well, you may approach them both and see if the idea is of interest to them.”</p><hr/><p>“Almost private tuition with Professor Goodwitch, huh?” Jaune asked. “I wonder why she decided to offer you that?”</p><p>“I’m not sure,” Pyrrha admitted as she adjusted the gilded greave on her right leg, “but it is a great honour to be asked by so renowned a huntress, so great that I can hardly refuse.” She looked up at him. “I hope you don’t mind.”</p><p>“Mind?” Jaune repeated. “Why would I mind?”</p><p>“You’re losing a training session,” Pyrrha reminded him.</p><p>“Yeah, but…” Jaune hesitated for a moment. “I’ve probably been too selfish as it is, letting you spend every single night helping me to improve; if I let you turn down a chance to improve yourself… it wouldn’t be right.”</p><p>Pyrrha stood up, fully armoured and attired for battle. “You…”</p><p>“Need the help more than you?” Jaune suggested.</p><p>Pyrrha winced. “Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but-”</p><p>“You’re the best fighter at Beacon, Pyrrha,” Jaune told her. “I know it, everyone knows it. Just like everyone knows you’re going to win the Vytal Festival-”</p><p>“There are some other students who shouldn’t be discounted so readily.”</p><p>“But the world is a lot bigger than Beacon,” Jaune continued, “and there are bad guys out there like Adam, and maybe even worse than him. If you got hurt because you’d turned down all your chances to train just to help me get stronger… I don’t know if I could live with myself.”</p><p>“I… I see,” Pyrrha murmured. “You’re right, I shouldn’t rest upon my laurels. And I must admit, I’m looking forward to seeing what Yang is capable of.”</p><p>Jaune grinned. “Go get her.”</p><p>Pyrrha covered her mouth with one hand as a giggle escaped. “I’m not sure that’s the right attitude for this.”</p><p>“Really? I think it’s the perfect attitude,” Jaune replied.</p><p>Pyrrha laughed again. “You don’t have to stick around for this, you know?”</p><p>“What if I want to?” Jaune asked.</p><p>“Then I’ll be counting on your support.”</p><p>“Always,” Jaune whispered.</p><p>Pyrrha smiled. She reached up briefly to adjust the way that her circlet sat upon her brow before she turned away from Jaune and left him to follow after her as she walked out of the locker room and into the amphitheatre. </p><p>It was dark. Most of the lights were off, and those that were on were focussed upon the stage. Professor Goodwitch stood upon that same raised stage, her scroll out in one hand. As Pyrrha approached, she looked up, the lights glinting off her spectacles. </p><p>“Ah, Miss Nikos.” Her eyes narrowed as she saw Jaune follow her in. “Mister Arc, what a surprise to see you.”</p><p>As Jaune laughed nervously, Pyrrha said, “With your permission, Professor, I thought that Jaune might get something out of watching… whatever it is you have in store for us.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Professor Goodwitch said. “You may remain, Mister Arc, but please try to be quiet and remember that tonight is for the benefit of Miss Nikos, not yourself. If you’re having trouble following or comprehending what you’re seeing, then I’m afraid that’s something you’re going to have to live with until your skills improve.”</p><p>“Don’t worry, Professor,” Jaune said, “I’m not going to make this all about me.”</p><p>“I will hold you to that, Mister Arc,” Professor Goodwitch said. “Please, take a seat while we wait for- ah, Miss Xiao Long.”</p><p>Yang walked in from the other locker room, the one used by most of the first-year teams. In the gloom that consumed the bulk of the amphitheatre ,she shone like a blazing torch, while in her wake trailed Blake, like a pale spectre. </p><p>“I see that you also brought a second, Miss Xiao Long,” Professor Goodwitch said. “Miss Belladonna.”</p><p>“Good evening, Professor,” Blake said, bowing her head. “I hope you don’t mind. I admit that I was intrigued when I heard about this.”</p><p>“As I told Mister Arc, you can remain as long as you’re unobtrusive.”</p><p>“You won’t know I’m here, Professor.”</p><p>“That might actually be true,” Professor Goodwitch murmured.</p><p>“Hey, Pyrrha,” Yang called. “Jaune.”</p><p>“Good evening, Yang,” Pyrrha replied. “Good evening, Blake.”</p><p>“Pyrrha,” Blake murmured with a respectful nod. “Jaune.”</p><p>“Hey, Blake, how’s it going?” Jaune asked.</p><p>“Ahem,” Professor Goodwitch said pointedly.</p><p>“Right, quiet, sorry,” Jaune said. </p><p>He and Blake hastened to find seats somewhere in the dark – Pyrrha found it easier to keep track of Blake in her white blouse than she did Jaune in his dark hoodie – while Pyrrha and Yang climbed up onto the stage. </p><p>“Thank you both for joining me here tonight,” Professor Goodwitch said. “As I’m sure you’re both aware, the two of you are the top Beacon students in your year in sparring, and the rest of the top quartile rely very heavily upon their semblances to a degree that isn’t true of you.”</p><p>“I assume you’re only talking about Beacon students, Professor,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>“Indeed, Miss Nikos, since I am a Beacon instructor,” Professor Goodwitch said. “Although I know that you both take your studies very seriously, at least in <em>my</em> class.”</p><p>Yang let out a laugh that mingled nervousness with a trace of discomfort. “That’s not quite fair, Professor; I work hard in all my classes. It just doesn’t do me a whole lot of good in all of them.”</p><p>“I hope that Doctor Oobleck agrees, for your sake, Miss Xiao Long,” Professor Goodwitch replied. “In any case, I have become concerned that, for all that you try your best, your supremacy in my class is… not preparing you for life and combat outside the walls of Beacon.”</p><p>Yang smirked. “You mean you’re worried we’ll think we’re the bee's knees until we get a short, sharp lesson otherwise?”</p><p>“Quite so, Miss Xiao Long,” Professor Goodwitch said. “And in the field, such lessons can easily prove fatal. Which is why I have invited you to these weekly sessions, where you can learn from one another and from me.”</p><p>“I’m honoured, Professor, and grateful for you taking the time for our sake,” Pyrrha declared.</p><p>“Me too,” Yang added. “Don’t start sucking up already, Pyrrha.”</p><p>Pyrrha felt her cheeks flush a little. “I wasn’t! I simply didn’t want to presume to speak for you-”</p><p>Yang grinned. “I’m just messing with you! You make it almost too easy. But, yeah, really, Professor, thanks a lot.”</p><p>“You can thank me by giving it your all here in these sessions,” Professor Goodwitch declared. “Now,” she added, climbing deftly down from off the stage. “Why don’t you start by showing me what you’re capable of when up against the best that this school has to offer?” She tapped a couple of buttons on her scroll, and the images of Pyrrha and Yang flashed up on artificial banners hanging down the back wall, complete with bars showing their respective aura levels. Both had full bars in the green. </p><p>“You want us to spar with one another?” Yang asked.</p><p>“To begin with, yes,” Professor Goodwitch confirmed. “However, I would like you to avoid using your semblances, to the greatest extent physically possible.”</p><p>“No semblances?” Yang asked. “Why not? Our semblances are a part of us and how we fight.”</p><p>“True,” Professor Goodwitch allowed, “but I want to get an idea of how you fare without them; that way, I can see if you’re using your semblance as a crutch and, if so, suggest which areas you need to focus on so that is no longer the case.”</p><p>“I see,” Yang murmured, looking downcast for a moment, before the grin returned to her face in full force as she looked at Pyrrha. “Don’t go holding back on me, okay, Pyrrha?”</p><p>Pyrrha smiled as she brought Miló and Akoúo̱ down into her hands. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she declared. In truth, she was quite glad that Professor Goodwitch had specified no semblances on this occasion, because it meant that she could promise not to hold back without either being a liar or making a nonsense of the match by picking Yang up by the gauntlets and flinging her out of the ring as soon as the fight began. She could fight using only her finely honed skills and still keep her promise not to hold back. </p><p>The two of them stalked to opposite ends of the fighting stage and, there, turned to face one another. Yang assumed a boxing stance, fists raised before her. Her Ember Celica clacked and clicked as they extended down her arms towards her elbows. Pyrrha brought Akoúo̱ up before her face and held Miló in spear mode ready, poised above her shoulder. </p><p>She couldn’t hear Jaune, but knowing that he was there and cheering for her in his heart, even if he wasn’t allowed to shout with his voice, gave her more comfort than a throng of thousands cheering her name in the arena ever had. </p><p>She wondered who Blake was cheering for, if she was cheering inside at all.</p><p>“Begin!” Professor Goodwitch declared.</p><p>In Mistral, in the arena, combat began with an exchange of crowd-pleasing banter between the two combatants, or at least, it was crowd-pleasing when it was done well. Arslan was a master of it. Pyrrha, on the other hand, found the whole business rather hard to take and even harder to respond to to the extent where she didn’t bother. Fortunately, that silent rectitude played into her ‘princess’ image with the public: she was too gracious and noble to engage in vulgar taunts. </p><p>Fortunately, it seemed that Yang was about as interested in that as she was, because she leapt into action immediately, taking a step forward and throwing punches at her as though she were shadowboxing. </p><p>Except she wasn’t shadowboxing; she was firing Ember Celica, the golden gauntlets barking and clicking as shot after shot leapt from the stubby mouths above Yang’s knuckles. </p><p>Pyrrha brought Akoúo̱ up before her, deflecting one shot away from her, and then another, leaping out of the path of a third and rolling along the stage surface as Miló switched to rifle mode in her other hand. Pyrrha rolled onto one knee, bringing the rifle to her shoulder, firing off one shot and then another in quick succession. Yang dodged, just as Pyrrha had, doing a cartwheel in mid-air before she landed lightly on her feet, but as she leapt, she stopped shooting, and as she stopped, Pyrrha charged. </p><p>She dashed forward, her booted feet tapping lightly upon the floor as she rushed at Yang with Akoúo̱ held before her as Miló shifted fluidly into its sword form. Yang was on the ground and ready for her, fists clenched and ready. As Pyrrha closed, Yang threw a solid right hook, her fist snapping out like a rocket, her gauntlet blazing with fire. Pyrrha took the blow upon her shield, using Akoúo̱ to turn the punch upwards and aside, Yang’s first scraping across the surface of the shield as Pyrrha turned it upwards like a plate towards the ceiling. Yang’s momentum carried her forward; as she surged forth, Pyrrha spun upon her toe, as graceful as a dancer, dropping to one knee as she brought Miló around in a wide arc to cut Yang’s legs out from under her. </p><p>Yang leapt straight upwards, and as she jumped, one heavy boot lashed out for Pyrrha’s face. Pyrrha leaned backwards so far that she was on the floor, rolling from back to front and back again as the blasts of Ember Celica pursued her, blowing chunks out of the stage as she went. </p><p>As Yang dropped down to the stage once more, Pyrrha threw Akoúo̱ at her, the shield spinning like a discus as it flew unerringly towards its target. Yang caught it with both hands, the spinning weapon coming to a dead halt as Yang’s aura dropped slightly. Pyrrha was on her feet at once, wielding Miló in both hands as she charged, her spear spinning. Yang threw Akoúo̱ back at her; Pyrrha batted it aside with a deft twirl from Miló. She slashed at Yang with the spearpoint; Yang caught the blow on one of her gauntlets and turned it aside, but as she did so, Pyrrha caught her with the butt upon the side of the head. Yang winced in pain, her head snapping around, her back bending, exposing herself for a second blow across the back. Pyrrha twirled the spear above her head. </p><p>Yang’s punch caught her directly in the gut, Ember Celica booming. Pyrrha’s breath was driven out of her as she was hurled across the stage, landing near the back of it, not far from being tossed out of the ring completely. </p><p>That single hit had dropped her aura into the yellow. It was rather exhilarating.</p><p>Yang’s eyes were lilac, but her hair was paler now, as pale as flax, her semblance rising, unbidden to the fore as it was her turn to go on the offensive, charging at Pyrrha, bellowing at her enemy where she lay on her belly on the ground. </p><p>Pyrrha’s shield was some distance away – without her semblance, she couldn’t get near it – but she still had Miló in her hands. She lay on the ground, her weapon in spear form, lying and waiting, seemingly helpless as Yang came for her. </p><p>Pyrrha knew the time that Miló took to transform from each of its three modes into each of the other two, so she knew exactly when to switch her weapon into rifle mode at just the last minute when Yang, almost on top of her, had no time to react before Pyrrha emptied the last three shots into her gut. </p><p>Yang was hurled backwards, though she managed a backflip to land upon her feet as Pyrrha rose up off the floor and charged at her, Miló switching once more into a sword which she swung in a downwards crosswise slash. </p><p>Yang grinned as she caught the blow, one hand closing around the blade, and with her other hand, threw a punch for Pyrrha’s face. Pyrrha turned aside, but she felt the heat of the blast from Ember Celica burn away her aura before she twisted her whole body around, grabbing Yang’s outstretched arm with her own free and threw her bodily over Pyrrha’s shoulder and onto her back on the ground. </p><p>Yang twisted in place, her legs sweeping Pyrrha’s out from underneath her before the other girl could react and dumping Pyrrha on her backside beside Yang. Yang rolled onto her side, fist shooting forward. Pyrrha caught it, but also caught the blast from Ember Celica that took her aura dangerously close to the red. She rolled, still tightly gripping Yang’s fist, and with all the strength that remained to her, tossed her opponent as far as she could make her fly. </p><p>Which turned out to be just out of the arena, once she had finished rolling. Yang disappeared off the stage and descended into the darkness with a  thud and a slight ‘oof’ of discomfiture. </p><p>“And that’s the match,” Professor Goodwitch declared. “Congratulations on another victory, Miss Nikos.”</p><p>“Thank you, Professor,” Pyrrha murmured, as she climbed to her feet. “It was very close.” Enjoyably close, in fact; she’d known that Yang was good, but now she knew just how good she was. </p><p>“Indeed,” Professor Goodwitch agreed. “As expected of our <em>other</em> top student.”</p><p>Yang groaned. “Rematch,” she muttered as she clambered back up onto the stage. </p><p>The faint hint of a smile crossed Professor Goodwitch’s face. “There will be plenty of time for that later, Miss Xiao Long. For now, if you’ll come up here and Miss Nikos will recover her weapons, I’ll go over the areas you both could have improved on…”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0046"><h2>46. Her Second Assignment</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Blake makes a Great and Powerful team-up.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Her Second Assignment</p><p> </p><p>“So,” Blake said as she and Yang walked back towards the dorm rooms from the amphitheatre, “did you get something out of that?”</p><p>“Oh, yeah, I got tons out of it; Goodwitch really knows her stuff.” Yang tucked her hands around the back of her head, her fingers disappearing amidst her mass of blonde hair. Her lilac eyes flickered towards her smaller companion. “Did <em>you</em> get anything out of it?”</p><p>Blake nodded. “It was interesting to watch you and Pyrrha go all out against someone who could challenge you.”</p><p>Yang chuckled. “Yeah, she’s pretty tough, huh? Way tougher than she looks.” She paused, her eyes widening a little. “She isn’t right behind me, is she?”</p><p>Blake looked over her shoulder. Pyrrha and Jaune were also leaving the amphitheatre, but they were hand in hand and moving slowly, their steps meandering and without clear direction.</p><p>“I think you’re going to be okay,” she said, a slight smile playing across her features. </p><p>Yang’s eyebrows rose, and she turned her whole body around to look at what Blake was seeing. A laugh escaped her as a smile escaped her face. “Oh, boy. They have got it bad, don’t they?”</p><p>“Beacon’s very own fairy tale,” Blake agreed wryly.</p><p>Yang was silent for a moment. “As Ruby’s sister, I know that I should probably be pulling for them to break up, but… I see stuff like that, and I just can’t do it.”</p><p>“Ruby wouldn’t want you to,” Blake pointed out.</p><p>“I know,” Yang agreed, “but I’ve always thought of myself as being… not such a good person as Ruby.”</p><p>“That’s… hard on yourself,” Blake murmured.</p><p>Yang shrugged, her hands dropping down to hang by her side. “It is what it is; Ruby… she’s so good, you know? Not many people can be as good as that, and I’m not one of them.”</p><p>“That doesn’t make you a bad person.”</p><p>“Did I say that it did?”</p><p>Blake blinked. “No, I suppose you didn’t, although your tone implied it. So, what did you mean when you say Pyrrha’s tougher than she looks?”</p><p>“You know,” Yang said, as though it should have been obvious. “She looks like you ought to be able to knock her down with a tap.”</p><p>“Are you sure you’re not thinking of Weiss?” Blake asked. “Pyrrha has always looked very strong to me.” She couldn’t quite resist adding. “She’s got more muscles than you do.”</p><p>“Yeah, well, it’s not what you show, it’s what you do with them,” Yang replied defensively. “I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. Or maybe it’s the way she acts.”</p><p>“That, I suppose I can understand,” Blake admitted. Outside of battle, Pyrrha did have an air of emotional fragility about her that belied her steadfastness in combat. </p><p>“I’ll get her before the year is over,” Yang vowed. “Hey, imagine if she found her semblance, then think what she’d be. That would be a hell of a challenge, huh?”</p><p><em>If only you knew,</em> Blake thought. If Pyrrha had been allowed to use her semblance, then Yang wouldn’t have come as close to victory as she had done; if she had used it the way that she’d used it on the train, then Yang wouldn’t stand a chance, unless she forsook Ember Celica and fought bare-handed. “I… suppose,” she said in a careful tone that committed to nothing.</p><p>Yang nodded as though she had agreed with her. “So, you weren’t bored hanging out there?”</p><p>“Not at all.”</p><p>“To be honest, I think you’re good enough to join us.”</p><p>Blake shook her head. “I’m not bad-”</p><p>“You’re a lot better than <em>not bad</em>.”</p><p>“But I’m not on the same level as you or Pyrrha.”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Yang replied. “I’m not the one being headhunted for Atlas.”</p><p>“Well, yes, but that…” Blake trailed off. “That is… that’s more than a reflection on pure combat performance.”</p><p>“Yeah, I know,” Yang accepted. “Still, it must feel pretty good when another headmaster is trying to poach you specifically for his academy, right?”</p><p>Blake’s brow furrowed. “You’re not… jealous, are you?”</p><p>“No!” Yang cried immediately. “I mean… I suppose that I’m a little jealous. Not because I want to go to Atlas, you understand – etiquette lessons? Really? It sounds way too stuffy for me – but… I gotta admit, it would be pretty cool to be thought so much of that people want you, you of all people, to come and be a part of their institution.” Her voice dropped. “Nice to be wanted, I guess.”</p><p>The furrow of Blake’s brow deepened. “Yang…” A part of her felt as though she was the last person who ought to be even attempting to offer advice to anyone, but another part of her felt it would be obnoxious in the extreme to let this pass without comment. “Is there…? I mean, I’m here if you want to talk.”</p><p>Yang shook her head. “It’s nothing,” she said swiftly.</p><p>“Are you sure?” Blake asked.</p><p>“Yeah,” Yang insisted. She stopped, her face falling a little. “Well… I don’t know; it’s just that sometimes I think… would anyone really miss me if I wasn’t here?”</p><p>“Yes,” Blake answered at once. “Lots of people. Your sister, your team-”</p><p>“Ruby has Sunset now, and Ren and Nora have each other,” Yang pointed out. “You’ve got all your Atlas friends-”</p><p>“So?” Blake demanded. “Are friendships rationed now? Just because Ruby and Sunset are close, just because Ren and Nora have known each other for a long time, that doesn’t mean that they don’t care about you.”</p><p>“Of course not, but you get what I’m saying, right?” Yang asked. “I’m no one’s…” She trailed off. “Ah, forget it. Don’t mind me, I’m just… I get like this sometimes; I shouldn’t inflict it on you.”</p><p>“I’m your teammate now,” Blake reminded her.</p><p>“But not my therapist,” Yang pointed out. “Come on, let’s get back.”</p><p>Blake’s scroll went off as they continued to walk across the courtyard. The caller ID informed her that it was General Ironwood himself. </p><p>“Wonder what he wants so late?” Yang muttered.</p><p>“It might be that Torchwick has started talking,” Blake replied. “You go on ahead; I’ll try not to disturb anyone when I get in.”</p><p>“It’s cool,” Yang said. “I’ll wait.”</p><p>“Are you sure? I don’t know how long I’ll be.”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Yang assured her. “Now you’d better answer that, or he’ll think you’re blowing him off.”</p><p>“Right,” Blake murmured. “Thank you,” she added, with a slight smile at Yang before she turned away, and took a couple of steps away besides, and answered the scroll. </p><p>General Ironwood’s image appeared on her screen. “Miss Belladonna,” he said, “I hope I didn’t wake you.”</p><p>“No, sir, you didn’t,” Blake said.</p><p>“Good. Now, before you get your hopes up, I’m not calling about Torchwick; he’s still not saying a word,” General Ironwood informed her. “I’m calling about a different matter that we discussed.”</p><p>“I see, sir,” Blake replied, unable to keep the disappointment out of her voice, “and what would that be?”</p><p>“We talked about you participating in missions alongside other Atlesian teams,” General Ironwood reminded her. “Well, something just came across my desk, and I thought of you. It’s nothing to do with the White Fang, so I can’t order you to do it-”</p><p>“Actually, sir, I think you probably could.”</p><p>“Perhaps,” General Ironwood conceded, “but I won’t. It’s up to you, Miss Belladonna.”</p><p>“What’s the mission, sir?” Blake asked.</p><p>“The CCT relay tower in Badger’s Drift went dark about twelve hours ago,” General Ironwood explained. “We don’t know if it’s a technical issue or something more serious, but a mission was flagged to check it out and get the relay back online, and that mission was picked up by Team Tsunami.” He paused. “With so many Valish huntsmen scattered across the country protecting remote settlements from grimm concentrations, a lot of training missions this year are going to be remotely supervised or without supervision at all. That will be the case here. So, are you interested?”</p><p>Blake didn’t need much time to think about it; she had asked for this, and it would be churlish of her to ask in principle only to turn down every opportunity in specific. “Yes, sir.”</p><p>“Excellent,” General Ironwood said. “I’ll inform Team Tsunami to expect you. Meet them on docking pad one at oh-eight-forty-five hours tomorrow.”</p><p>“Yes, sir,” Blake said. “And thank you for giving me the opportunity.”</p><p>“Good luck, Miss Belladonna,” General Ironwood said before hanging up the call.</p><p>Blake looked slightly apologetic as she put her scroll away and turned back to face. “So… I won’t be around tomorrow,” she said.</p><p>Yang smiled. “It’s no big deal. Although you’ll miss out on Nora’s pot-luck pot roast.”</p><p>Bake blinked. “Can you have a pot-luck with such a small number of people?”</p><p>“It’s always pot-luck when Nora cooks,” Yang informed her. “You never know what you’re going to get.”</p><p>Blake smiled. “I’ll be sorry to miss that.”</p><p>“Maybe,” Yang said. </p><p>“Any regrets about having me on your team?”</p><p>“None at all,” Yang declared. “Now come on; if you’ve got an early start tomorrow, then we’d better get you to bed.”</p><hr/><p>Yang and Nora were both still sleeping as Blake stole out of the Team YRBN dorm room. As Blake looked at them, both sprawled out across their respective beds, both snoring in counterpoint to one another, she couldn’t help but observe that they looked as much like sisters as Yang and Ruby did. </p><p>The thought brought a smile to one corner of her mouth as she turned away and slipped quietly out of the dorm room, shutting the door gently behind her. There was no sound from the SAPR dorm room across the hall; it was Sunday, the laziest of days for most, and she had no doubt that Sunset and Ruby, at least, were still asleep, although it was possible that Jaune and Pyrrha had already set out on their morning run. Or not; even they could take mornings off. </p><p>Blake kept her footsteps light and quiet as she walked down the hall towards the little galley kitchen not far from the stairs. Fortunately, she had experience in moving stealthily, and the hallway was so quiet that she could believe – she allowed herself to believe – that she was not waking anyone by moving about at this time. </p><p>She thought about Yang and Nora, sleeping behind her, and Ren, wherever in Remnant he might be – he was no slouch in the stealth department himself to leave the room without even Blake noticing he was gone. They had welcomed her into their team, and yet… and yet, could she really call herself a member of their team if she kept slipping off to go on missions with sundry Atlesians? But then, if she wasn’t a member of Team YRBN, then what team was she a part of? Not SAPR, not any more, for all that the letter B would be on the wall to confuse future generations of huntsmen and huntresses. Not RSPT either, when it came to that. </p><p>She was… she was the cat who walked by herself, although not out of choice, and not forever. Whatever decision she made about her future… either she would stay at Beacon when the Atlesians departed, and she could move forward as a member of Team YRBN in truth with no other ties of obligation upon her, or she would go to Atlas and become part of a new team to go along with her new start.</p><p>In the meantime…</p><p>It was with such thoughts in mind that Blake walked into the kitchenette and – her hands moving automatically – got her mug down from out of the cupboard. The mug was blue, with a cartoonish tortoise on it; it had been a gift from Rainbow Dash. </p><p>Blake filled the chrome kettle up with water and sidled across the cupboards towards the one with the coffee in it.</p><p>“Good morning, Blake,” Ren said.</p><p>Blake’s ears stiffened visibly. She looked sideways; there he was, standing near the back of the small room. She let out the breath she didn’t realise she had been holding. “Usually it’s me sneaking up on other people,” she pointed out.</p><p>“I have mastered the art of moving so slowly that I appear to become invisible,” Ren declared.</p><p>Blake stared at him.</p><p>“That was a joke,” Ren pointed out helpfully.</p><p>“Oh.”</p><p>“I’m sorry; it’s not as funny as one of Nora’s jokes,” Ren said.</p><p>“It was funny,” Blake assured him. “I’m just-”</p><p>“Preoccupied?” Ren suggested. “That was the real reason you didn’t notice I was here.”</p><p>“I suppose you could say that,” Blake said as she reached up and got the coffee jar down from the cupboard. She pulled open a drawer and got out a teaspoon. “What are you doing here?”</p><p>“Once I’ve woken, I find it hard to get back to sleep,” Ren informed her. “I come here to think.”</p><p>“I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you,” Blake said. “I just wanted a quick coffee before I leave.”</p><p>“I understand,” Ren said. “Although Nora will be disappointed you left without saying goodbye.”</p><p>Blake winced. “I didn’t want to disturb her.”</p><p>“I can certainly understand that,” Ren said. “And so will she. But she’ll still be a little disappointed.”</p><p>“Apologise to her for me, will you?” Blake asked.</p><p>“Of course.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Blake said. “Do you want anything?”</p><p>Ren shook his head. “Not right now.” He paused. “So, what’s on your mind?”</p><p>Blake shrugged as she started the kettle boiling. “My future,” she admitted. “This team. Whether or not I’m letting you down by pretending to be a part of it.”</p><p>Ren took a couple of steps towards her, placing a hand upon her shoulder. “Everyone in Team Iron understands your obligations to Atlas at the moment. Nobody holds them against you, any more than we hold your past against you. We don’t always get to choose the circumstances in which we live our lives,” he added, his voice solemn. “Sometimes, the most that we get to choose is how we respond to those circumstances, be they pleasant or otherwise.”</p><p>Blake smiled up at him. “Everyone… you’re all so very understanding,” she said, “even of the possibility that I might leave at the end of this year and you’ll be left a man down.”</p><p>“There are worse reasons to be a man down than because our teammate found her path, though it led to a place we could not follow,” Ren declared. “You can’t live your life according to the dictates of others’ desires.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“Do you?” Ren asked, gently but pointedly. “You can’t worry about what I think, or Yang or Nora or anyone else. If Atlas is where you want to go, then go to Atlas; if Beacon is where you want to go, then stay at Beacon. But that is a decision only you can make and a decision that you should make for yourself and yourself alone.”</p><p>Blake was silent a moment. “You should talk more often,” she said. “You’re very wise.”</p><p>Ren shook his head. “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t claim to have wisdom. But you and I – and Nora – are a little alike: we’ve all been taught a few lessons by the world that came earlier for us than for most.”</p><p>“Perhaps,” Blake whispered. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Ren said, almost as quietly. “You know, your water boiled some time ago.”</p><p>“Thanks for telling me,” Blake muttered, switching the kettle on again and watching it as it brought the – still heated, fortunately – water back to boiling point, at which point, she poured it into her cup and watched it turn the coffee granules into a steaming black liquid. A drop of milk from out of the fridge turned the inky blackness to a dull brown colour. </p><p>She took a sip. It was hot enough to scald her throat. “So what made you choose Beacon?” she asked. “Instead of Haven?”</p><p>Ren was silent for a moment, and very still. “Haven,” he said, “is… traditional. I was afraid that amongst the first questions our teammates there would ask would be ‘what is your parentage’? For some, like Pyrrha, the answer is so well-known as to bring its own difficulties. For others, the obscurity of the answer is the cause of issues. I thought… it was better if Nora didn’t have to answer.”</p><p>“I… I didn’t mean to pry,” Blake said.</p><p>“If you had been prying, I would have told you,” Ren informed her. “Good luck.”</p><p>Blake offered him a thin smile in return. “Thank you.”</p><p>She finished her coffee and then ran down to the amphitheatre to grab Gambol Shroud out of her locker. She was surprised to be met outside by Twilight in her lavender armour. </p><p>“Hey, Blake!” Twilight called.</p><p>“Twilight?” Blake said, slowing to a halt. “What are you doing here, and dressed like that?”</p><p>“I’m coming with you,” Twilight said, as though that should have been obvious. “General Ironwood is concerned that you might need someone with advanced technical skills to get the relay tower back online.”</p><p>“So, you’re coming with me and Team Tsunami?” Blake asked.</p><p>“Uh huh, that’s what I just said, isn’t it?” Twilight asked.</p><p>“And Rainbow is okay with letting you out of her sight like that?”</p><p>“Rainbow isn’t like that!” Twilight squawked.</p><p>Blake looked at her flatly.</p><p>“She’s not,” Twilight insisted, “really. Besides, Team Tsunami are perfectly capable.” She hesitated. “Although… when she found out that you were going on this mission, she did say ‘well, that’s okay then.’”</p><p>Blake blinked. “Really? She actually said that.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Twilight said, nodding her head. “Why? Are you surprised?”</p><p>Honestly, yes. Blake… the little humour that Blake had obtained from imagining Rainbow’s reaction to Twilight being temporarily assigned to another team had vanished in the face of the other girl’s trust in her. Not in the team to whom the mission had been assigned, but Blake. </p><p>
  <em>Last semester, she wanted to kill me; now, she trusts me with the person who means the most to her in the whole world.</em>
</p><p>It was… humbling, honestly, in a strange way <em>because</em> it probably ought to have boosted Blake’s ego. Instead, it made her consciousness of the responsibility that had been placed upon her shoulders. She had not asked for it, but she would prove herself worthy of it. </p><p>No matter what, she would not let Rainbow Dash down. </p><p>She wasn’t sure how to say that to Twilight, however, without sounding unbearably pretentious, and so she simply said, “We should probably get moving.”</p><p>“Probably,” Twilight agreed. “I… I’m glad that you’re here, too.”</p><p>“You are?”</p><p>“Of course,” Twilight said, her voice bright and rich with a subtle undercurrent of laughter. “You find that so hard to believe?”</p><p>“Well, you and I haven’t really…” Blake trailed off.</p><p>“You’re our friend,” Twilight insisted. She fell silent for a moment. “To be honest… it’s easy to be nice when you grow up like I did: loving parents, a big brother you can depend on, good friends, everything I ever wanted. But you… to go through things I can’t even imagine and still come out kind and generous and brave… you’re the strongest person I know, Blake.” She paused, a smile flitting across her face. “But don’t tell Rainbow Dash I said that.”</p><p> Blake chuckled. “I won’t.”</p><p>The two of them lapsed into a companionable silence as they set off in the direction of the docking pads.</p><p>“You know them, then?” Blake said, as they reached the long path that led beyond the school.”</p><p>“Hmm?”</p><p>“Team Tsunami,” Blake clarified, remembering that Twilight had described them as being quite capable.</p><p>“Oh, yes. Well, some of them better than others,” Twilight replied.</p><p>“What are they like?”</p><p>“Well, they… they’re characters,” Twilight admitted. “Some of them, anyway. She’s the one I know the least, but you’ll probably get on best with Tempest Shadow. From what I can tell, she’s very… intense.”</p><p>“You think I’m intense?”</p><p>“You don’t think you’re intense?”</p><p>Blake fell silent. “That’s a good point,” she admitted. </p><p>They reached the docking pad, where an Atlesian Skyray was waiting for them alongside four figures.</p><p>One of them Blake dimly recognised as the girl who had beaten Ruby in combat class, the girl with the curly hair of purple and aquamarine. She waved at them as they approached and jogged across the docking pad towards them. “Twilight, hey!” she cried. “It’s great that we’ll finally be getting the chance to work together, don’t you think?”</p><p>Twilight smiled. “Hey, Starlight. Yeah, although I hope you’ll forgive me for hoping I don’t get to see too much of Equaliser in action.”</p><p>Starlight laughed. “You know what they say: any mission where you don’t have to fire your weapon is a successful mission.”</p><p>“Up to a point,” Blake murmured.</p><p>Starlight turned her big blue eyes upon her. “You must be Blake Belladonna, right? The auxiliary.”</p><p>“That’s right,” Blake said softly. She didn’t offer her hand. She remembered what Starlight had done to Ruby’s semblance, and she wasn’t all that keen on having it done to her.</p><p>Starlight waited a moment, possibly for the hand from Blake that wasn’t coming, before a little nervous laugh escaped her lips. “So, anyway,” she said. “Let me introduce you to the rest of Team Tsunami: Tempest Shadow, Sunburst Flare, and-”</p><p>“The Grrreat and Powwwerful Trrrixie!” Trixie declared, throwing her arms out wide on either side of her as firecrackers of many colours – red, green, blue, and purple – exploded in a semi-circle above her. </p><p>“Trixie Lulamoon,” Starlight said, a fond smile playing across her lips. “Our team leader.”</p><p>Sunburst Flare was the only male on the team or even in the larger group, once Twilight and Blake were taken into consideration. He was a tall, lanky young man with very large, round spectacles resting on top of his pointed nose and appearing to magnify his blue eyes. His hair was red and brushed across his head so that it fell down across the right-hand side of his face, falling slightly over his eye. Despite the fact that he was the same age as Blake and Jaune, he had managed to grow a goatee of some length that descended down from his chin and made him seem as if he very desperately wanted to seem grown up and mature. The effect was slightly undercut by the fact that he was wearing a dark blue cape, with a high collar and stars embroidered on it in green, over his orange waistcoat and tan pants. White gloves enclosed his hands, in which he gripped a gilded staff tipped with a pale blue ice-dust crystal. </p><p>Tempest Shadow was a pony faunus, with a tail of rich rose red, cut in a ragged and uneven fashion, descending down towards the ground between her legs. Her hair was of the same colour, arranged in a tall Mohawk that rose like the rest of a helmet upwards and along the middle of her head. Her eyes were opal, narrow and cold, and a scar ran down her face on either side of her left eye. She was dressed in a form-fitting black bodysuit, with dark grey armour over the top protecting her torso, upper arms, shoulders, and thighs. She held a metal staff in one hand, so slender that Blake could not believe that it transformed into anything else. </p><p>Trixie Lulamoon had hair of grey and silver, long and curled, descended in waves down her back and framing the left side of her face. Her eyes were purple, and she wore a matching purple pointed hat and cape, adorned with glittering stars of gold and purple, over her similarly-adorned blue hoodie and purple skirt, so that she looked rather like a wizard from somebody’s childhood storybook. Blake could only assume that was the intention behind it. In one hand, she held a pale and slender wand. </p><p>“How do you get ‘Tsunami’ from that?” Blake asked.</p><p>“T-T-S-S,” Starlight explained.</p><p>Blake thought that was a bit of a cheat, even moreso than as spelling ‘Sun’ SSSN.</p><p>“So, Blake,” she said, her voice languid and her vowels stretched out as she strutted forwards, “I hear that you want to learn how real Atlesian huntsmen conduct themselves.” She smiled. “Well, you’ve come to the right place, because there is no better place to see true Atlesian greatness in action, than with the Grrreat and Powwwerful Trrrixie.”</p><p>“Ahem,” Starlight said.</p><p>“And her team of faithful and glamorous assistants,” Trixie added hastily with a wink at Starlight. She threw one arm around Blake’s shoulders, pulling her forwards. “Oh, it must have been so awful for you, having to take <em>Rainbow Dash</em> as a model of what Atlas is made of-”</p><p>“I’m standing right here, Trixie,” Twilight pointed out.</p><p>Trixie ignored her. “But now that you’re here, you can relax and bask in the radiance of Team Tsunami. Gasp with awe as you behold the greatest team in all of Atlas in action! Be amazed by our feats of daring! And bow down before our magnificence beyond compare!”</p><p>“Um,” Blake had no idea how to respond to that. “I, um, look forward to working with you.”</p><p>“Likewise,” Sunburst said eagerly.</p><p>“Are we actually going to get to work?” Tempest demanded. “Or are we going to stand here on the docking pad talking all day?”</p><p>“Yes, yes, we’re getting there,” Trixie said. “I’m just putting our guest in the right mood. And you might learn something too, Twilight,” she added.</p><p>“I’m sure,” Twilight muttered dryly.</p><p>Trixie pulled her arm away from Blake. “Onward, team!” she proclaimed, waving her wand above her head before gesturing towards the Skyray. </p><p>“Hey, Twilight,” Blake said softly as Sunburst and Tempest followed Trixie aboard. “This team, is it-?”</p><p>“Any good?” asked Starlight, who had remained a little behind the others. She put a hand out to stop Blake, and Blake did stop, lest she touch Starlight and have her semblance affected somehow. Starlight’s brow furrowed a little, but only for a moment. “Yes,” she declared. “Yes, we are. We might not actually be the best team in all of Atlas, but this team knows what it’s doing.” She paused for a moment, staring down at Blake. “General Ironwood assigned you to join us on this trip, and I’m sure the General knows what he’s doing-”</p><p>“But you don’t want me here,” Blake finished for her.</p><p>“All that time alone as an undercover agent has to be tough,” Starlight said. “If you were an undercover agent, that is. I’m sure you know how to handle yourself in a fight, but we’re a team, and I’m not having any member of it get hurt because you can’t remember what that means. The lone wolf stuff stays behind, clear?”</p><p><em>How is that you’re not the leader?</em> Blake wondered. “Crystal clear,” she said.</p><p>Starlight nodded, seemingly satisfied with Blake’s word. “Then let’s go,” she said. </p><p>They boarded the Skyray; Blake took a degree of comfort in the fact that there was no sign of Sun anywhere. </p><p>The doors of the airship slid shut. </p><p>“Good to go!” Starlight declared. </p><p>The airship lifted off the docking pad and headed westwards, weaving between the Atlesian cruisers, waggling its wings in salute to the capital ships as it soared towards the mountains, and away from Vale.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0047"><h2>47. Tsunami</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Great and Powerful Trixie shows her mettle.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tsunami</p><p> </p><p>The Skyray bearing Team TTSS within flew westward across the kingdom of Vale, passing over tall pine forests as the mountains beyond loomed ever larger. </p><p>Within the airship, the four members of TTSS – plus their two guests – sprawled about the central space, sitting upon various boxes and bags that had been loaded up on board by the time Blake climbed in. Nobody had yet explained to her what was in them. </p><p>“This big box here has my drones inside,” Twilight said, seeming to read Blake’s mind as she patted the large, metal-rimmed case on which she sat upon Blake’s right. “I’ve also got my tools to repair the relay. I’m not sure what the other stuff is.”</p><p>“This and that,” Starlight replied. “Grenades, ammunition, MREs-”</p><p>“Are you planning an extended trip?” Blake asked.</p><p>“No,” Starlight said. “But it never hurts to be prepared, right?” She was the only member of the enlarged team who was not sitting down, managing to keep her balance standing despite the vibrations of the airship as it flew.</p><p>“I suppose not,” Blake murmured. </p><p>“Hey, Blake,” Sunburst Flare drew her attention to her left. His cloak was thrown back, which meant that Blake could see that he was reaching into a pouch at his belt to produce a deck of playing cards. He shuffled the deck once or twice, then took a handful of cards, spread out in his hands, and offered them to Blake. “Pick a card.”</p><p>Tempest Shadow groaned and rolled her eyes. Trixie chuckled. Blake stared at him, eyebrows climbing ever so slightly up her face like mountaineers in the midst of a very cautious ascent up a particularly treacherous summit.</p><p>“Come on,” Sunburst said eagerly, shaking the cards a little in his grasp. “Please?”</p><p>Blake took a card, which turned out to be the five of diamonds.</p><p>“Now give it back to me,” Sunburst instructed, and Blake handed the card back to him without protest. </p><p>Sunburst put all the cards that he had offered back at the bottom of the deck and then proceeded to shuffle said cards with vigour, his hands moving rapidly to alter the deck in his hands. “Now,” he said, holding up the two of spades, “is this your card?”</p><p>“Um,” Blake hesitated for a moment. “I’m afraid not, sorry.”</p><p>Tempest snorted. Sunburst let out a surprised, “Oh.” He took the next card off the deck – the jack of clubs – and showed it to her. “Is this your card?”</p><p>“No,” Blake admitted.</p><p>“Uh,” Sunburst murmured. “Could it be this one?” He showed her the seven of hearts.</p><p>By now, there was a part of Blake that wanted to lie to put him out of his misery, but nevertheless, she shook her head. “Sorry.”</p><p>Tempest shook her head, while Starlight said, “Don’t worry, Sunburst. I’m sure that even professionals have bad days.”</p><p>“I guess,” Sunburst murmured, putting the deck of cards back in the pouch at his belt. “Sorry for wasting your time.”</p><p>“It’s not a big deal,” Blake assured him. “So, you’re into magic?”</p><p>“Stage magic,” Sunburst replied. “If you know Twilight, then you probably already know that she believes in real magic existing out there in the world, but I just can’t see it.”</p><p>“Not convinced by Twilight’s evidence?” Blake asked.</p><p>“Sunburst is unnecessarily close-minded,” Trixie declared. “How can anyone not believe in the existence of magic when the Grrreat and Powwwerful Trrrixie stands before you?”</p><p>“You believe in magic too, then?”</p><p>Trixie laughed. “The Grrreat and Powwwerful Trrrixie doesn’t simply <em>believe</em> in magic, the Grrreat and Powwwerful Trrrixie <em>has</em> magic! Why else do you think that I’m so Grrreat and Powwwerful?”</p><p>“I…” Blake trailed off for a moment. “I really have no idea.”</p><p>“Trixie,” Twilight said, “you realise that… your tricks, impressive as they… they’re not real magic, not in the sense-”</p><p>“I know that!” Trixie cried. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I can <em>too</em> do real magic!” She swept her hat off her head. “Behold and be amazed, as I produce from out of this hat, Twilight Sparkle’s pet dog, Spike!” She plunged her hand into the hat, and her face froze, set in a mask of confidence betrayed by the way that her eyes suddenly betrayed a degree of uncertainty. “Twilight Sparkle’s pet dog,” she repeated, and it looked as though she was fumbling in her hat. “Twilight Sparkle,” she repeated a third time, an edge of desperation in her voice. </p><p>The smirk on Tempest Shadow’s face was unmistakable. </p><p>Trixie pulled out her hand – empty – and set her hat back on top of her head. “I don’t need to prove anything to you anyway,” she huffed.</p><p>“Ohhhkayyy,” Starlight said, drawing out the vowel sounds a little more than she needed to. “Ears up, everyone; it’s mission briefing time. Twilight, if you wouldn’t mind?”</p><p>Twilight raised her right arm, twisting it a little so that a holographic keyboard appeared above her wrist, a few of which virtual keys she tapped with the armoured fingers of her left hand. A holoprojector stirred to life, and Starlight took a step back as the centre of the Skyray was filled with a pale blue holographic rendition of a moderately-sized village, nestling at the back of a wooded valley, with a relay tower rising up high above any other structures in the community and even above the tall trees that jutted out of the rising valley slopes like the jaws of some particularly voracious predator. A river or stream cut through the centre of the village, crossed by only a single bridge that Blake could see and winding its way out beyond the limits of the hologram, which continued until the wooded valley gave way to flatter and more open ground beyond. A part of the valley had been cleared of trees, and tunnels bored into the rockface, though how far the tunnels extended, she couldn’t tell from this hologram. </p><p>“Thank you, Twilight Sparkle,” Trixie said, though ever so slightly gritted teeth. “Starlight, give the mission briefing, if you wouldn’t mind.” </p><p>“Sure thing, Trix,” Starlight said, with a fond smile that did nothing to explain to Blake why she wasn’t the leader instead of Trixie. “Everyone, this is Badger’s Drift, home to the westernmost relay tower in the Kingdom of Vale. That relay tower went dark yesterday, which means weak signals in a substantial part of Vale and a complete blackout in these valleys where signals from the main tower are blocked by the mountains. This means that we are entering a dead zone; until the tower is back online ,command will not be keeping us company on this mission. Our job is to get that relay working again, which is where Twilight comes in. Hopefully, it’s just a mechanical issue, and she can fix it easily.”</p><p>“What if it’s more than just a mechanical issue?” Blake asked. </p><p>Starlight looked her in the eye. “Then we search, rescue, and destroy.”</p><p>“Speaking of which,” Twilight said, pulling out her scroll, “I’ve developed an app which should be a big help; the General authorised me to test it out on this trip.”</p><p>“An app?” Sunburst repeated. “What kind of app?”</p><p>“Motion tracking,” Twilight said, as she pushed a button. A moment later, the scrolls of everyone else in the Skyray buzzed with a notification. “With it, you can use your scrolls to detect movement in your vicinity; just in case… you know.”</p><p>“Do we have to have our scrolls out to use this?” Tempest inquired.</p><p>“Unfortunately, yes,” Twilight replied.</p><p>“More useful for those of us who can use our weapons one handed,” Starlight observed, “but we’ll make it work.”</p><p>Blake cocked her head to one side. “If the village was attacked by the grimm then any survivors might have fled into those caves. Do we know what they are?”</p><p>“Mining tunnels,” Starlight said.</p><p>Blake blinked. “Dust mines?”</p><p>“Diamond mines,” Twilight corrected her. “Most of the diamonds sold in the Kingdom of Vale are mined from this area, and it’s the only place in Remnant where  blue diamonds have been found.”</p><p>“I’d look so good in blue diamonds,” Trixie observed.</p><p>Tempest snorted. “Better get a lot better at magic if you want to make that kind of money.”</p><p>“With that much lien at stake, I’m surprised it’s such a small town,” Blake observed.</p><p>Starlight shrugged. “It’s hard to get people to move to a remote place like this so far from the big cities. Hard to supply and defend them too.”</p><p>“Plus, there isn’t a lot of good farmland nearby,” Twilight added, “and in any case, most of the mining is done by robots.”</p><p>“I see,” Blake murmured. <em>If only the SDC would follow suit. </em></p><p>
  <em>Or not. If they automated their workforce, then fewer faunus would be dead in mining accidents, but more of them would be destitute.</em>
</p><p>It occurred to Blake that if Badger’s Drift was bigger, then they – the owners of the mines – might have found themselves powering down their robots just to provide jobs for the population. </p><p>The Skyray flew on. Blake got her scroll out, her address book open, watching as the amber indicators of weak signal began to flash up against the images of Sunset, Rainbow Dash, Yang, of everyone she knew who wasn’t sitting in this airship, until eventually, their images darkened, indicating that she couldn’t reach them at all. Only Twilight and the members of Team TTSS remained. They had entered the dead zone. </p><p>She put her scroll away and glanced at Twilight, who was looking down at her hands as they rested on her knees. </p><p>“Twilight?” she murmured, reaching out and touching Twilight’s armoured elbow. “Are you okay?”</p><p>Twilight looked up. “I, um… I’ve never been out in the field without Rainbow Dash before, you know?”</p><p>Blake nodded, smiling out of one corner of her mouth. “I thought as much,” she admitted. “Are you nervous?”</p><p>“Is it that obvious?”</p><p>“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Blake assured her. When she’d gone on her first mission without Adam, she’d barely been able to keep her hands from shaking. “It’s… it’s normal, especially for a non-combatant. Anyway, the point is that Dash isn’t here, but you’re not alone. I’ll take care of you.”</p><p>“<em>We’ll</em> take care of you,” Starlight corrected her, crossing the couple of steps separating them in the Skyray. Tempest seemed to be watching them as she knelt down in front of Twilight. “Hey, Twilight.”</p><p>Twilight smiled, if only for a moment. “Hey, Starlight.”</p><p>“I know that I’m not Rainbow Dash,” Starlight said, “but we really do know what we’re doing… even if it might not always seem that way.”</p><p>“I heard that!” Trixie cried.</p><p>Starlight chuckled. “The point is, even if this turns out to be something more than a simple mechanical error, we’ve got each other's backs, and we’re coming home safe.”</p><p>“That’s right!” Trixie yelled, getting to her feet. “Though our enemies are numerous, and though their fangs are sharp, we will prevail, because we’re Team Tsunami, and we strike with the force of a rampaging hurricane!”</p><p>“Yes, we do,” Starlight agreed. She paused. “Twilight, do you mind if I load up on your semblance before we land? It’s pretty versatile.”</p><p>“Sure,” Twilight said.</p><p><em>You’re just giving her your semblance?</em> Blake thought.</p><p>It must have shown on Blake’s face, because Starlight said, “My semblance doesn’t always cut semblances; I can just copy and leave Twilight with the ability to access her semblance even while I can use it too. It depends on whether I’m borrowing from a friend or denying an enemy.”</p><p>“I see,” Blake said softly. That sort of explained how easily Twilight could approach this transaction, but at the same time, Blake still didn’t like the idea of just anyone being to copy her semblance. It was a reflection of her soul, it was <em>hers</em>, it was one of the things that defined who she was. While Starlight Glimmer was defined by the fact that she could just take that away whenever she wanted to. </p><p>Blake couldn’t help but think that said something about her. </p><p>Nevertheless, Starlight pressed on, holding out her hand to Twilight. Twilight didn’t seem to hesitate as she placed her own hand, encased in its lavender armour, into Starlight’s open palm. There was a flash of teal light in Starlight’s hand, Twilight let out a soft gasp, and then Starlight pulled her hand away, clenching it into a fist. </p><p>“Thanks for… for letting me do that,” she said, unable to meet Twilight’s eyes. </p><p>Trixie, on the other hand, did meet Twilight’s eyes and nodded silently to her. </p><p>The Skyray set down upon an airstrip, a flattened patch of ground covered with concrete near the mouth of the valley. With what Starlight had said earlier about the difficulties in supplying settlements like this one, and from the fact that she couldn’t see a road or a railway line anywhere, Blake guessed that airships were the only means of supplying Badger’s Drift, its only means of contact with the outside world… the only way the lucrative diamonds reached the rest of Vale, there to adorn the necks of the likes of Skystar Aris. </p><p>Admittedly, Blake had never actually seen Skystar wearing anything like that, but she had only met the other girl a couple of times, so that wasn’t too surprising. She’d be very surprised if she didn’t have a couple of fancy necklaces, being the First Councillor’s daughter and all. </p><p>
  <em>Mind you, I was a princess of sorts, and I never had anything like that.</em>
</p><p>They dismounted from the airship, leaping down with all of their gear onto the tarmac surface, at which point, the airship rose into the sky again, taking off in a wide and lazy circle over the surrounding area. </p><p>“Team Tsunami, this is Rapidfire,” the female voice crackled in Blake’s ear. “I’ll stay on station until you call in.”</p><p>“Thank you, Rapidfire,” Trixie said. “I promise we won’t keep you waiting too long.”</p><p>As Badger’s Drift was set in the rear of a valley, it could be protected by a single wall of white stone, maybe ten meters high, running from one side of the ravine to the other; a pair of towers rose a little higher than the wall, topped with pyramid-shaped roofs, on either side of the gate. It was not the most sophisticated defence setup, but it probably served to keep bandits from trying their luck and would even be enough to hold off the occasional grimm who might amble by. </p><p>Whether it had been enough in this case remained to be seen. </p><p>The silent relay tower rose high above the wall; the only building in the village that was visible above the wall. Some attempt had been made in its design to accommodate a traditional Valish aesthetic, and those efforts had borne fruit with the result looking a little like the sort of tower that the eponymous girl might have been trapped in… if it weren’t for the obvious antenna sticking out of the top. </p><p>Trixie tapped her earpiece, and Blake guessed that she was broadcasting on all frequencies, or at least the ones she thought the town would respond to. “This is Trrrixie Lulamoon of the Atlesian Team Tsunami,” she declared, and though she didn’t refer to herself as ‘Great and Powerful,’ she seemingly couldn’t help trilling her Rs. “We’re here to help you with your relay problem.” She waited; Blake couldn’t hear a response, and she guessed that Trixie couldn’t either. “Hello?” she said. “I said this is Trixie Lulamoon of Team Tsunami, can anybody hear me?”</p><p>“It is a dead zone,” Tempest pointed out.</p><p>“Yeah, but we should be able to get point-to-point contact at this range,” Sunburst replied, a little nervousness creeping into his voice. “Right?”</p><p>Starlight pulled her rifle off her back and into her hands. Its lines glowed green with power. </p><p>Trixie took a deep breath. Her hand trembled ever so slightly as she pulled a phial of fire dust out of a pouch at her belt and slipped it into the base of her wand. She took another deep breath. Her hand might have shook, but her voice was firm as she said, “We should get moving.” She led the way herself, striding forwards and forcing the others to follow. Starlight had the stock of her rifle pressed into her shoulder, although the barrel pointed downwards. Sunburst carried a bag of gear in one hand and his staff in the other, while Tempest had two bags slung across her back and surprised Blake by transforming her staff into a very slender-barrelled rifle, one that had no stock of any kind and no handle to speak of either. Blake slid Gambol Shroud free of its sheath, the ribbon fluttering from the hilt. </p><p>They approached the gates, which were of a dark wood and resolutely shut. There was no sign of anybody in the towers. </p><p>“Hello up there!” Trixie called, her voice carrying over the wall with great ease. “This is Team Tsunami of Atlas Academy. We’re here to fix your relay tower. Open up!”</p><p>Silence was the only response which they received. </p><p>“Can anyone hear me?!” Trixie yelled. “I demand to speak to your supervisor!”</p><p>“The supervisor’s probably dead too,” Tempest muttered.</p><p>Sunburst winced. “Did you have to?”</p><p>Tempest shrugged. “Everyone’s thinking it; I was just saying it.”</p><p>“If everyone was thinking it, you didn’t have to say it,” Blake murmured.</p><p>Tempest glanced at her, a slight trace of a smirk upon her face. </p><p>“What do we do now?” Twilight asked. “I could have one of my drones fly over the wall and-”</p><p>“No need,” Trixie assured her. “The Grrreat and Powwwerful Trrrixie will simply teleport onto the other side of the wall and open the gate.” She raised one fist into the air. “The Magician’s Exit!” She threw down her hand, and Team TTSS and their companions were engulfed in a cloud of grey smoke. Blake’s eyes watered a little, and she started to cough as the smoke filled her throat. Fortunately, it cleared within moments and without any ill-effects that Blake could determine, what was more, revealing the sight of Trixie Lulamoon trying – and failing – to scramble up the wall. </p><p>She lost her handhold and fell, landing on her rear end with ill grace. She glowered at everyone as she got back up to her feet, as if daring anyone to make an issue of it. </p><p>Blake didn’t say anything, but inside, she was beginning to wonder if Rainbow Dash was the exception to Atlas, not the rule; if the majority of Atlas students were incompetent blowhards like this, then the northern academy was probably not the place for her. </p><p>On the showing of Team TTSS thus far, she was beginning to think she would be better off at Beacon. </p><p>Twilight knelt down, opening up her case of drones and lifting one of the delicate machines out of its resting place. “Why don’t I use this drone to see if I can find another way through the wall?”</p><p>Trixie sniffed. “An excellent idea, Twilight Sparkle, I was wondering who would be the first to suggest the obvious course of action. Hurry along, now; we haven’t got all day.”</p><p>Blake found herself exchanging glances with Tempest Shadow, who jerked her head towards Trixie in a ‘see what I have to put up with’ kind of manner. </p><p>Twilight also glanced at Blake, although apologetically in her case, before she activated her drone. The little machine rose a couple of feet, rotors whirring, even as a feed from its camera began to appear on Twilight’s scroll. </p><p>The team remained where they were, weapons out, eyes glancing around them, as the drone set off, running along the course of the wall, camera trained upon said wall and transmitting images back to Twilight. </p><p>“Have you found anything yet?” Trixie demanded.</p><p>“Not yet,” Twilight said, with admirably equanimity in the face of Trixie’s impatience. “Give me a little- oh.”</p><p>“'Oh'?” Starlight repeated. “'Oh' what? Is that good 'oh' or an-”</p><p>“Oh, that’s not good,” Twilight murmured. “Oh, dear.”</p><p>What was not good, as the rest of the team found out as they gathered around Twilight to look at the image on her scroll feed, was a culvert set in the base of the wall to allow the village’s namesake drift to pass through without being contained. It looked as though a metal grate had covered the culvert’s entrance from the outside, but it had been almost completely torn away, with only a few jagged stumps of metal protruding from concrete. </p><p>“Does that look big enough to admit a grimm to anybody else?” Sunburst asked tremulously.</p><p>“Depends on the size of the grimm, but, yes,” Starlight agreed. </p><p>Blake took a step forward. “If a grimm can fit, then so can I; I’ll crawl through the culvert and open the gate for you from the inside.”</p><p>Trixie opened her mouth, but was cut off by Starlight saying, “I’ll go with you.”</p><p>“I can do this by myself,” Blake said.</p><p>Starlight’s gaze was flat, hard and unyielding. “I’m coming with you,” she said, in a voice that left no room for discussion. </p><p>And, to be perfectly honest, there wasn’t time for an argument about this. “Fine,” Blake said, turning away from the rest of them and striding off down the wall in the direction of the culvert. </p><p>Starlight was slowed by the need to take off her vest first – or at least she wanted to take off her vest so that she was thinner and smaller crawling through the drain – but she soon caught up with Blake by moving at a jog. </p><p>“Clearly, you weren’t listening when I said that the lone wolf stuff stayed behind,” Starlight declared. </p><p>“Were you listening to yourself when you said that this team was capable?” Blake demanded.</p><p>Starlight reached out for Blake’s shoulder. Blake recoiled, turning on her toe and retreating a couple of steps away from Starlight. </p><p>Starlight held up her hand. “Just because I <em>can</em> copy your semblance doesn’t mean I’m going to,” she pointed out.</p><p>Blake stared at her. “In my experience, people rarely tell you that they’re going to snatch away the things that make you who you are. They just do it, because they can.”</p><p>“That’s not who I am,” Starlight declared. “You may think that you’ve got a pretty good idea of what this team is, but I’m asking you: don’t write us off just yet.”</p><p>Blake didn’t reply to that. There was nothing much to say in response to that. It was all very well for Starlight to ask for patience, but this wasn’t class; there were lives at stake here, and she wasn’t convinced that Trixie understood that, or cared about it. </p><p>“Let’s get this done,” she whispered.</p><p>Starlight didn’t stop Blake as she resumed leading the way to the culvert. They found it easily enough, not least because Twilight’s drone was hovering beside, camera still trained upon the hole where the grill had been torn away. </p><p>Water flowed through the culvert, but it was not deep enough that they would have to swim, although the drain was small enough that they would have to crawl. Getting Twilight’s drones and gear through would have been difficult, but for the unencumbered Blake, it shouldn’t present too much of an obstacle. </p><p>“Would it make you feel better if I went first?” Starlight asked. </p><p>Blake hesitated. It would, but on the other hand, she trusted herself more than she trusted any of Team TTSS right now. “No,” she said. “I’ll do it.” She sheathed Gambol Shroud upon her back and plunged into the water. It was deep enough that it overflowed her boots, filling them up and soaking her purple leggings. As she started to crawl, she could feel it on the patch of bare skin around her bellybutton where her outfit left her stomach exposed. The water was cool, and not particularly clean by the look of it. As she moved her hands through it, she could see little particles attaching to her skin, not to mention all the sediment at the bottom through which she was crawling just as much as through water. She hoped that there was nothing more unsanitary than dirt here, but even if that was true, then she was still going to have to wash everything when she got back to Beacon. </p><p>As she crawled through beneath the broken remnants of the grill and into the culvert, the sunlight dying and the world plunging into shadow, Blake heard Starlight moving behind her. She was splashing a lot more than Blake, at least in Blake’s opinion. </p><p>“I will accept,” Starlight said, “that we may not have made the best first impression. But come on, give us until the end of one mission before you judge.”</p><p>“It may be too late by then,” Blake muttered.</p><p>Starlight was silent for a moment. “I told you that we’re not Rainbow Dash. That’s unfortunate, because Rainbow’s great. I can see why General Ironwood likes her so much, although don’t tell Trixie I said that.” She paused. “Since you know Rainbow so well, I’m guessing that she’s sung the General’s praises to you?”</p><p>“Something like that,” Blake admitted. “I’m not sure how much of it I believe.”</p><p>“Honestly? Me too,” Starlight said. “I accept his experience, I accept that he is respected by a great many people, but do I accept that he deserves to be put up on some sort of pedestal the way that Rainbow and his other admirers do? No. He’s just a man, and men…”</p><p>Blake ventured a glance over her shoulder. “Men what?”</p><p>Starlight’s eyes gleamed a little in the shadow of the culvert. “You ever heard of the story of the man with two souls?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“What do you think it means?”</p><p>“Why don’t you tell me what you think it means?” Blake asked as she turned her head backwards. She was crawling towards the light, the other side of the culvert and the other side of the wall. “It seems more relevant to this discussion.”</p><p>“We’re <em>all</em> the man with two souls,” Starlight said. “We’ve all got light and dark within us, fighting for control of our body. Good and evil battle within our hearts each day, and that is no less true of General Ironwood than of anyone else.”</p><p>“That makes sense,” Blake conceded, “but spelled out like that, it must make it hard to trust people.”</p><p>“I trust some people a lot,” Starlight replied. “I don’t trust anyone blindly.”</p><p><em>I wonder if Rainbow or Twilight could say the same.</em> “But you want me to trust you and your team?”</p><p>“I want you to reserve judgement,” Starlight corrected, “for just a little while longer.”</p><p>Blake reached the end of the culvert. The grill here had been torn away, just like it had at the other end, and so, there was nothing stopping her from crawling out and back into the sunlight. She scrambled onto her feet and out of the water; her waistcoat and blouse were filthy, with it showing more strongly against the white than the black, and she could feel the water in her boots. Her leggings were soaked through, and the belladonna flower embroidered on them was invisible now. </p><p>She would definitely need a wash when she got home. </p><p>As Starlight, similarly filthy, splashed out of the culvert behind her, Blake drew Gambol Shroud once more, the sword switching into pistol configuration as she scanned the village before her with her gaze. </p><p>Aside from the quiet, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Badger’s Drift was a nice-looking settlement, nestling between the two sides of a valley that was mostly covered with trees, except for the tunnels that the miners had dug to get at the riches that lay beneath. The houses were of stone, irregular in size compared to brick, with edges that seemed a little rough and ready but sturdy-looking at the same time. One- and two-storey buildings mingled higgledy-piggledy, with some modest balconies jutting out from the two-storey houses. The relay tower loomed above all of them, casting a long shadow. </p><p>There was no sign – at least none that Blake could see – of any of these buildings having been smashed down, no doors broken into, no windows shattered. The village looked fine. Except it was too quiet. It was mid-morning on a pleasant summer’s day, and no one was stirring? No one was out of doors? No one could be heard at all?</p><p>It was wrong, and Blake didn’t like it one bit.</p><p>From the frown on her face, Starlight didn’t think much of it either. “Let’s go,” she said. “We need to get that gate open.”</p><p>As they ran down the length of the wall, Blake found – much to her discomfort – evidence of the violence that had been hidden from her initially: doors broken down, windows smashed, objects discarded in flight… blood on the streets. </p><p>And then Starlight’s scroll began to beep. </p><p>Blake looked at her. She was using Twilight’s motion tracking app, and from the other side of the scroll, Blake could see a white dot, representing an object in motion, approaching Starlight, and her. </p><p>Blake gripped Gambol Shroud in both hands, finger resting on the trigger, as she turned in the direction of the approaching whatever it was. Starlight held her weapon – Blake didn’t know what it was called – in one hand, holding her scroll up with the other. The beeping was incessant as the white spot headed towards them. </p><p>“I don’t see anything,” Blake said, her eyes darting this way and that. She saw the buildings, some of which bore some evidence of violence done unto them, others which looked so peaceful it was as if their owners had locked up and gone on vacation. She didn’t see anything, neither grimm nor survivor, moving towards them. </p><p>And yet, the motion tracker didn’t lie, did it?</p><p>Blake tapped her earpiece. “Twilight, are you sure your app works?”</p><p>“It should do,” Twilight replied. “Why? Are you getting something?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Blake muttered. “Could it be-?”</p><p>Something darted out of the open door of a nearby house; Blake snapped off two shots which missed, kicking up dirt and prompting an outraged yowl from the tabby cat which ran across the road towards them. </p><p>“Was that shooting?” Sunburst demanded.</p><p>“Confirm contact? Starlight are you okay?” Trixie yelled.</p><p>Starlight slung her weapon across her back. “We’re fine, Trixie,” she assured their leader. “It was just a cat,” she added, bending down to stroke the feline with her free hand. “It was just a cat, and we were a little jumpy. Sorry about that, little guy.” She petted the cat one last time before she stood up. “We’re on our way to you now.”</p><p>They made the rest of the journey to the gate without incident until they actually arrived at the gate. Then, they saw the bodies. Judging by the fact that he was clutching a sword, Blake guessed that one of them had been the huntsman hired to protect Badger’s Drift; she didn’t know who the other three were, but it seemed from the way their bodies lay on the stairs that they had been caught coming down off the walls. Maybe, when they realised that the grimm had crept in through the culvert, they had tried to rush down and confront them… only to be too late. </p><p>“It’s weird, huh?” Starlight said. “How they… sometimes clean up after themselves, and sometimes not?”</p><p>“They want us to know they were here,” Blake replied. “They want us to be nervous.”</p><p>“It’s kind of working,” Starlight muttered. “We need to get this gate open. Luckily…” She walked towards the gate, besides which sat a red light, currently glowing, and a green button underneath. </p><p>Starlight slammed the button with the palm of her hand. </p><p>Slowly, with much low rumbling like the stomach of some great beast, the gate began to slide open. </p><p>Twilight, and the other three members of Team TTSS, made their way through the opening portal even before it had completely opened up. It didn’t take a moment for them to spot the bodies. </p><p>“So it was the grimm, then,” Twilight murmured. “It can’t ever just be a mechanical failure, can it?”</p><p>“Apparently not,” Tempest said. </p><p>“So… what now?” Sunburst asked, looking at Trixie. His cheeks had gone a little green. Blake wondered if he’d ever seen the results of a grimm attack before. </p><p>“We need to search the area for any survivors,” Blake declared. “Like I said, they might have fled into the mining tunnels-”</p><p>“What we need,” Trixie interrupted her, “is to get the relay tower back on line as per our orders.”</p><p>“Our orders?” Blake repeated, her voice shaking with disbelief. “This town has come under attack, people have died, and you want to just keep blindly following orders?”</p><p>Trixie scowled. “Our priority is to restore the tower-”</p><p>“Our priority is to protect life; we’re huntsmen!” Blake cried. “Or at least you’re supposed to be.”</p><p>Trixie’s blue eyes blazed. “And what is that supposed to mean?”</p><p>“I mean are you really going to put blindly following orders like some robot ahead of doing what’s right?”</p><p>“I don’t need you to lecture me on how to run a mission!” Trixie snarled. “Even if you are some kind of secret agent! I’m the leader of this team, and I say that we’re going to head straight to the tower and restore communications!”</p><p>“Well, I say that we need to search for survivors immediately and rescue as many people as we can-”</p><p>“And what will you do once you find them?” Starlight demanded. “Without comms to call in medical, evac, or backup?”</p><p>Blake froze. The words stuck in her throat. She looked away from Trixie – who was glaring at her as though she were hoping to manifest a laser eye semblance and blow Blake’s head off – to her other companions on this mission; Twilight didn’t meet her eyes; she was looking downwards as though she were engaged in a very detailed study of the ground beneath her feet. Sunburst was biting his lip. Tempest looked completely unruffled by any of this. </p><p>Blake bowed her head. She hadn’t… she had been so focussed on the need to get to people that… Starlight was right; her options would be severely limited once she found any survivors until communications were restored. </p><p>“Orders don’t always make us feel good,” Starlight said, “but they usually make sense.”</p><p>“More people could die while we’re repairing the tower,” Blake pointed out. </p><p>“Then we’d better make it snappy, hadn’t we?” Starlight replied, her voice quiet and not carrying any judgement.</p><p>Blake took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking up at Trixie. “I… I’m sorry.”</p><p>Trixie snorted. “Apology accepted,” she replied, in a tone of ill grace. “Now, let’s move. Like Starlight said, the faster we make it to that tower, the better.” She set off, but stopped after a single step. “Wait.” She turned around, looking down at the bodies to her right. She frowned and raised her wand. Fire shot from the tip of it, an expanding cone of flame that consumed both the bodies mounting the steps towards the wall. Trixie turned, and more flame leapt from her wand tip to strike the other two bodies. </p><p>Trixie closed her eyes for a moment. “That’s the best that even the Great and Powerful Trixie can do for you,” she said, as the remains were turned to ashes where they lay. </p><p>“It’s better than nothing,” Starlight said.</p><p>Trixie flicked her hair, tucking a few rogue silver-white strands behind her ear. “Now, we move!” she declared, gesturing towards the rising, looming tower with her wand. </p><p>They ran, seeing no one as they crossed the village; at least, nobody alive. There were signs of fighting, signs of the grimm, but they saw neither grimm nor survivors. They did see bodies, though, and Trixie burned them with her fire dust just as she had those at the gate. They lay in the doorways of their homes, but they also seemed to form a trail towards the tunnels dug into the valley wall. </p><p>Blake felt her hands start to itch; she understood the need to get the tower back online, but why couldn’t they split up, some to the tower and others to search for survivors? Maybe Trixie was just too blinkered to think of it, or perhaps she didn’t trust her team to be able to function in smaller sub-units. </p><p>Either way, Blake doubted that she would get a sympathetic hearing if she raised the idea now. She got the feeling that, just as she had judged Team TTSS, so the team had now finished judging her. And they were no more impressed than she had been. </p><p>They arrived at the tower. There was another body outside, this one wearing a green Valish uniform, with what looked like a badge with a crossed pick and shovel on it on his collar. </p><p>“Was there a garrison here?” Sunburst asked.</p><p>“No, just a detail to maintain the relay tower,” Twilight replied. “An officer and four men of the Royal Engineers.”</p><p>“Royal Engineers,” Tempest mused. “How can there be Royal Engineers when there are no royals?”</p><p>“How can there be kingdoms when there are no kings?” Blake asked.</p><p>The corner of Tempest’s lip curled upwards. “How indeed?”</p><p>“Twilight,” Trixie ordered, “open the door.”</p><p>The tower might have been built with an eye to Valish architectural sensibilities, but the door was definitely not old-fashioned; it was a solid blast door of black metal, designed to withstand assault; it was shut, but there was some hope that if it had been closed in time, they might find people inside. </p><p>It also, however, posed a problem for them getting in, a problem that was swiftly solved as Twilight stepped forward, kneeling down in front of the control panel. </p><p>“It’s locked,” she announced, “but if I just…” She trailed off, murmuring to herself as some kind of device – it was long and thin and metallic and looked like a screwdriver to Blake – extended out of one of the fingers of her gauntlet before she inserted it into a socket on the wall. The holographic display on her arm stirred to life, and Twilight began to tap furiously on the light buttons with her free hand before the door slid open, grinding back into the recesses of the wall. </p><p>“We’re in,” she said, after it had become obvious that that was the case.</p><p>“Good work, Twilight,” Starlight complimented.</p><p>“Yeah, you’ve gotten even faster than before,” Sunburst added.</p><p>“You know what they say about practice making perfect,” Twilight replied. </p><p>“Tempest,” Trixie decreed. “Guard the door.”</p><p>“Whatever you say, leader,” Tempest replied.</p><p>Inside the tower, it was dark. All the lights were dead, and no amount of flicking the nearest switch back and forth could get them to work again. Starlight attached a flashlight to the shoulder of her vest, and the tip of Trixie’s wand glowed with a bright white light, but it was Blake with her natural night vision who moved ahead, leading the way down corridors which were pitch black to the others but which were as clear as day to her. </p><p>There were no survivors, at least none that she came across. There were more bodies though: Royal Engineers with weapons in their hands, and by the looks of it, civilians who had fled into the tower for protection. </p><p>But how had the grimm gotten to them with the door locked?</p><p>Blake’s footsteps echoed upon the metal walkways, for the interior of the tower was all Atlesian modernity, with smooth metal corridors that were almost featureless. She didn’t like the sound of all the footsteps in here; she had to keep reminding herself that they belonged to allies, not enemies. The motion tracker apps detected nothing. It seemed they were the only ones here. </p><p>Twilight, in the midst of the group, called out directions to those leading the way, and so brought them to what looked like a control room. There were no dead men here, thankfully, but there was a lot of wanton vandalism: the guts had been ripped out of the control panels that lined the walls.</p><p>“Oh, no,” Twilight wailed. “It’s been completely wrecked! Do you think they knew what they were doing?”</p><p>“I hope not; that would make it one smart grimm,” Starlight replied. “Can you fix it?”</p><p>“It depends what you mean by 'fix it,'” Twilight replied. “It will take over a week of repairs to get this tower fully operational again, but I think I can rig up a way to talk to command in… an hour. Maybe thirty minutes, if I’m lucky.”</p><p>“Do it,” Trixie said. She froze, her expression doubtful, her eyes darting this way and that. She looked at Starlight Glimmer for a moment, but said nothing. She looked away. Nobody said anything. Starlight and Sunburst didn’t seem inclined, Blake didn’t dare. Twilight was too busy getting out her tools; it was the only sound in the control room, her rustling around in her bag of tricks. </p><p>Eventually, Trixie spoke, “You’ll stay here and get your work done, Twilight; Tempest will guard the door. The rest of us,” – she looked Blake in the eyes – “will head for the caves.”</p><hr/><p>The caves were dark, but not completely lightless; mining lights had been strung up along the walls of rock so black it seemed almost obsidian, and those lights were still on and lit their way as they walked down the largest central tunnel dug into the rock face.</p><p>“You know,” Sunburst observed, “Twilight’s drones would be ideal for scouting all the different tunnels.”</p><p>“Twilight can’t operate the drones and repair the comms,” Starlight pointed out. </p><p>“I know,” Sunburst acknowledged. “That doesn’t mean I can’t regret it, right?”</p><p>“I suppose not,” Starlight agreed. “There’s a fair amount to regret around here.”</p><p>Sunburst nodded. “Right.” He tapped his earpiece. “Twilight, how are you getting on with the repairs? Twilight?”</p><p>“The tunnels are interfering with the reception,” Starlight said. “A dead zone inside a dead zone.”</p><p>“I… I hope that some people made it into these caves,” Sunburst said. “I hope that enough made it that they can rebuild this place. It reminds me of the place where we grew up, you know?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Starlight murmured, a melancholy note entering her tone. “Yeah, I get you. Like you said… hopefully.”</p><p>“Hopefully, Twilight gets communications back on soon so that she <em>can</em> use her drones,” Trixie grumbled. “Or we could be searching these tunnels for days and not find anything!”</p><p>A scream echoed up from deeper into the tunnels. A child’s scream. </p><p>Trixie was the first one to start running, the others not far behind. Blake and Starlight had their guns ready, Trixie’s wand swung up and down in her hand as she pumped her arms. Her sparkling cape trailed behind her as she ran, rounding a corner to behold a little girl, fallen on the ground, screaming up at the grimm that loomed over her.</p><p>It looked like a giant rat; at least eight feet tall, with a tail of bone – spikes protruding out at all angles – that was another four feet long at least and a bony mask over its face from which two giant teeth extended down. Plates of bleached bony armour covered its back, obscuring the black fur beneath. Its forepaws were small, but the claws that ended them were sharp. </p><p>It was a stormvermin, a rat grimm, Blake recognised the description from Professor Port’s class; he had told a story about battling them beneath the sewers of… she couldn’t remember where it was supposed to be. </p><p>She couldn’t remember how he’d beaten them either. Professor Port made it very hard to recall the important bits of his lectures. </p><p>Blake raised Gambol Shroud, snapping off two shots from her pistol which ricocheted harmlessly off its armour plates. The stormvermin swung its head around to brux at her, slamming its teeth together angrily.</p><p>Trixie raised her free hand. “Magician’s Intervention!” she cried as she brought her hand down in a swift chopping motion. A puff of smoke surrounded her, and Blake’s eyes widened as she saw a second puff of smoke burst out of nothing between the grimm and the girl… and when the smoke cleared, there stood Trixie. </p><p>Her cape swirled around her as though it was buffeted by a hundred winds. The moons upon her hand gleamed silver and gold. And Trixie laughed, her laughter mocking and defiant in equal measure, as she flung out one hand out by her side and brandished her wand before her in the other. </p><p>Fire shot from the tip of the wand, fire in a great gust, expanding outwards, cone-like, to consume the upper half of the stormvermin. The grimm screeched in pain, cowering futilely as the fire kept coming, kept burning. The fire danced in Trixie’s eyes as the grimm turned to ashes. </p><p>Trixie locked eyes with Blake for a moment, the slightest trace of a smirk upon her face, before she turned and knelt down in front of the little girl that she had just saved. </p><p>“Hey there, kid,” she said. “Are you okay?”</p><p>The girl sniffed. “I… I think so. Are… are there any more of those things?</p><p>“It doesn’t matter,” Trixie assured her, “because if there are, then the Grrreat and Powwwerful Trrrixie will protect you over and over again!”</p><p>Starlight walked forwards towards them both. “What are you doing here all by yourself? Where are your parents?”</p><p>“They’re further down in the tunnels,” the girl said. “I came out because…” She looked away.</p><p>“Hey,” Trixie said. “Do you want to know a secret, kid?”</p><p>“My name’s Millie.”</p><p>“Do you want to know a secret, Millie?” Trixie asked again. “We all make mistakes, even the Great and Powerful Trixie. So what were you doing here all by yourself?”</p><p>“I was looking for my cat, Jonesy,” Millie replied. “I… I lost him when we were running, and I was worried about him all by himself.”</p><p>“Your cat, huh,” Trixie said, sweeping the hat off her head. Blake could only stare in amazement at the idea that she would actually try this here and now, of all times and places, as Trixie reached into her hat… and there was a yowling sound, the hat shook as though something inside were fighting to get out, and then Trixie produced the tabby cat that Blake had shot at earlier that day. It wriggled in Twilight’s grip, struggling to get free. “Is this your cat?”</p><p>“Jonesy!” Millie cried, embracing the tabby with both arms, hugging him tight as he tried to get free of her, ignoring all his attempts to wriggle out of her grasp. “Thank you so much! How did you do that?”</p><p>“A magician never reveals her secrets,” Trixie said.</p><p>“Say, Millie,” Starlight said, “now that you know that Jonesy’s safe, can you lead us back to where your parents are?”</p><p>Millie nodded eagerly, and she led the way through the tunnels to a large hollow where around thirty people, maybe more, were gathered, not counting the children, of whom there were quite a few. They were all dirty, ragged, and dishevelled. They had no supplies that Blake could see, and some of them were injured, and their injuries were going untreated. The best that could be done for them was to cover in layers of coats and hope that was enough to keep them warm. Only two people had guns that Blake could see; meanwhile, nerves and anxiety were so plain to see on everybody’s faces that it was a wonder that more grimm hadn’t found them already. </p><p>It was clear that nobody believed little Millie when she said that Trixie had made the pet cat appear from out of her hat – Blake wasn’t sure that she believed it herself – but nevertheless, they looked at Team TTSS as though they were more than human, as though they were in some way miraculous for finding them there, and so quickly. </p><p>And when Sunburst put down his bag and opened it up to reveal that it was full of candy bars and water bottles, the people looked at them as though they would have happily voted Team TTSS for First Councillor if they could. </p><p>Blake watched as Sunburst gave out food and water to the refugees down here, while Trixie distracted with magic tricks and bombastic pronouncements; she watched and was forced to concede that, yes, perhaps she had been a little hard on them before. </p><p>“You can admit I was right any time you want,” Starlight said, a smile playing across her face as she leaned against the cavern wall next to Blake.</p><p>Blake glanced at her. “You asked me to reserve judgement until <em>after</em> the mission,” she pointed out.</p><p>“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” Starlight admitted. “Still, you see what I mean? Trixie… she’s got it where it counts.”</p><p>“Why is that?” Blake asked. “At the gate, and then here-”</p><p>“I’ve given up trying to understand,” Starlight admitted. “Maybe it really is magic.”</p><p>“Even if it is magic, then it should still work all the time,” Blake pointed out. <em>Sunset’s does.</em></p><p>“Like I said, I’ve given up trying to explain,” Starlight repeated. “All I know is that-” She stopped as the scroll in her hand began to beep. “Trixie, we’ve got movement!”</p><p>Trixie got to her feet. “How many?”</p><p>“It’s hard to say,” Starlight said, because there were not a lot of individual dots coming towards them on the motion tracker so much as one great, undivided blob, with a couple of smaller outriders preceding the main group. </p><p>Trixie and Sunburst joined Blake and Starlight in front of the mouth of the cave. “How many grimm attacked you?” Starlight asked.</p><p>One of the refugees, a man with a balding head and a walrus moustache, shivered as he said, “Just one.”</p><p>“One?” Starlight repeated. “That’s impossible, that-” The first stormvermin poked his head around the corner; Starlight blew said head off with a single clean shot, and then did the same to the next. “That’s two right there, and Trixie already got a third.”</p><p>“There were many when they broke in,” the man corrected himself, “but then they merged, became one giant creature; I’ve never seen anything like it!”</p><p>“Oh no,” Sunburst groaned.</p><p>Blake blinked. “What? Do you know what he’s talking about?”</p><p>“You ever heard of a rat king before?”</p><p>“No,” Blake said. “What’s a rat king?”</p><p>“Instead of just growing,” Sunburst explained, “stormvermin sometimes-”</p><p>His voice was drowned out by the sound of bruxing, the sound of a score or more of stormvermin grinding their teeth, fangs chattering together, growing louder as the creatures came closer and closer, the great blob on Starlight’s motion tracker drawing nearer and nearer, as the sounds that they made got louder and louder and the fear of the children and adults alike became more and more pronounced. They huddled together, they cried out in fear, they wailed and wept as the bruxing, the sound of all those stormvermin, got closer.</p><p>But it was not a horde of stormvermin that approached; it was a single rat king.</p><p>Blake didn’t know how they had done it, but once they had gotten inside the walls, all of those stormvermin had combined somehow; all their tails were fused together, joined within a spiky, armoured sphere from out of which stretched the bony tails of all the rat-like grimm, turning a mass of grimm into a single grimm. One grimm with many heads and many minds all joined together as one. </p><p>The rat king shrieked, a single sound sprang out of many mouths, as it rushed forward, a broiling mass of teeth, individual bodies of the whole scrambling over themselves to reach their enemies. </p><p><em>Many bodies, part of a single whole.</em> It occurred to Blake that this rat king was not a terrible metaphor for the Atlesian forces, and it struck her how absurd it was that she should think of a thing like that at a time like this.</p><p>Starlight fired – Blake fired too – laser bolts and bullets from Gambol Shroud slamming into the stormvermin heads, scoring their bony skulls but slaying none of the individual components of the rat king. Trixie thrust out her wand, fire spraying from tip of it, and Sunburst used the wind dust crystal in his staff to create a tornado of air which fanned the flames, increasing their spread and intensity until the rat king was confronted by a wall of flame, flames leaping up the height of the cave, flames which the grimm could not avoid but had to pass through. </p><p>Pass through it did, though, or at least, the rat king sent one of its bodies, not seeming to notice that it was on fire, surging through the flames to strike Trixie square in the chest and knock her off her feet, the wand flying from her hand to clatter on the ground. </p><p>Blake leapt forwards, Gambol Shroud switching smoothly from pistol into sword as she flung her hook to bury it in the burning flesh of the stormvermin before she fell on it with cleaver and blade and sliced off its head. </p><p>The body ceased to burn, turning to ashes, all save the tail, the spiked and bony tail which lashed out like a whip to hit Blake across the midriff and send her flying. Blake, caught by surprise, not anticipating having to use a clone, was sent pinwheeling through the air, hitting the cave ceiling before plummeting down to land upon her front on the ground. </p><p>Starlight’s gun transformed in her hands into a long lance, a lance which she wielded in smooth, flowing strokes to slice the tail into pieces before it could strike at Sunburst. The flames began to die down; another part of the rat king rushed forward, and though it was impaled on Starlight’s lance once more, its tail was free to whip her to the ground. </p><p>Trixie regained her feet just as another rat grimm leapt over Starlight, forced to her knees and temporarily distracted, its jump so high as to clear the huntsmen completely. </p><p>“Oh no you don’t!” Trixie yelled, and from out of her sleeve, she flung a line of multi-coloured handkerchiefs, of the sort that would be pulled from out of somebody’s ear, a line of handkerchiefs all tied together which she flung towards the grimm and which, by some miracle, wrapped all around it like a lasso, pulling the grimm – or part of the grimm – away from the refugees to where Blake – beginning to catch on – severed first its tail and then its head. </p><p>Trixie recovered her wand, expelling the fire dust cartridge and inserting a phial of ice dust which she used to create a wall of ice at the mouth of the cave. </p><p>They could hear the rat king battering at the ice wall from the other side. Every time its many heads hammered against the wall, the people cried out. </p><p>“No one be alarmed!” Trixie declared. “The Great and Powerful Trixie will come up with a solution… momentarily.” She turned to the others. “Sunburst, how do we kill this thing?”</p><p>Sunburst pushed his glasses up his nose. “Destroying the cluster of tails will do it; that’s how they’re all linked; taking it out will… either kill them or weaken and confuse them; it’s not entirely clear.”</p><p>“I guess we’ll find out,” Starlight said. She walked briskly over to the bag of gear that Sunburst had brought with him and rummaged around in it until she pulled out a large grenade. </p><p>“That’s not our only one of those is it?”</p><p>“No,” Starlight said quickly. “But we do only have two.” The grenade she had been holding hovered above her hand. “Luckily for us, I borrowed Twilight’s semblance.”</p><p>“Mm, lucky,” Blake murmured. </p><p>The ice wall began to crack. Blake transformed Gambol Shroud into a pistol once more. Trixie loaded her wand with lightning dust, and Sunburst did the same with his staff. </p><p>The first head of the rat king broke through the wall. Lightning from Trixie and Sunburst lashed at it, but that didn’t stop more heads from breaking through until the ice wall shattered and the rat king stood revealed once more, pushing as many of its bodies as it could through into the cave, in spite of all the lightning that was loosed on it. </p><p>Starlight flung the grenade, Twilight’s telekinesis guiding it through the mass of stormvermin, guiding it towards the mass of tails that had been armoured in bone, dodging this and that individual head, dodging the tail that sought to knock it aside, getting closer and closer-</p><p>Until one of the stormvermin leapt out of the black and bony mass and swallowed the bomb whole. The explosion ripped it apart a moment later, but the tails were untouched. </p><p>“Dammit!” Starlight growled. </p><p>Blake ran for the pack, skidding to a halt beside it as she grabbed the remaining bomb. </p><p>“Blake?” Starlight yelled. “What are you doing?”</p><p>Blake didn’t respond. She just ran. In her other hand, Gambol Shroud switching once again, flowing fluidly from pistol into sword, her legs and arms pounding as her filthy boots hammered upon the rocky floor. She burst past the members of Team TTSS, leaping over the grimm rat that sought to lunge at her. They must have recognised that she was holding their destruction because another stormvermin leapt up to close its jaws around her, only for its fangs to bite mere shadow as Blake’s clone dissolved, revealing the real Blake several meters ahead. </p><p>Trixie had, in the end, shown Blake what she was made of; now Blake would show Trixie what she was made of in turn. </p><p>She leapt through the mass of the rat king, using her clones to take the hits while she danced on, rarely bothering to strike and then not aiming to kill, only to get some obstacle out of her way. The rat king was shrieking, its mass of bodies turning over themselves in their rush to get at her, but they were being harried by lightning blasts and by the fire of Starlight’s rifle, and those attacks and the pain they caused hampered it. It couldn’t get hold of Blake; she had too many clones, she was too nimble, they just couldn’t stop her. </p><p>And she got closer and closer to the tail. Close enough that she could reach out her hand and the bomb was almost touching the bone covered mass. </p><p>Blake pulled the fuse. </p><p>The last thing Blake heard was the world exploding. The last thing she felt was being hurled backwards. </p><p>The last thing she saw was the fire consuming everything. </p><hr/><p>“Blake? Blake!”</p><p>Blake blearily opened her eyes, the face of Twilight Sparkle slowly coming into focus. </p><p>“Blake!” Twilight cried. “You’re awake! How do you feel?”</p><p>Blake groaned.</p><p>“I’m not surprised; your aura broke,” Twilight exclaimed. “You’re lucky you don’t have any permanent injuries.”</p><p>Blake sat up, or tried to sit up, anyway. It was hard when your body hurt that much. </p><p>“Try to stay still,” Twilight insisted. “You shouldn’t move.” She shook her head. “Starlight told me what you did. What were you thinking?”</p><p>Blake looked around as best she could. Medical personnel were administering aid to the injured refugees. “We won, right?”</p><p>Twilight nodded. “Yes. You destroyed the rat king, and Starlight and the others took care of the stormvermin. And I restored communications and requested aid from Vale.”</p><p>Blake let out a long, slow breath. “Then it was worth it. One might even say it was cheap at the price.”</p><p>Twilight frowned. “You really mean that, don’t you?”</p><p>“So surprised?” Blake asked. “I’m sure Rainbow Dash would agree with me.”</p><p>“Maybe,” Twilight admitted. “Even so, you-”</p><p>“It’s what I signed up for,” Blake told her. “Beacon or Atlas, it doesn’t change that.”</p><p>“I’m not… I don’t know; maybe you’re right, and I’m just showing my naivety,” Twilight admitted. “So… how did it feel?”</p><p>“Almost dying?”</p><p>Twilight rolled her eyes. “No, your mission with Team Tsunami.”</p><p>“Oh,” Blake said. She thought about it for a moment. “They… they weren’t Rosepetal.”</p><p>“I heard that!” Trixie yelled.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0048"><h2>48. Uncomfortable Truth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Blake fights with Sunset, Cardin and Bon Bon in succession.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Uncomfortable Truth</p><p> </p><p>Blake bent down to start unloading her clothes from one of the large washing machines that filled up the laundry room in the dorm room basement. Five such washing machines, along with two tumble dryers, ran along the right-hand wall of the room, while the other side was taken up with wooden hanging racks for drying clothes out on, if that was preferred, or airing clothes that had been ironed. Unfortunately, there wasn’t an actual airing cupboard anywhere in the dormitory. A pair of ironing boards lay propped up against the wall, waiting.</p><p>“It looks weird, you wearing your uniform on a Sunday,” Sunset said as she grabbed one of the ironing boards and set it up. The metal legs crackled and groaned as Sunset lowered them into place. </p><p>“I didn’t exactly come here with a lot of clothes,” Blake murmured.</p><p>“I… have never noticed that before,” Sunset admitted. “How come I never noticed that before?”</p><p>Blake, still bent over, looked around at her. “Do you really want the answer to that?”</p><p>“Probably not,” Sunset conceded. “You should have mentioned it; we could have… gone shopping or something. We still could.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Blake said, a touch of amusement creeping into her voice. “But I’ll pass. There are ways that I’d rather spend time with you than shopping for clothes.”</p><p>“Me too, but it seems like you could do with them,” Sunset pointed out.</p><p>“I’ve managed just fine so far,” Blake pointed out, turning her attention away from Sunset and towards the washing machine. She had changed out of her mucky outfit just as soon as she and TTSS got back from Badger’s Drift, and left her stuff in the washing machine while she went up to the SAPR dorm room to do some more work with Pyrrha on their essay. Now, a couple of hours later, she was back to put her stuff in the dryer, at which point, there might be time for a little more work with Pyrrha if she was still willing.</p><p>Or perhaps she would wait with Sunset while the latter got her ironing out of the way. </p><p>Either way, the first thing was to actually get her stuff out of the washing machine. Blake pulled on the latch and opened up the door to find that someone had beaten her down here. </p><p>Someone who had painted ‘Terrorist Scum!’ in lurid blood red across her white blouse. </p><p>Blake held up her blouse, the only blouse she had, in both hands. “Please tell me this will come off in another wash.”</p><p>Sunset was looking down at a pair of jeans and had to look up, asking, “What will come-?” The words died on her lips. </p><p>Both Blake and Sunset were silent for a moment, a silence shattered by the crack of Sunset kicking one leg of the ironing board hard enough to make it topple over onto its side, the iron falling with it. </p><p>“Be careful,” Blake warned. “Those things are fragile.”</p><p>“Do I look like I care?” Sunset snapped, stepping over the fallen ironing board. “That little… hasn’t she learned her lesson yet? Is she a glutton for punishment or something?”</p><p>“Who?” Blake asked.</p><p>“Bon Bon, who else?” Sunset demanded, her ears flattening down on top of her head. “She needs another, then she’s going to get another lesson, and-”</p><p>“Bon Bon?” Blake repeated. “Sunset, what are you talking about?” she asked, although she had a bad feeling that she knew exactly what Sunset was talking about. “What did you do?”</p><p>“What did I do?” Sunset said. “Bon Bon is the one who vandalised our door, and I’ll bet she’s the one who did this too.”</p><p>“And what did you do?” Blake asked once again, her tone firmer now. “You were Anon-a-Miss, weren’t you?”</p><p>Sunset was silent for a moment, which said a great deal in its own right, because if it was not her, then why would she not simply deny it? Why not say ‘no’? Why stand there so sullen, thrusting her hands into her pockets, looking away from Blake, unless she had done it but didn’t wish to say so.</p><p>“Say it, Sunset,” Blake urged. “If you think that what you did was right, then you should have no problem having the courage to say so, and if you think that you did was wrong-”</p><p>“It wasn’t!” Sunset growled. “She had it coming.”</p><p>“Who, Lyra?” Blake asked, her voice like iron. “Lyra didn’t do anything.”</p><p>“No, but Bon Bon did.”</p><p>“So you got back at her by punishing her friend who didn’t do anything wrong?!” Blake cried. “That’s ridiculous! It’s worse than ridiculous; it’s <em>wrong</em>! How could you?”</p><p>“I did this for you.”</p><p>“No!” Blake snapped. “No, I will not have that. I have spent too long having people tell me that they’re doing terrible things ‘for me’ or ‘so I don’t have to,’ and it wasn’t true when he said it, and it’s not true now!” Blake’s whole body trembled. “Have the guts to admit that you did this because you felt offended, and no lies about protecting me.”</p><p>Sunset stared at her, eyes wide. “I’m not Adam,” she said quietly.</p><p>“No,” Blake conceded. “But that fact alone doesn’t make you a good person. I don’t belong to you, Sunset; an attack on me isn’t an attack on you, you don’t get to be angry on my behalf, you don’t get to respond on my behalf, you don’t get to take revenge on my behalf.”</p><p>“It was my door too; am I allowed to get upset about that?”</p><p>“If you must, but leave me out of it!” Blake shouted. “I didn’t ask for you to hurt Lyra, I didn’t ask for you to try and get back at Bon Bon, and I won’t have you pretend that you were driven by concern for me.”</p><p>Sunset scowled. “Just because it’s not a form of concern that you like doesn’t mean it’s not concern. And why do you care that Lyra had her secrets shared across the school?”</p><p>“Because I’m in this position because I had my secrets shared across the school!” Blake reminded her. Loudly. </p><p>Sunset looked down at the ground, scuffing her foot back and forth. “Right. Of course. But that-“</p><p>“Worked out in the end?” Blake demanded. She held up her blouse once more. “Not completely.”</p><p>Sunset looked at the garment and the words that had been sprayed onto it. “I wanted to warn her off,” she said. “I wanted to send her a message.”</p><p>“It doesn’t seem to have taken,” Blake said acidly. “If I need your help, I’ll ask for it. As I have done before. As I <em>didn’t</em> do this time.”</p><p>Sunset was quiet for a moment. “You can’t expect me to just let you face this alone.”</p><p>“Better that than what you call help,” Blake replied. “If you don’t realise that what you did was wrong, then… if you really are my friend, if what I want matters to you at all, if you really are different from Adam, then I want you to promise me something. Promise me that you won’t do anything about this. Promise me that you’ll let it go.”</p><p>“While you do what?” Sunset demanded. “Let them keep biting at you?”</p><p>“If that’s my choice,” Blake said.</p><p>Sunset wrinkled her nose. Her tail twitched behind her. </p><p>“Promise me, Sunset,” Blake insisted.</p><p>Sunset sucked in through her teeth. “Fine,” she said. “I promise. Nothing… nothing will come of this on my account.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Blake whispered. “I… it was wrong, you see that, don’t you? What you did, it wasn’t right?”</p><p>Sunset didn’t say anything for a moment. She turned away. “I’ll do my ironing later,” she said and stalked out of the laundry room. Blake heard her footsteps outside, moving away until she didn’t hear them any more.</p><p>
  <em>I guess that’s a no, then.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>How can you be so charming one moment and so ugly the next?</em>
</p><p>She was reminded of what Starlight had said: two souls, fighting for control over the body. </p><p>Blake let out a sigh as she picked up the falling ironing board and set it up against the wall. She put the iron away as well, before returning her attention to her own laundry and to the vandalised blouse. It would need re-washing, which would mean going back to get her detergent again. Which would mean explaining to Yang and the others. </p><p>
  <em>I’ll just tell them my clothes were so filthy that they need more than one wash to get the stains out.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Hopefully, they’ll believe it.</em>
</p><p>This would mean leaving her clothes there for longer, and Blake was a little concerned about the fact that she might come back to even worse vandalism, but – while she planned to stay with them while they were washing this time – there wasn’t much she could do about the need for washing powder, and so, she closed the washing machine door, with her blouse back inside, and approached the door out of the laundry room. </p><p>The doorway was barred by Bon Bon before she could step out of it. </p><p>“Blake,” she said, in a voice that was hard and a little cold.</p><p>“Bon Bon,” Blake replied, her own tone even and without emotion. “Excuse me, please.”</p><p>Bon Bon didn’t move. She didn’t even give any sign that she had heard Blake speak.</p><p>Blake’s brow furrowed a little. “Let me by.”</p><p>“Have you got the message yet?” she demanded.</p><p>“So,” Blake said, “Sunset was right. It <em>was </em>you.” She couldn’t pretend to be too surprised, or too upset. She had lied to her teammates more than to any other students at the school, and she couldn’t affect amazement that at least one of them bore a grudge against her for that. For that matter, she knew that Bon Bon had taken the revelation about her past the hardest, so it wasn’t too much of a leap that she would take action against the object of her ire. They had never been friends; Blake had no right to treat this as some kind of a betrayal on Bon Bon’s part. </p><p>She would say that she was a little disappointed; based on what she had known of Bon Bon, she had thought the other girl was better than this. </p><p>
  <em>It seems that we were both hiding who we really are.</em>
</p><p>“It’s the very least that you deserve,” Bon Bon said.</p><p>“Haven’t you heard?” Blake asked. “I was an Atlesian agent the entire time.”</p><p>“Don’t give me that!” Bon Bon snapped. “You were never any servant of Atlas; you were a criminal, a terrorist, a killer, and as far as I’m concerned, you’re still all those things.”</p><p>“Then you’re wrong,” Blake declared.</p><p>“I don’t think so.”</p><p>“Just because you think it doesn’t make it true,” Blake insisted. “I am a huntress in training, just like you-”</p><p>“You’re nothing like me!” Bon Bon snarled.</p><p>“No,” Blake murmured. “I suppose I’m not.” She hesitated, silent for a little while. “I… I’m sorry about what Sunset did to Lyra; she shouldn’t have been caught up in our quarrel. I didn’t ask for her to-”</p><p>“Sunset will pay for what she did,” Bon Bon vowed, “but at least she didn’t slit Lyra’s throat like you-”</p><p>“I would never have hurt Lyra or any other member of Team Bluebell!” Blake cried. “Nor any student at this school! I… I am more than what you think I am.”</p><p>Bon Bon folded her arms. “You may have fooled Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle, you may have fooled Pyrrha and Ruby, you might even have fooled Professor Ozpin and General Ironwood, but you haven’t fooled me.”</p><p>Blake took a deep breath. Clearly Bon Bon was beyond reasoning with on this point. “So,” she said, “have you come to give me the rest of what I deserve?”</p><p>Bon Bon’s lips curled into a sneer. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d like me to humiliate myself in front of your skill, give you an excuse to fight back because I threw the first punch? You must think I’m an idiot.”</p><p>“I don’t think that,” Blake said softly. “I think you’re a product of this world.”</p><p>“I’m looking out for the people who matter to me. I’m doing what’s right.”</p><p>“A lot of people think that; it doesn’t make it so,” Blake replied.</p><p>“You mean your terrorist friends?” Bon Bon demanded. She shook her head. “Our ancestors were stupid for making your people slaves. They should have exterminated you while they had the chance.”</p><p>Blake’s eyes widened. “What did you say?”</p><p>“I said you people have caused nothing but trouble,” Bon Bon yelled. “Let’s forget about the White Fang for a moment, all the people that you kill, all the people you kidnap, all the things that you steal, all the businesses your burn down-“</p><p>“The White Fang are not the faunus-”</p><p>“So you say, and let’s forget about them for a minute; what do you people actually do?” Bon Bon demanded. “What good are you? What do the faunus do for the kingdoms other than moan and whine about how bad they have it? I mean give it a rest already!”</p><p>Blake found that her hands were curling up into fists by her side. Her breathing came slowly and more heavily. She had heard all this before, as a child growing up, moving around the four kingdoms with her parents; she had heard it when she was living in Mistral as part of the White Fang chapter there. She had heard it all before, but now, coming after the tolerance, the acceptance that she’d received at Beacon, from Team SAPR, from Yang, Ren, and Nora, from the Atlesians… it was like the old scars that she had carried on her soul had faded, and these new attacks, here in what she had come to think of as a safe haven. </p><p>“All that we ask,” she said, her words coming in harsh fits and starts, “are the same rights that you take for granted.”</p><p>“You don’t deserve the same rights as us,” Bon Bon sneered. “You’re just a bunch of animals!”</p><p>“Stop it!” Blake yelled. “That’s not true!”</p><p>“You belong in-”</p><p>“Drop it!” snapped the voice that Blake recognised as belonging to Starlight Glimmer, as Bon Bon’s words were cut off by a masculine cry of pain from outside the laundry room. </p><p>There was the sound of something hitting the floor, followed by Cardin saying, “Hey! Let go of me already!”</p><p>“I don’t think so,” Starlight snapped. “Come on, inside.”</p><p>Bon Bon was forced forwards by Cardin being shoved into her. They both tumbled forwards into the laundry room, causing Blake to use one of her clones to get out of the way. She reappeared on top of a washing machine as Starlight Glimmer – wearing her Atlas uniform and balancing a bundle of clothes in one arm – and Trixie Lulamoon – dressed as she had been for the mission, cape and all – followed Cardin and Bon Bon through the door. </p><p>“Trixie?” Blake asked. “Starlight?”</p><p>“Hello again, Blake Belladonna,” Trixie said, her voice rolling up and down like the tide.</p><p>“Hey, Blake,” Starlight said with a slight smile upon her face. “You need any help?”</p><p>“Uh, I’m not sure,” Blake murmured. “What are you two doing here?”</p><p>“The Grrreat and Powwwerful Trrrixie can always tell when a friend is in need,” Trixie declared.</p><p>Blake stared at her.</p><p>“Plus, Starlight has laundry after crawling through that drain,” Trixie added, in a less grandiloquent tone, “and all the machines in <em>our</em> building were already in use.”</p><p>“So,” Starlight said, brandishing a scroll in one hand, “let me guess: you were hoping to goad Blake into starting a fight which you would then capture on video as proof of what a savage animal she is.” She glanced at Blake. “No offence, I’m just-”</p><p>“Trying to capture their words, yes, I know,” Blake acknowledged.</p><p>“So?" Starlight demanded. “Do I have it right?”</p><p>“Bon Bon, I’m astonished!” Trixie cried melodramatically. Her smile was a little sly as she continued, “What would Twilight Sparkle say if she heard your spouting such foul sentiments?”</p><p>“I didn’t mean it,” Bon Bon protested. “I was only saying it to get a rise out of her.”</p><p>“I’m not sure that would make much difference,” Starlight growled. She turned her attention to Cardin. “And you-”</p><p>“She doesn’t belong here!” Cardin snapped.</p><p>“Blake helped save an entire village today,” Trixie declared. “She was almost as much of a hero as the Great and Powerful Trixie!” She flung out one hand, and a single miniature firework burst above her open palm. “What have <em>you</em> done recently?”</p><p>Cardin growled. “She’s White Fang! You’re from Atlas, you should-”</p><p>“Should what?” Starlight snarled with a ferocity that silenced him. “Should hate faunus? Should judge people just because of how they were born?”</p><p>Trixie folded her arms. “Besides, Blake Belladonna was an Atlesian spy infiltrating the White Fang. Any idiot knows that.”</p><p>“You can’t possibly believe that, Trixie!” Bon Bon cried. “That’s obviously just a cover story they made up!”</p><p>“Oh, really. Can you prove that?”</p><p>“I…” Bon Bon hesitated for a moment. She let out a wordless hiss of irritation before conceding, “No. No, I can’t.”</p><p>“It doesn’t matter if we can prove it or not!” Cardin snarled. “Every word that she said is true: they’re just a bunch of filthy animals; they don’t deserve to live amongst civilised people.”</p><p>“There’s nothing civilised about you or your attitudes,” Starlight said, throwing Cardin’s scroll at him and forcing him to catch it clumsily with both hands. “I think you ought to leave. Now.” She took a step forward, her blue eyes narrowing. “And if I hear any more about you giving Blake a hard time, then what Sunset Shimmer might do will be nothing compared to what I do to you two! Now beat it!”</p><p>They retreated, Bon Bon swiftly and Cardin with more reluctance, but they both left. Cardin slammed the door shut behind him, leaving Blake, Trixie, and Starlight in the room. </p><p>“If I came on too strong on your behalf, I’m sorry,” Starlight said. “I just can’t stand people like that.”</p><p>“I’m not sure that I’d want you to actually do anything to them,” Blake murmured. “But… thank you, for sticking up for me. Especially since we only really met today.”</p><p>Starlight smiled. “Sometimes, a day is all it takes. Especially when it’s a day like we’ve had. A day where you did really good.”</p><p>“Trixie meant what she said; you were almost as impressive as I am,” Trixie said. “And that’s not praise that the Great and Powerful Trixie accords to just anyone.”</p><p>Blake chuckled, covering her mouth with one hand. “I’m duly appreciative.”</p><p>“You’d better be,” Trixie replied haughtily.</p><p>Starlight shook her head. “You did good out there today, Blake. A little crazy, but good. Not many people would have the guts to pull a stunt like that.”</p><p>Blake shrugged her shoulders as she hopped down off the washing machine. She noticed that, resting on top of Starlight’s bundle of clothes, was a box of detergent. “Do you mind if I borrow a little of that?”</p><p>“How would you give it back?” Trixie asked.</p><p>“Right,” Blake murmured. “Can I have a little of that?”</p><p>“Of course,” Starlight said. “Need another wash to get those stains out?”</p><p>“Bon Bon and Cardin left me with a couple of extra stains,” Blake informed them.</p><p>Starlight frowned. “And you still don’t want anything to be done to them?”</p><p>“It’s not worth it,” Blake replied.</p><p>Starlight set her clothes and washing powder down on top of one of the machines. “It’s not, or you’re not.”</p><p>Blake blinked. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“I mean, you were lucky today,” Starlight explained. “Very lucky. If you had had a little less aura left, the blast would have killed you.”</p><p>“So long as the people survived, it would have been worth it.”</p><p>Starlight and Trixie looked at one another. Starlight said, “It can’t be easy, being here, after everything you’ve been through.”</p><p>“You could say that.”</p><p>“I suppose you have an idea of who you’re supposed to be, and the fact that other people don’t see you that way makes you desperate to prove to them that you <em>are</em> that person, that you’re more than what they think you are,” Trixie said. “Trust us, we get it.”</p><p>“And yet, you also think I’m crazy,” Blake pointed out.</p><p>“Does it matter if everyone finally believes you’re the hero you are in your own head once you’re too dead for them to admit it?” Trixie asked.</p><p>“It’s not about that,” Blake insisted.</p><p>Trixie raised her eyebrows.</p><p>“People’s lives were at stake!” Blake cried. “Isn’t that something worth dying for?”</p><p>“Sure,” Starlight agreed. “But most people wouldn’t be so… lacking in hesitation. Most people wouldn’t be so quick to let their antagonists walk away without consequence.”</p><p>Blake grasped at her honour band with her other hand. “I’m a faunus,” she said. “I’m a faunus who half the school believes used to be a member of the White Fang. I have to be twice as brave, twice as fearless, twice as forgiving in order to get half as much credit as a human would. That’s something I don’t think either of you could understand.”</p><p>“I understand what it’s like to be feared and hated,” Starlight said. “To be met with mistrust simply because of who I am.”</p><p>Blake thought for a moment. She thought about her own reaction to Starlight’s hand going anywhere near her. “Your… I’m sorry, it’s just-”</p><p>“Semblance-stealing semblances aren’t cute, I know,” Starlight finished. “There’s something not right about them. Something… evil. So I’ve been told.”</p><p>Blake closed her eyes. “Like I said, I’m sorry. I didn’t… I can’t imagine how much I-”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Starlight said, “I’m used to it.”</p><p>“That doesn’t make it right that I should become one more in a long line of people to make the same assumptions about you that I hate when people make about me,” Blake said. “Although it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve made thoughtless assumptions about others around here.”</p><p>“So we’ve heard,” Trixie said dryly.</p><p>Blake laughed nervously. “You asked Twilight about me before the mission?”</p><p>“Well, you were going to be part of our team,” Starlight explained.</p><p>“And yet, you still defended me?”</p><p>“Of course we did!” Starlight declared. “You’re one of us now.”</p><p>“I’m actually not,” Blake pointed out. “At least, not yet. Maybe not ever.”</p><p>Trixie smirked. “Just give it time,” she said. “You <em>are</em> one of us, Blake Belladonna; you just haven’t accepted it yet.”</p><hr/><p><em>I’m not so sure about that,</em> Sunset thought, as she lurked out of sight. Specifically, she was lurking in the boiler room just down the corridor, suffering from surprisingly little excess heat. </p><p>She had seen Bon Bon coming before Bon Bon saw her, and seen the looming form of Cardin Winchester behind her, and since Sunset had no interest in an open confrontation with them – not because she was afraid of those two clowns, but because she wasn’t sure that Blake would believe she hadn’t started it – and so, she had scrambled into the boiler room with the door only slightly ajar, so that she was not seen as she squatted in the gloom with the boilers, but she could hear what was going on not far away. </p><p>It had been clear to her – as it had been clear to the Atlesian student Starlight Glimmer – what Cardin and Bon Bon had, between them, been up to. Unlike Starlight, Sunset had not made any move to intervene to help Blake deal with it. After all, Blake had already made it very clear that she didn’t want Sunset’s help. She wanted to deal with things on her own. Very well then, let her deal with it. </p><p>That… that was unfair. And unkind. And an intentional misreading of what Blake had said. But what Blake said had hurt. It had been a slap in the face to Sunset’s pride, and that wounded pride didn’t much feel like putting itself out there for Blake again so soon if its only reward was to be compared to Adam and told that she was a bad person for caring about a friend. </p><p>But at the same time, she <em>was</em> Blake’s friend. She was Blake’s friend even if Blake herself thought ill of Sunset, and so – while she had not gone to Blake’s aid – she had gotten out her scroll and recorded everything. </p><p>She wondered how Skystar would feel to hear her cousins described as ‘filthy animals.’</p><p>She had had nothing before. That was, no doubt, why Cardin had felt confident to be so brazen about Blake: he knew that Sunset couldn’t prove that he was a racist, at least not to the satisfaction of a girl who was besotted with him, and so, he thought her toothless and scorned her threats. </p><p>Well, he wouldn’t be so quick to scorn now, would he?</p><p>In the darkness, Sunset pondered her next move. She could confront Cardin with what she had and try to wring some advantage out of him… no. No, that would be to make the same mistake that Cardin had made with Jaune; that would only demonstrate a different kind of powerlessness, borne out of an unwillingness to cede her power and inflict the ultimate sanction on him. No, if she was going to use this, then she would have to use it, sending it to Skystar and possibly others. </p><p>But if she wheeled out Anon-a-Miss again, then Rainbow might take it poorly… or she might not, considering the egregious racism on display. </p><p>Or Sunset could not risk it and simply send the recording to Skystar. That would be less anonymous, but it would protect her from Rainbow’s wrath. </p><p>It might not, however, protect her from Blake. Blake had extracted a promise from Sunset and would probably expect Sunset to hold to it no matter what. She was, after all, that kind of person. </p><p>
  <em>Do I want to help Blake, or do I want to keep Blake as my friend?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And is there a way I can do both?</em>
</p><p>She could, Sunset considered, do the whole thing anonymously – actually anonymously, not Anon-a-Miss-ly, har har – by sending the tape to the press. Assuming that the First Councillor’s daughter was actually someone they cared about, which was something Sunset wasn’t certain of at present. </p><p>And besides, while that might have the desired effect, the problem with anonymity was that the person you were getting back at didn’t know it was you. And if they didn’t know, then what was the point of revenge?</p><p>Yes, you theoretically got them back for whatever they had done, but it wasn’t enough that they be punished, that they suffer for their actions; they needed to <em>know</em>, even – <em>especially</em> – if they couldn’t prove it, that it was you, whom they had thought they could offend with impunity, that had struck back against their hubris. </p><p>They needed to know the debt was paid, or else it felt empty. </p><p>
  <em>But is it worth losing Blake just for the satisfaction?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>No. No, it isn’t?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Is it worth going against her will to help her out?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I… I don’t know.</em>
</p><p>So Sunset lurked in the darkness, and pondered upon the morality of revenge.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0049"><h2>49. The Lion and the Unicorn</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sunset faces off against Arslan Altan, the Golden Lion of Mistral</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Lion and the Unicorn</p><p> </p><p>“The next match,” Professor Goodwitch said, “will be between Sunset Shimmer and Arslan Altan.”</p><p>Sunset rose to her feet, adjusting the strap that held Soteria’s scabbard across her back.</p><p>“Be careful, Sunset,” Pyrrha murmured. “She’s the one I warned you about earlier.”</p><p>It took Sunset a moment to remember back to the start of the semester; so much had happened since then. “You mean the one who doesn’t like me?”</p><p>“The one you gratuitously insulted, yes,” Pyrrha replied. “Don’t underestimate her. She’s come closer to defeating me than anyone else I’ve ever fought.”</p><p>Sunset frowned. “Including me?”</p><p>Pyrrha hesitated. “That… would be difficult to say for sure.”</p><p>“I’ll be fine,” Sunset assured her. “I almost beat you, and she’s not as good as you are, so I’ll have no problem.”</p><p>Pyrrha frowned a little. “I’m not quite sure that logic holds up.”</p><p>“You can do it, Sunset,” Ruby declared.</p><p>“Good luck up there,” Jaune added.</p><p>“Miss Shimmer?” Professor Goodwitch demanded. “Will you be joining us?”</p><p>“Coming, Professor,” Sunset said, turning away from her team and making her way across the darkened floor of the amphitheatre towards the stage. She leapt up onto said stage in a single bound, Sol Invictus held in her hands. She nodded her head to Professor Goodwitch. “Just having a quick strategy session with my teammates.”</p><p>Despite that ‘strategy session,’ Sunset was still the first one to arrive onto the stage, waiting expectantly for her opponent to show herself. The delay was – in Sunset’s opinion – almost certainly because said opponent was spending time in the dark getting her big entrance ready. </p><p>Arslan Altan strutted onto the stage like a rock star, arms spread out low on either side of her as if she were running her fingers through water that only she could see or feel. Her olive green eyes sparkled with light from the cocksure smirk that besmirched her lips, and as she mounted the stage, a great roar of approval arose from the assembled Haven students. Fists were thrust into the air as voices cried out her name, called on her to kick ass, to win for Haven, for Mistral, to let the lion roar. Arslan’s smile widened, becoming a smile in truth instead of a smirk, and like a flower absorbs the sunlight so she seemed to drink up the energy and approval of the crowd, turning towards her supporters down below and in the gallery, raising her arms up high above her head to raise the volume up higher still.</p><p>“Quiet down, please, all of you,” Professor Goodwitch said, raising her voice above the tumult. She waited for the noise to die down, at least a little, before she added, “Miss Altan, please try to remember that this isn’t the Mistral Coliseum. In fact, that is something <em>all</em> Haven students should try to remember.” She swept her glare across them all, silencing the last of them who had dared to continue demonstrating their enthusiasm. “These bouts are not displays for your entertainment but for your education. Please take them seriously.”</p><p>“Believe me, Professor, there is nothing I take more seriously than a fight,” Arslan declared. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun, right?”</p><p>Sunset studied her opponent as Arslan began to limber up; she was about as tall as Yang and as broad in the shoulders as Rainbow Dash, not to mention darker than anyone that Sunset had seen outside of Atlas. She was dressed in a yellow-green robe with a white cuff around the one remaining loose sleeve on the right. The other sleeve – and much of the left-hand side of the robe – was absent for whatever reason, exposing the black tank top and pants she wore beneath, as well as the bandages around her wrist – and around her upper arm, above the elbow – in the place where Pyrrha and Blake wore their arm bands. A red sash, embroidered with an endless knot, was wrapped around her waist and dangled down almost to the floor. Around her neck, she wore a string of red beads- no, they were fire dust crystals, weren’t they? Something to be wary of, although Sunset couldn’t see any other weapon on her. Her hair was platinum blonde, cut short at the nape of the neck but worn in an untidy mop atop her head. </p><p>She settled in a low stance, her knees bent and legs spread apart, her palms unclenched but poised to strike, one held before her and the other drawn back and level with her eyes.</p><p>“Are you ready, Miss Shimmer?” Professor Goodwitch asked.</p><p>Sunset’s fingers shifted upon Sol Invictus. “Ready, Professor.”</p><p>“Miss Altan?”</p><p>“Ready, Professor,” Arslan said.</p><p>“Very well then,” Professor Goodwitch said, as she retired nimbly from the stage. “Begin!”</p><p>Arslan had been standing poised to attack, but now, as the signal came to start the fight, one hand flew to the necklace of fire dust crystals around her neck, ripping one and flinging it across the stage at Sunset, igniting it with her aura so that a blazing fireball streaked towards her.</p><p>Sunset conjured up a shield, the barrier of green energy forming before her just as the fireball struck, beating upon her magic but not denting it; the fire blossomed upon the barrier, providing a harmless light show for a moment before dissipating into nothing.</p><p>The death of the flame revealed Arslan charging, one fist drawn back, the smile on her face replaced with a look of intense concentration as she swiftly – she was almost as fast as Pyrrha – closed the distance between them. </p><p>Sunset kept her shield up. If Arslan wanted to approach just like Pyrrha, then she would begin just like she had with Pyrrha; she’d let her shield take the first punch and then erupt it outwards to knock the proud Haven challenger on her backside. And unlike Pyrrha, Arslan didn’t have a gun. </p><p>She could already see how this battle was going to go. </p><p>A roar ripped from Arslan’s throat as she swung her fist straight at Sunset’s shield. Her knuckles struck the gleaming green barrier, and Arslan’s aura dropped into the yellow as Sunset’s shield shattered into so many pieces like glass. </p><p>Sunset’s eyes widened. <em>She broke it… with her aura? But-</em></p><p>Arslan charged through, still yelling at the top of her lungs as she threw a second punch with her other hand, driving her fist straight into Sunset’s stomach. Shockwaves erupted from her hand, spilling off the stage and blasting across the watching crowd like a mighty wind as her aura dropped yet further. </p><p>Sunset would have doubled over if it weren’t for her cuirass; even with the armour on, her body bent as much as she was able to, the force of Arslan’s aura-enhanced blow rippling through the metal and through her body too. She could feel her aura being mashed by Arslan’s strength, she could feel her insides being rocked by it, and she could see herself flying as the force of Arslan’s attack blasted her backwards.</p><p>Sunset teleported before she could be knocked off the stage and the fight ended before it began. Wherever she reappeared, she would still be suffering the force, so she reappeared in mid-air, her whole body flying, upside down, her hair askew. For a moment, Arslan didn’t realise where she had gone, and in that moment Sunset, spread out her hands and fired magical bolts from her fingertips, green darts rapidly spitting down at Arslan as Sunset flew overhead. </p><p>Arslan shielded herself with both hands; that was as much as Sunset saw before the stage began to explode from the impacts all around her, showering Arslan with debris and obscuring her in the clouds of smoke from the explosions. Sunset risked a glance towards the aura board and saw that Arslan’s aura was going downwards. </p><p>Sunset cast an anti-gravity spell on herself, beginning to right her body as she hovered in the air above the smoke, palms out, watching for-</p><p>Arslan emerged from out of the smoke, carried by a great leap up into the air, flying towards Sunset like a missile. Sunset fired a blast of magic from her palm, which struck Arslan square in the chest, hurling her back downwards towards the ruined stage, but as she fell, she threw a knife attached to a rope at Sunset. It didn’t strike Sunset, but the rope wrapped itself tightly around Sunset’s vambrace. As Arslan fell, Sunset was pulled down with her, pulled down towards the stage, pulled down to where Arslan – who had hit said stage with a thump that had knocked some more of her aura off – was waiting for her with a punch to the face. </p><p>Sunset tried to block the blow, but it was hard to do when you were being literally hauled downwards towards your opponent, and the punch caught her square on the jaw, pounding her aura level down as Sunset was tossed aside, bouncing across the wreck that her magic had made of the stage before coming to a halt upon her back.</p><p>She knew from her fight with Pyrrha that she wouldn’t get the chance to lie down. She teleported to the other side of the stage; Sunset had lost her grip on Sol Invictus, but she summoned it with telekinesis into her hand as Arslan charged towards her. </p><p>The weapon reached her sweat-stained hands just in time. Sunset brought the rifle up, her breathing heavy. She snapped off one shot, then another; Arslan rolled aside, tossing another fireball Sunset’s way, and then a second. Sunset conjured a shield which absorbed both blasts, then disrupted it without waiting for Arslan to break through – she didn’t know if Arslan still had the aura left for that, but she wasn’t going to take any chances – the magic rippling outwards in a wave that would have blasted Arslan backwards if she hadn’t already leapt back out of range, sending another fireball Sunset’s way as the shield’s effects vanished. </p><p>Sunset threw herself to the ground – the part of the stage she was on now was largely untouched – and fired a third shot, which Arslan dodged. </p><p>Arslan charged. Sunset scrambled to her feet and fired the three remaining shots in the chamber of Sol Invictus. Arslan dodged them all, diving and rolling out of the way before rising up to continue her rush towards Sunset. </p><p>Sunset kept hold of the empty gun with one hand, as with the other, she ignited the fire dust layered into her jacket, the phoenix cape that would burn Arslan if she tried to strike her there. The flames of red and gold leapt up across her back and front, armouring her against an enemy who didn’t have the aura left to trade-off damage for damage like that. </p><p>Yet Arslan kept on coming. </p><p>Sunset extended the bayonet of Sol Invictus, the blade snapping outwards like a javelin as a spearshaft slid smoothly out from the stock of the gun. Arslan nimbly avoided the thrusting blade, her body twisting as she turned away, one hand snapping out to grab the shaft as it thrust past her. Sunset let go of the weapon, allowing Arslan to toss it aside. She threw her knife at Sunset, who blasted it away with a single blast of magic from her fingertip. More magical blasts split the stage where Arslan was standing. She leapt up, her whole body spinning, and began to descend for a kick aimed squarely at Sunset. </p><p>Sunset braced herself, bringing up her vambraces above her head, and with a touch of her aura, she ignited the lightning dust infused within them. It crackled and sparked, hissing eagerly, waiting for the moment when Arslan’s foot would-</p><p>Miss it, descending past Sunset’s face, past her whole body, as Arslan landed on the ground right in front of her. </p><p>She presented a perfect target. Sunset’s hand flew out: one blast, and she-</p><p>Arslan caught her with a spinning kick that cut her legs out from under her, the blow landing beneath Sunset’s jacket, where the flames did not protect her. Sunset yelped in alarm as the world flew sideways; she toppled over, long hair flying. She saw Arslan rise up over her, expression grim, fist poised to strike. </p><p>She did not strike; she held her open palm just above Sunset’s flames, as if she were daring herself to see how close she could get to the fire. </p><p>Sunset felt the blow nevertheless, a blast of Arslan’s aura hitting her in the chest, making her wince in pain, even through her breastplate, slamming her into the ground and making the stage crack beneath her. </p><p>The buzzer sounded. </p><p>“And that’s the match,” Professor Goodwitch declared. “Miss Altan, you are the winner.”</p><p>Sunset groaned as cheers rose from the Haven section of the watching students. Arslan remained standing over her, unable to keep a slight smirk off her face. </p><p>“You were right,” she said.</p><p>Sunset blinked up at her. “Huh?”</p><p>“You were right, in Grimm Studies on the first day of semester,” Arslan explained. “I’m not Pyrrha Nikos. But I am Arslan Altan, the Golden Lion of Mistral, and don’t you forget it.” She held out one hand to help Sunset up.</p><p>Sunset took it. “You really have been carrying a grudge about what I said this entire time, haven’t you?”</p><p>“Of course I have!” Arslan declared, as she hauled Sunset onto her feet. “You insulted me!”</p><p>Sunset stared at her. She breathed in, and then breathed out again. She grinned. “Good for you,” she said, because it was nice to meet someone who held their pride as precious as she did and could remember the slights inflicted upon it for just as long. “I won’t make that mistake again.”</p><p>“That’s right,” Arslan declared. “You won’t.”</p><p>“Well fought, both of you,” Professor Goodwitch declared as she made her way back up onto the ruined stage. “Miss Altan, had you done any preparation for this match?”</p><p>Arslan hesitated a moment. “I, um, might have watched the video of Sunset fighting Pyrrha a few times,” she murmured.</p><p>“Make that a few dozen times!” someone shouted from out of the darkness. </p><p>“Who’s side are you on, Reese?” Arslan demanded. </p><p>“There is nothing to be ashamed of, Miss Altan,” Professor Goodwitch informed her. “I hope you don’t mind me disclosing to the class that you requested this fight.”</p><p>“It’s a bit late to object now, isn’t it, Professor?” Arslan asked. “But no, I don’t mind. I wanted to show her that I wasn’t some chump to be dismissed so easily.”</p><p>Professor Goodwitch nodded her head slightly. “Miss Shimmer, were you aware that Miss Atlan desired to fight against you?”</p><p>Sunset’s brow furrowed. “Pyrrha mentioned that she might, Professor.”</p><p>“And did you seek out any videos of Miss Altan’s fights to get a feel for her fighting style?”</p><p>Sunset looked down at the ground. “No, Professor.”</p><p>“No,” Professor Goodwitch repeated. “And that, more than any details of your individual performances, is why Miss Altan defeated you: preparation, forethought, planning. Having sought out a battle, Miss Altan researched her opponent and devised strategies to use against her, while Miss Shimmer did not. </p><p>“In the field as huntsmen, you will not always know what you are walking into,” Professor Goodwitch continued. “Unforeseen variables will arise on your missions, grimm that you did not expect may show themselves, but there will also be times when the situation is not completely unknown to you: you are pursuing a criminal with a bounty and a record, certain grimm have been reported in the area, and so forth. In those circumstances, rigorous preparation can mean the difference between victory and defeat, even between life or death. Thank you both; you may step down.”</p><hr/><p>There were many differences between Pyrrha and Arslan, but the one that had always stood out the most to Pyrrha herself was the way in which Arslan relished what might be called the perks of fame. As Pyrrha spotted her great rival on the way to the dining hall, she was surrounded not only by her own teammates but by a veritable entourage of hangers-on, all dressed in the uniform of Haven Academy. They seemed cheerful enough, given the way that they were all laughing at something that Arslan had just said – Pyrrha had been too far away to catch it – but as Pyrrha approached, she couldn’t help but wonder just how much of that was earnest laughter and how much of it was forced. </p><p>Flatterers were, in her opinion, almost as much of a bane as being put upon a pedestal and out of reach of all genuine contact. </p><p>“Arslan?” she asked, raising her voice a little to be heard over the hubbub. “May I have a word with you, quickly, before lunch?”</p><p>Many eyes turned to Pyrrha, not only Arslan’s but those of her team and those who thronged around her. Most of those gazes were respectful, some were even deferential – which made Pyrrha want to look away – but some verged upon hostility. Pyrrha couldn’t help but wonder what she’d done to offend them. </p><p>Arslan herself did <em>not</em> look hostile, thankfully. She didn’t smile, exactly, although it seemed as though she might do so; she nodded. “Sure thing, P-money. I’ll see you guys inside, okay?”</p><p>“Are you sure?” asked one of her teammates, a tall, dark-haired young man.</p><p>“Yes, I’m sure, go on,” Arslan said, shooing them off with one hand before she strode off the path and across the grass towards where Pyrrha stood under the shade of a convenient tree. “Sorry about that,” she said, speaking softly as her entourage passed by. “Some of them…”</p><p>“Don’t like me very much,” Pyrrha murmured.</p><p>Arslan winced. “You can’t honestly be too surprised about that,” she said. “I mean, you did ditch your own kingdom.”</p><p>“Because I attended Beacon instead of Haven?” Pyrrha asked.</p><p>Arslan nodded, leaning her shoulder against the tree. “You can’t have missed the fact that it was a big deal when people found out about it.”</p><p>“I felt – I still feel – that it was made a much bigger deal of than it warranted,” Pyrrha replied, her voice even softer than Arslan’s. “Why should it matter where I choose to go to school?”</p><p>“Come on, P-money, you know how this works,” Arslan replied. “Everything that we do matters. Everything that <em>you</em> do matters most of all, because you’re the champ, and the princess, what’s more.”</p><p>“I’m not a princess.”</p><p>“Tell that to the press and the fans,” Arslan muttered. “Besides, if it doesn’t matter where you go to school, then why didn’t you go to Haven?”</p><p>“Because…” Pyrrha hesitated, choosing only the reason that Arslan would actually understand. “Because Beacon has a better reputation.”</p><p>“Yeah, and don’t we know it too,” Arslan said. “You could have changed that; people were expecting you to change that. This was supposed to be Haven’s year, like it hasn’t been in… ever. You and me, an all-Haven final, wouldn’t that have been something special for the folks back home?”</p><p>Pyrrha’s eyes narrowed. “You do realise that there is so much more to our education than the Vytal Festival? The tournament is an ornament to our time here, not the purpose of it.”</p><p>Arslan folded her arms. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you? I wasn’t certain, but you’re actually taking this seriously.”</p><p>Pyrrha blinked. “You thought that I was… what? A dilettante? Did you think that I was going to spend four years here and then retire to my family fortune?”</p><p>“No, I thought you were going to spend four years here, try and notch up a couple of Vytal victories, and then come back to the arena like me.”</p><p>“You’re not going to become a huntress?” Pyrrha asked.</p><p>“No,” Arslan said, her voice rising, her tone conveying just how absurd she found the idea. “Why would I?”</p><p>“Because you’re training to become one?” Pyrrha suggested, a little more sharply than she had intended.</p><p>“I’m here for the Vytal Festival,” Arslan declared. “There is no other reason. You have to be a student at one of the academies to compete, so here I am,” – she spread her arms out wide on either side of her – “a student. And I’ll be a student until my second Vytal tournament is done, and then I’ll-”</p><p>“Drop out?” Pyrrha asked. “Leave your teammates to carry on without you?”</p><p>Arslan frowned. “Are you judging me, P-money?”</p><p>“Yes, I’m afraid I am, and where does that name even come from?”</p><p>Arslan shrugged. “Does it bother you?”</p><p>“A little.”</p><p>“Good, that’s why I keep using it,” Arslan replied quickly. </p><p>A sigh escaped from Pyrrha’s lips.</p><p>“Oh, don’t sigh like that; it’s not like any of the ways I tried to needle you ever caused you to slip up in the arena,” Arslan said. “I wish they had.”</p><p>“You do realise that we’re not in the arena now?”</p><p>“Oh, really, that explains the lack of a crowd.”</p><p>“My point is, can’t you please drop it?” Pyrrha asked.</p><p>“You think I’m faking this?”</p><p>“Aren’t you?”</p><p>“I’ll never tell,” Arslan replied. She grinned. “Come on, Pyrrha, you know that if we break character, some of the magic goes away; who knows where a fan might be watching?”</p><p>Pyrrha sighed again. “You really don’t intend to become a huntress? You intend to go back to the tournament circuit?”</p><p>“And you don’t?” Arslan demanded. “You’re going to give up the arena, and all that you mean to so many people back home?”</p><p>“I’m going to defend humanity,” Pyrrha declared. “I’m going to defend the world against the darkness that surrounds it.”</p><p>“That’s what I said,” Arslan growled. “You just tried to justify it with a lot of fancy words.”.</p><p>“Are you angry?” </p><p>“Yes, I’m angry; I’ve a right to be angry!” Arslan snapped. “You can’t do this to me, Pyrrha.” She stalked off, walking a few paces before turning around, a scowl upon her face. “You cannot do this! You can’t just walk away before I’ve beaten you!” She took a deep breath. “You know that I’m not entered into this year’s tournament.”</p><p>“Neither am I,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>“I know you’re not; that’s why I’m not entering either. Professor Lionheart told me that if I wanted it, he’d make special arrangements for me to fly back for the tournament, clear it with Professor Ozpin and everything,” Arslan said. “I told him, ‘thank you, sir, but no thanks.’”</p><p>“You didn’t want the special treatment.”</p><p>“That’s not it at all,” Arslan said. “You really don’t get it, do you? Three years in a row, I’ve placed second to you. If I won this year, and I didn’t face you, then the whole rest of my career, I’d have been dogged by people saying ‘oh, Arslan isn’t the real champ; she never beat Pyrrha Nikos’ or ‘the Invincible Girl would have taken it home again if she’d only bothered to show up.’ I stayed away because I didn’t want people to think that I’d won by default, that I waited until you were out of the picture to snatch the laurels that were rightfully yours. Only, that’s exactly what you’ve condemned me to do. That’s exactly what’ll happen when I finally take home the crown: I won’t be the Champion of Mistral; I’ll be the second place who hung around until the real champion quit so I could win by default. I didn’t think you hated me like that.”</p><p>“That’s not my intent,” Pyrrha said. “But it’s also not my fault.”</p><p>Arslan shook her head. “You always were an amateur,” she muttered. “A talented amateur, but an amateur nonetheless.”</p><p>“I intend to be a professional huntress,” Pyrrha replied.</p><p>Arslan scowled. “Why? Why would you want to walk away from everything you are for the sake of… of this?”</p><p>“Because it’s important,” Pyrrha said. “More important than any trophy or contest that I could ever win. Because I’m defending humanity, and what’s more important than that?”</p><p>“Come on, Pyrrha, you’re already a hero; we both are.”</p><p>“Is that so?” Pyrrha asked. “Is that really what you think? I… I’m afraid I can’t agree with you on that. I… I certainly won’t deny that I would like to be a hero, perhaps even <em>the</em> hero. I won’t even deny that that is my goal, but would I call myself a hero now? No. No, I would not; certainly, I would not accord myself that honour based upon my tournament victories.”</p><p>“Go on TV and tell that to all the kids who look up to you,” Arslan told her. “Stand on the stage at FanExpo and tell everybody dressed up like you that you’re not a hero and they’re a bunch of suckers for thinking differently. Does anybody get dressed up for a huntress? Does anybody wait in line to have their photos taken with huntresses?”</p><p>“Perhaps not, but huntsmen and huntresses save the lives of those who do not dress as them or wait in line for photographs,” Pyrrha said. “As we did over the vacation.”</p><p>“Yes, well, somebody had to do that, I will admit,” Arslan conceded. “And you did it very well, I’m sure, in that practically perfect in every way manner of yours that is so deeply and incredibly frustrating. My point is that it didn’t need you to do that; a lot more people could have taken care of that grimm than can get the crowd up on their feet like we can. Although… I have to admit there is one thing that has been eating at me about that grimm business.”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“Why didn’t Professor Lionheart ask me for help?” Arslan asked. “I was home in Mistral for the vacation; I spent it with my folks in the new house I bought for them on the eastern slope.”</p><p>It was possibly rather rude, but Pyrrha couldn’t help but suggest, “Perhaps Professor Lionheart is aware that you’re not taking your studies particularly seriously.”</p><p>Arslan glared up at her for a moment. “I suppose I deserved that,” she conceded. “But if Professor Lionheart thinks anything bad about me, then he’s kept it quiet; every time he sees me, he fawns all over me, tells me how well I’m doing, what a great student I am. It’s all a bit much, to tell you the truth.”</p><p>“I can’t imagine what that must be like,” Pyrrha murmured.</p><p>Arslan let out a bark of laughter. “Okay, okay, you’ve made your point. I don’t know; maybe he just forgot where I live. It is kind of weird, though, right? I mean, I’m not the only student who lives in Mistral, and I’d have gone on a hunt with you.”</p><p>“It does seem a little strange,” Pyrrha conceded. “But we must hope that he has a good reason for his decisions. In any case, with what happened at Mistral – with what’s happening in Vale – we need more good huntsmen in Remnant now, not less. We might not be able to save the world, but we can at least save someone, and that’s something that I couldn’t say if I went back to the arena.”</p><p>“Huntsmen might be needed, but that doesn’t mean that you or I have to do it, or that what we do doesn’t mean anything,” Arslan said. “Yes, there aren’t real lives on the line, but so what? When we put on our costumes and step into the ring, we’re what every kid in Mistral aspires to be, and I don’t know about you, but that matters to me. </p><p>“I didn’t grow up near the peak of the mountain; I grew up in the foothills, on the lower west side. Our next door neighbour sold drugs out of his bungalow until the Vacuan mob moved in and cut his fingers off. At night, we could hear battles between the Vacuans and the local crooks. There were days when my mother went hungry so that I could eat dinner. By rights, I should be dead or in jail or hooked on something, but I got out. And when kids whose mothers go hungry so that they can eat dinner see me fight in the coliseum, they know that they can get out too, that it’s not hopeless, that their lives can be better if they work hard and hold onto their dreams. That’s not nothing, and that’s something they wouldn’t get if I turned my back on it to go fight grimm.”</p><p>“That is… there is some force in what you say,” Pyrrha acknowledged. “A great deal of it in fact. So much that I apologise; I should not have been so disapproving… although-”</p><p>“You still don’t like it.”</p><p>“If you never had any intention of becoming a huntress, I think you should not have taken a spot at the academy which might have been filled by someone more committed to the cause,” Pyrrha said. “As things stand now, your teammates will face their final year – plus the rigours of the field – with only three people where there should be four.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Arslan murmured. “Right. I, uh… I didn’t exactly think of that. I… they’ll be fine. They’re all… they’ll be fine.”</p><p>“Perhaps,” Pyrrha murmured. “As for the rest… none of what you say applies to me. Compared to you, compared to most people, I grew up in unimaginable privilege. I can’t imagine that I’m an inspiration to-”</p><p>“Don’t be disingenuous; you know exactly how big of an inspiration you are to so many people,” Arslan said sharply. “You know how many people are going to be crushed when you announce your retirement?”</p><p>“They’ll recover in time, I’m sure,” Pyrrha said softly. She smiled slightly. “Especially since they will still have you to look up to.”</p><p>Arslan snorted. “Stop it, P-money, you’re going to make me blush.” She paused. “So, what did you actually want?” she asked.</p><p>“Hmm?”</p><p>“You asked me over here, and then we got sidetracked.”</p><p>“Oh, yes, of course,” Pyrrha said. She let out a little nervous laugh. “I’m sorry about that.”</p><p>“No problem; it was probably my fault as much as yours.”</p><p>“I wanted to congratulate you on your victory,” Pyrrha said. “You fought very well.”</p><p>“I always fight well,” Arslan replied.</p><p>“I didn’t mean to imply otherwise,” Pyrrha said quickly.</p><p>“I know, I’m just messing with you.”</p><p>“Will that be an end to it?”</p><p>“Of me messing with you? Don’t be daft.”</p><p>“Of your grudge against Sunset,” Pyrrha clarified.</p><p>“Oh, sure!” Arslan declared. “She insulted me; I avenged the insult. We’re all square now. She’s not going to hold a grudge against me, is she?”</p><p>“I shouldn’t think so, no.”</p><p>“Good,” Arslan said. “Because I kind of like her.”</p><p>“You’re not the only one,” Pyrrha murmured.</p><p>“She’s pretty impressive,” Arslan said. “But all the same…”</p><p>Pyrrha frowned. “All the same what?”</p><p>“That sword she was wearing,” Arslan said. “People have noticed it. They say that it’s important somehow. Some relic of your family.”</p><p>“Soteria,” Pyrrha said. “It’s from the Great War; it was carried by one of the Imperial bodyguards. It… was a princely gift, of my mother’s to Sunset.”</p><p>“It’s an unpopular gift,” Arslan said. “People don’t like it.”</p><p>“Perhaps people should mind their own business,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>“Don’t look at me; I’m just reporting common room gossip,” Arslan insisted. “You want to be careful, Pyrrha; spitting on Mistral to attend Beacon, giving a family heirloom to an outsider-”</p><p>“I didn’t spit on anything, and my mother is free to bestow-”</p><p>“I’m just telling you what some people think,” Arslan told her. “Plus, you’re dating some Valish oaf-”</p><p>“Jaune is not an oaf!” Pyrrha cried, anger entering her voice now. “And I will thank you not to refer to him that way again in my presence, even if you are only repeating what others have said. He is good and kind and brave, and he is worth ten of any of those who slander him!” </p><p>She covered her mouth with one hand, feeling a little embarrassed at the way that her words had run away from her like a train with no breaks. The very thought of what people might be saying about Jaune, how much they might be misjudging him, underestimating him… she could barely stand to so much as imagine it.</p><p>Arslan raised both hands pacifically. “Fine, if it means that much to you… you won’t hear the like from me again.”</p><p>“It does, <em>he</em> does,” Pyrrha said. “And thank you.”</p><p>“All the same,” Arslan said. “You want to be careful. I know you’ve never been big on brand management, but it’s not a good look to be seen to forget where you came from.”</p><p>“I’m not here to be popular,” Pyrrha said, “and I’m not going to let public opinion dictate my choices.”</p><p>“That’s all well and good, but there might come a time when you need the public on your side,” Arslan said, “and some won’t forget if you’ve delivered the Vytal crown to Beacon and Vale in that time.”</p><p>Pyrrha was silent for a moment. “Who knows?” she said. “You might defeat me and deliver it to Haven, in spite of me and my betrayal.”</p><p>A smile spread across Arslan’s face. “Well, you can bet your ass I’m going to try.”</p><hr/><p>“So,” Cinder drawled. “What’s it like to lose?”</p><p>“You ask me that as though it’s the first time I’ve lost,” Sunset replied.</p><p>“It’s the first time I’ve seen you lose,” Cinder said.</p><p>“It may surprise you to learn that my life didn’t start when I met you.”</p><p>“Really?” Cinder asked, as though the information was genuinely new and shocking to her. “Did it at least get more entertaining?”</p><p>The sun was going down, and the two of them sat on the cliffs not far from the docking pads. A Skybus took off not far away, its engines droning as it started its flight  for Vale; the sky was red as the sun descended, casting the Atlesian airships in a scarlet hue, as though the hulls had been drenched in blood. </p><p>“It doesn’t bother me,” Sunset said. “Losing, I mean. Professor Goodwitch was right: she’d done her homework, and I hadn’t.”</p><p>“For what it’s worth, you ran her very close in spite of that fact,” Cinder murmured. “One more hit, and she would have been out.”</p><p>“But I didn’t get that one hit,” Sunset reminded her. “So… I’m not bothered about losing to Arslan Altan except…”</p><p>Cinder was silent for a moment. “Except?”</p><p>“Except that it shows that I’m not where I need to be,” Sunset declared. “I, we, have real enemies, serious enemies; they’re the ones it bothers me that I can’t beat.”</p><p>“I can understand,” Cinder said softly. “There is nothing worse than feeling powerless, living in fear of another and all that they might do to you and you would be helpless to resist it.”</p><p>Sunset glanced at her. “Need to vent about something?”</p><p>Cinder was silent for a moment. “No,” she said eventually. “Such things are behind me now. I merely meant to point out that I understand where you’re coming from.” Her lips twitched. “But that’s not the only thing that’s bothering you this evening, is it?”</p><p>Sunset snorted. “Blake isn’t very happy with me right now.”</p><p>“Because you tried to help her?”</p><p>“Because of the manner in which I did it,” Sunset replied.</p><p>Cinder hesitated. “You may have to explain this to me, because I don’t quite understand what you did wrong.”</p><p>“I think that if I completely understood what I did wrong, then I probably wouldn’t have done it,” Sunset replied. “But… well, there’s the fact that Lyra didn’t actually do anything to Blake, and even if she had, I’m not sure that Blake would have appreciated me taking action without asking her first.”</p><p>“You’re supposed to ask permission before defending her?”</p><p>“I’m not supposed to presume that I can act on her behalf as though I know her mind,” Sunset explained. “At least, I think that’s what it is.”</p><p>Cinder sighed, shaking her head sadly. “Such ingratitude. Such folly. If I were in difficulty, it would give me great comfort to know that you would come rushing to my aid the moment I required it.”</p><p>“Yes, well, Blake…” Sunset trailed off. Blake’s secrets weren’t hers to reveal. “Blake has her reasons.”</p><p>“It doesn’t make them good reasons.”</p><p>“Maybe, but so what?” Sunset asked. “Her wishes are hers, and she has the right to them.”</p><p>“So you’ll abandon her?” Cinder asked. “Leave her to face the slings and arrows all by herself.”</p><p>“If that’s what she wants.”</p><p>“Just because she wants it doesn’t make it good for her.”</p><p>“No, but… but if I do something without asking, again, after she’s told me… I’m afraid I’ll lose her,” Sunset muttered. “And that… that matters to me. That matters more to me than…”</p><p>“More than your desire to protect her?” Cinder asked.</p><p>“What’s the point in helping her if she doesn’t want anything to do with me afterwards?”</p><p>“Why need she know?” Cinder suggested.</p><p>Sunset frowned. Cinder’s words were certainly very tempting; they accorded so well with her own thoughts, they reminded her of the recording which she had on her scroll... but at the same time, they called to mind Blake’s own words, spoken in the laundry room. </p><p>
  <em>If you really are different from Adam, then I want you to promise me something.</em>
</p><p>“It’s all immaterial now,” she said. “I made a promise.”</p><p>“To Blake?”</p><p>“Yes,” Sunset replied. “I promised her that I wouldn’t do anything about this.”</p><p>“She needn’t know if you break that, either.”</p><p>“I’ll know,” Sunset said firmly. “I made a promise, I gave Blake my word; I won’t break that, even for her own good, I can’t.”</p><p>Cinder stared into Sunset’s eyes. “So you’ll give your life for those who matter to you, but you won’t break your word for them? Is this an ethical line, or… something else?”</p><p>“It’s an issue of trust,” Sunset said. “Blake trusts me to do what I say I’ll do, and if I stop, if she can’t rely on me, then… I’m Blake’s friend because she knows she can rely on me. Ruby, Pyrrha, Jaune, they all know they can rely on me. They can rely on me to fight with them, to fight for them, to protect them as best I can, to lead them as best I can, and to keep my word to them. I have to be reliable, even if it’s against my better judgement.”</p><p>“I… see,” Cinder murmured, her voice barely audible. She chuckled. “It is a pity, though; you enjoyed your taste of revenge, didn’t you?”</p><p>Sunset hesitated. “Yes,” she admitted. “But some things…”</p><p>Cinder waited for a moment. “Yes?”</p><p>Sunset pursed her lips together. What she was considering, what she had in her mind, it might be considered a breach of her promise to Blake. </p><p>But, on the other hand, it might be considered nothing to do with Blake whatsoever. It might be considered to be helping Skystar. </p><p>“Tell me something,” Sunset asked, “if your boyfriend were really a racist, and you had faunus friends, or relatives, wouldn’t you want to know about it?”</p><p>“I think I’d want to know everything about my significant other,” Cinder replied. “I’d want to know what they really thought… and what they were really capable of.”</p><p>Sunset nodded. “That’s what I was thinking. There are times when I wish someone would have told me what Flash really was before I got in deep with him. It would have spared me a lot of feelings down the line if I’d just avoided him.”</p><p>Cinder chuckled. “It’s funny, isn’t it, the way that men allow such small and petty things to distract them from some of the most excellent women in the world and fawn upon… decidedly inferior creatures for a host of small and superficial reasons?”</p><p>“I have plenty of superficial reasons, I will have you know,” Sunset declared, preening her hair with one hand. “But… thank you, for that.”</p><p>“I speak only the truth,” Cinder declared, “but you’re welcome anyway. But what does this have to do with Cardin or Blake?”</p><p>“I have a recording, of Cardin and his new best buddy Bon Bon expressing some vile and shocking sentiments towards Blake, not just on account of her past but also of her race.”</p><p>“And this will harm him because-?”</p><p>“Because his girlfriend has two faunus cousins, with whom she seems close,” Sunset explained. “Close enough, at least, that Cardin hides his true feelings on them and is afraid of what will happen to his relationship if he is discovered.”</p><p>Cinder grinned. “How delicious,” she declared. “Sunset, you mean to say you’ve been carrying that around in your back pocket all this time?”</p><p>“I’ve never had proof that would convince a lovestruck girl,” Sunset replied. “It seems that he’s finally figured that out and decided to call my bluff.”</p><p>“They’re very close?”</p><p>“Without a recording, it would be like trying to convince Pyrrha that Jaune was cheating on her.”</p><p>“Ah,” Cinder said. “A challenge indeed.”</p><p>“Don’t even think about it,” Sunset declared.</p><p>“I don’t know what you mean,” Cinder replied, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.</p><p>“Good,” Sunset said firmly. “I mean it. They both… they’re both too invested in this; I won’t have it ruined for them.”</p><p>Cinder was silent for a moment. “I would never dream of crossing you like that, or striking against your team in any way,” she said softly. “You do believe me, don’t you?”</p><p>Sunset stared into her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “I believe you.”</p><p>“But your defence of love does not extend to Cardin?” Cinder asked.</p><p>“Nope,” Sunset said. “I’m going to screw him over and make sure that Skystar never wants to see him again.”</p><p>“She’ll be hurt,” Cinder pointed out. “As you were hurt when you discovered the truth.”</p><p>She wasn’t wrong about that, even if Sunset hadn’t thought about it that way until now. She hesitated, her hand freezing in the act of reaching for her scroll. She thought about how she’d felt when Flash broke up with her, when her world fell apart; there was definitely a part of her which would have rather gone on in blissful ignorance if it meant that she got to keep Flash by her side. “You don’t think that I should do it?”</p><p>“I didn’t say that; I just want to make sure you understand.”</p><p>Sunset inhaled, and then exhaled again through her nostrils. If she did this, if she exposed Cardin to Skystar by whatever means, then Skystar would be heartbroken; possibly, she would also be humiliated. Certainly, she would think herself a fool for not having noticed it before; Sunset knew that from experience. </p><p>She thought of the First Councillor’s daughter: sweet and bubbly, her smile struck down and her eyes suddenly filled with tears. </p><p>She thought of Skystar cowering away from Blake.</p><p>She thought of Cardin doing worse to Blake, and other faunus besides, and compounding his crimes with the sin of hypocrisy. </p><p>Cardin deserved his comeuppance; he deserved to have Sunset give it to him. Sunset… Sunset wanted to give it to him. </p><p>And Skystar… she’d thank Sunset eventually. </p><p>Probably. </p><p>Maybe, once she got over it. </p><p>Sunset got out her scroll. </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0050"><h2>50. Resolution</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>After a bruising interview with the headmaster, Weiss must seek help from someone she would rather avoid.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Resolution</p><p> </p><p>This was Weiss’ first time in Professor Ozpin’s office. </p><p>Up until this point, as she stepped out of the elevator with Cardin and Bon Bon – the latter keeping a discrete distance, and at this point, she wished that Cardin would keep his distance too – she had felt slightly envious of the fact that others, like Sunset Shimmer, had been called into the headmaster’s presence so regularly while she had not received one iota of his attention. It was petty, and very unbecoming of a Schnee, to be so jealous, but nevertheless, she did feel a twinge of jealousy towards the faunus girl: Weiss was as hard-working as she was, as intelligent as she was, had a semblance as versatile as hers, was arguably more talented in combat than the other team leader was; for whatever it might be worth, Weiss was as fair as she was too. And yet, Sunset Shimmer had fallen head-first into the leadership of the most talented team in the freshman year – not just at Beacon, but arguably in all four academies; with all their guests, it was still difficult to think of a team that could touch them – she was popular, the centre of an expanding group that encompassed not just her own team but the Atlesian Team RSPT and Blake and the reformed Team YRBN as well. She had the favour of their teachers, being chosen for a special and especially long field mission without even remote supervision from a qualified huntsman or huntress. It was clear that somebody – perhaps Professor Ozpin himself – saw great things in her and in her team. </p><p>She had everything that Weiss had wanted when she had come to Beacon: recognition and respect, not on the basis of her name but on the basis of her quality. </p><p>Unfortunately, while Sunset had all of those things, Weiss was stuck leading a team of what could best be described as mixed quality and more accurately as a team of two halves, one good and one bad. She had one true friend here whom she could count upon. No teacher seemed to regard her as their favourite. </p><p>Yes, she was jealous of Sunset Shimmer, but she was aware of the fact that it was ugly feeling not for the public consumption, and so, she hid it perfectly, as she did everything… no. No, she couldn’t even think that with a straight face. If she had done everything perfectly, then she would not have been in this deplorable position. </p><p>She had failed as a team leader, and now, she was being confronted with the consequences of that failure. </p><p>In other circumstances, she would have welcomed being called into the headmaster’s office, seeing it as her finally being given her dues. </p><p>She did not feel like that now. </p><p>Now, she knew exactly why she – and Cardin and Bon Bon – had been summoned into Professor Ozpin’s presence. It was all she could do not to throw Cardin out one of the windows that ringed the perimeter of the high room. </p><p>A high room and a cold one. Weiss’ interactions with Professor Ozpin had been unfortunately limited, but there was a definite coldness to his bearing and expression that had not been there before. As he sat behind his desk, regarding her with a stern look and cold eyes, Weiss was reminded uncomfortably of her father. </p><p>She walked forwards, her wedge heels tapping lightly against the grey stone floor. Cardin and Bon Bon followed behind, the latter spreading out a little as she emerged out of the elevator. </p><p>Professor Ozpin watched them all and said nothing. </p><p>It was all Weiss could do not to bow her head and cringe before his distemper; with an effort of will, she forced herself to keep her head up high and her back straight; Professor Ozpin was <em>not</em> her father, and she had no need to fear him that way, whatever Cardin had done.</p><p>And if she was wrong about that, well… perhaps Haven would accept her as a transfer student. Gods knew they were probably desperate enough for talented students. </p><p>She hoped very much that it would not come to that. </p><p>By unspoken consensus, the three students came to a halt at an invisible line not far from the headmaster’s barren, empty desk. None of them said anything. The gears of the clock grinding overhead was the only sound in the room. </p><p>Weiss found that she could not meet Professor Ozpin’s gaze. She looked instead over his head, out the window, at the Atlesian cruiser gliding slowly and gracefully past the tower. </p><p>She rather wished that she were there right now. </p><p>“Miss Schnee,” Professor Ozpin said, with a voice that had little warmth. “Mister Winchester. Miss Bonaventure. Thank you all for coming.” He paused. “I trust that you all know why you are here?”</p><p>“Yes, Professor,” Weiss said, and now, she looked at him because it would have seemed rude not to. “And on behalf of my teammate, I would like to offer our sincerest apologies. I’m sorry that a member of Team Wisteria has brought the school into disrepute.”</p><p>“Thank you, Miss Schnee, but it is not the reputation of Beacon Academy that concerns me,” Professor Ozpin declared, his voice sounding a little – just a little – less stern for the moment. “Yes, the release of this audio has provided commentators with material for a week or two’s worth of columns – and doubtless, there will be a culture war backlash for about the same length of time after that – and it is a pity that certain alumni of the school have chosen to air their grievances now rather than coming to me when they were still students… but the reputation of Beacon is built on the quality of the huntsmen and huntresses that emerge from our halls, and that reputation will endure in spite of this. And besides, the reputation of the school is of little concern to me compared with the wellbeing of our students… and their conduct towards one another.” Professor Ozpin skewered Cardin upon his gaze. “Speaking of students waiting to air their concerns, Mister Winchester, I have been informed that this incident is not the first of such but merely the latest in a troubling pattern of behaviour where you are concerned.”</p><p>“Who-?” Cardin began.</p><p>“As you well know, Mister Winchester, the names of accusers are never given to those they accuse,” Professor Ozpin reminded him. “For reasons that are especially obvious in your case.”</p><p>Cardin hesitated, and Weiss took that moment of hesitation to speak. “What Cardin, and Bon Bon,” she added, with a venomous look at the other girl out of the corner of her eye, “said to Blake was unforgivable, Professor, but if I might point out that Blake herself didn’t report this to you.”</p><p>Professor Ozpin’s eyebrows rose. “And how do you know that she didn’t, Miss Schnee?”</p><p>“Because you called us here to discuss a story that appeared in a gossip netzine, Professor, not a bullying complaint,” Weiss pointed out. “In any case, it appears that Blake didn’t find the matter to be worth raising.”</p><p>“No,” Professor Ozpin allowed. “But I think that Miss Belladonna, being a faunus, has less faith in the processes of justice here than I would like. In any case, her words are on the recording just as much as Mister Winchester’s and Miss Bonaventure’s; she is clearly distressed by the encounter in question. And, as you yourself said only a moment ago, what passed between you was unforgivable.” Once more, he turned his attention away from Weiss and towards the two who had actually done wrong. “And so, I will give you one chance, and one chance only, to explain yourselves and what motivated this outrageous conduct towards a fellow student.”</p><p>“She shouldn’t be a fellow student, Professor,” Bon Bon protested. “Knowing what she is-”</p><p>“Miss Belladonna’s past, whatever that past might be, is of no issue,” Professor Ozpin declared. “I have decided that she is and remains worthy of a place at this academy; that power is at my disposal and my discretion and mine alone.”</p><p>“What if she’s dangerous?” Cardin demanded. “Sky- the First Councillor’s daughter comes up to this school sometimes, as Amity Princess; what if Blake decided to kidnap her? What if she decided to go on a rampage?”</p><p>“I trust that you’re not suggesting that I would allow any student to remain at Beacon if I thought for one second that they posed a danger to their fellow students or anyone else, Mister Winchester,” Professor Ozpin said coldly. “Believe me, the fact that at no point during your altercation does your conduct audibly begin to escalate towards physical violence is the only reason I have not expelled you both already.” He paused. “But then, you knew that already, didn’t you? That was the lynchpin of your plan to goad Miss Belladonna into attacking you so that you could have her expelled.”</p><p>Once more, silence fell, until Bon Bon broke it by saying, “It wasn’t about race. We didn’t go after her just because she’s a faunus, but-”</p><p>“‘Our ancestors were stupid for making your people slaves. We should have exterminated you when we had the chance,’” Professor Ozpin read out, sounding as though it pained him to do so. “Forgive me, Miss Bonaventure, but that monstrous attitude certainly seems to be based in race.”</p><p>“We had to say extreme things in order to get a rise out of her; it doesn’t mean we meant them!” Bon Bon protested.</p><p>Professor Ozpin looked at her without replying. He looked at Cardin. “Is that your contention too, Mister Winchester? That you bear no racial animus to any faunus, but were motivated purely by a dislike for Miss Belladonna specifically?”</p><p>“That… that’s why we did it, yeah,” Cardin said, the words falling awkwardly from out of his mouth. Weiss would have known that he was lying, or at least failing to tell the whole truth, even if she hadn’t known by now just what he was and what he thought about the faunus. </p><p>
  <em>Of course, knowing it, I should have done something about it instead of letting it get this far.</em>
</p><p>“That is not an answer to the question I asked, Mister Winchester,” Professor Ozpin said calmly.</p><p>Cardin hesitated. He shuffled uncomfortably on the floor, but he seemed unable to escape from Professor Ozpin’s gaze, or to deny it. Weiss wondered for a moment if the headmaster’s semblance was some ability to compel the truth, but just as quickly dismissed the idea. If there was any power at work here, it was only the headmaster’s will and strength of character being brought to bear on someone who had less of both. </p><p>Cardin squirmed as though his feet were on fire. “I… I don’t… it depends, Professor.”</p><p>Professor Ozpin continued to stare at him. “What depends on what, Mister Winchester?”</p><p>“The faunus,” Cardin declared. “Some of them act just like us, and that’s fine; my gi- the First Councillor’s niece and nephew are faunus, and I’ve got no problem with them. In fact, most of the time I don’t even see it; they act just like humans. But others, some of them won’t shut up about it, and others act so weird that it’s creepy. They act like animals! It isn’t right that the ones like that should be allowed to walk around with humans. They’re the ones who give the good ones a bad name!”</p><p>Weiss gritted her teeth and hoped that her discomfort wasn’t too visible on her face. <em>Honestly, of all the ignorant, boorish things to say, you had to say that, didn’t you? It’s disgraceful! How can anyone think like that in this day and age?</em></p><p>Professor Ozpin was silent; perhaps he was even lost for words by Cardin’s combination of temerity and stupidity. “That is a remarkably asinine thing to say, Mister Winchester.”</p><p>“Are we not allowed to think as we please, Professor?” Bon Bon asked. “Are we not allowed to say what we think? Surely, a school should uphold the principles of free-”</p><p>“If you are seeking the rigours of academic debate unchained, Miss Bonaventure, might I suggest that you try King’s College?” Professor Ozpin suggested. “Why are you both here, at this school?”</p><p>“I’m here to become a huntsman, Professor,” Cardin said.</p><p>“And I a huntress,” Bon Bon replied.</p><p>“Are you?” Professor Ozpin inquired pointedly. He placed his hands upon the glass surface of his desk. “Huntsmen and huntresses are tasked with the protection of the world and <em>all</em> who dwell in it: human and faunus alike. How am I supposed to believe that you are equal to upholding that burden? How am I supposed to believe that you will fight and, if necessary, die for those that make you uncomfortable or to whom you see yourself as morally superior?”</p><p>“How are we supposed to trust that Blake will fight for humanity?” Bon Bon demanded.</p><p>“I believe she will,” Professor Ozpin said. “And if her recent conduct has not convinced you, I can only say that it has proved more than convincing enough for me. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same of either of you. Give me a reason why you should both be allowed to remain at this school.”</p><p>“If I may, Professor,” Weiss said, taking half a step forwards. “It’s true that neither Cardin nor Bon Bon deserves to become a huntsman or a huntress.”</p><p>“Thanks a lot,” Bon Bon muttered.</p><p>“But, to be frank, Professor… neither do I,” Weiss said softly, forcing the words out because they were necessary. She had been a poor team leader – there was no denying that – and in doing so, she had probably proven herself to be a poor huntress too. Yet the first step to becoming a good team leader was not to disown Cardin but to rescue him, to be loyal to him as he had never been loyal to her. “Nor, with a few notable exceptions, do I think that any of our freshman class presently deserve the honour.”</p><p>Professor Ozpin inclined his head slightly. “As you say, there are notable exceptions, but I accept your point, Miss Schnee. Please continue.”</p><p>“I don’t have much more to say, Professor, except that the first year is not yet over,” Weiss reminded him. “We have more than three years to go before we graduate. I’ve already accepted that attitudes like the ones expressed by Cardin are disgraceful, and I’m ashamed that a member of my team feels free to say such things, but there are more than three years for Cardin and Bon Bon to learn better, to learn how to fight for the faunus as readily as they would fight for humanity. Just as I have more than three years to learn how to lead Cardin towards that goal. I’m asking for you to give them both – to give all three of us – a chance to learn, as we came to this school to do.”</p><p>Professor Ozpin did not immediately reply, although he kept his gaze locked with Weiss for all the time, that seemed so achingly slow, until he finally did speak. “You are correct, Miss Schnee; this is a school. A school which exists because we believe that heroes can be taught. A school which exists because we believe that the values that drive a huntsman are as important as their skills. And, since this is a school, I will give you all a chance to learn better; but, since this is a school, I will also punish you for the hideous conduct you have displayed. Mister Winchester, Miss Bonaventure, you are confined to the campus; you may not leave for any reason without the permission of a member of the faculty.”</p><p>“For how long, Professor?!” Cardin cried.</p><p>“Until further notice, Mister Winchester,” Professor Ozpin said coldly and without sympathy. “In addition, you will be serving detention every night for the next week with Professor Peach, while you, Miss Bonaventure, will be serving the same number of detentions with Professor Greene. Depending on what they report of your behaviour during those sessions, the number of detentions may increase. In addition, for the next two weeks at least, your Saturdays will be spent attending sensitivity training with Doctor Oobleck. That will be all; I suggest you return to your dorm rooms. Miss Schnee, please remain for a moment.”</p><p> “Of course, Professor,” Weiss said, her voice soft as Cardin and Bon Bon retreated back towards the elevator. Professor Ozpin said nothing further while they did so; he remained quite silent until they were gone.</p><p>Weiss had little objection to that. She could use the time to think about what she was going to say to Cardin later. </p><p>And how she was going to manage this.</p><p>Professor Ozpin stared at her. His expression seemed a little softer now than it had done when the other two were in the room. “You are an intelligent young woman, Miss Schnee, so I take it that you are not ignorant as to what some people are saying about this incident.”</p><p>Weiss took a breath. “I’m aware, Professor.” Between Cardin’s actions, the… behaviour – or at least the reputation – of the Schnee Dust Company, and the unfortunate death of Flash’s father – and the way that it had been appropriated by those who opposed faunus rights – there were some who were suggesting that Team WWSR might more accurately be known as Team BIGOT. “I… I hope that you don’t believe that.”</p><p>“I should very much like not to, Miss Schnee,” Professor Ozpin said quietly.</p><p>Weiss frowned. Cardin was an ass in every conceivable way, true, but Flash… it was awkward to think about Flash right now. She didn’t think that he was bigoted against the faunus; he seemed to get on okay with Rainbow Dash, but on the other hand… what he’d said about why he broke up with Sunset… Was it possible that he simply hid his thoughts better than Cardin did?</p><p>No. No, she did not believe that. She had spent enough time with him to know what he was; he wasn’t hiding a detestable part of himself from her. Skystar had probably thought the same, but with all kindness, Weiss rated herself a better and a cannier judge of character than Skystar Aris. </p><p>She trusted Flash; he was a good man. </p><p>“What can we do to show you, Professor?” she asked.</p><p>“Avoiding any further incidents like this would be a good start, Miss Schnee,” Professor Ozpin murmured.</p><p>“Yes, Professor,” Weiss muttered. She glanced down at the floor for a moment. “Professor Ozpin… I’m aware that I haven’t been the best team leader. If you were regretting putting me in charge of Team Wisteria, I wouldn’t blame you, but… I promise you, I will do better.”</p><p>Professor Ozpin hesitated for a moment, before he offered the very slightest of smiles. “I am very glad to hear it, Miss Schnee. How, if I may ask?”</p><p>Weiss blinked. “I… I think I need some advice,” she said, “from those who seem to be making a better job of it than I am.”</p><p>Professor Ozpin nodded. “Sometimes, admitting that we require assistance is the hardest thing of all to do.”</p><p>
  <em>Especially when you’ve been brought up to equate it with weakness.</em>
</p><p>“However,” Professor Ozpin continued, “if I might offer you some advice of my own, and I appreciate that this may seem strange coming from me, but don’t be too hard on Mister Winchester.”</p><p>Weiss’ eyebrows rose. “You’re right, Professor, that does sound strange coming from you.”</p><p>“Nevertheless, Miss Schnee, it is rarely a good thing for a leader to too openly consider themselves superior to those they lead and denigrate them in consequence.”</p><p>“Don’t you think that some behaviour deserves to be denigrated, Professor?”</p><p>“I think that if we all got precisely what we deserved, Miss Schnee, the world would be a very ugly place,” Professor Ozpin replied, “and I think that denigration engenders resentment, and it is very hard to follow a person one resents.”</p><p>Weiss considered that, and considered that she could see the logic behind it, even if she still believed that she <em>was</em> better than Cardin and had every right to see herself that way. </p><p>But seeing herself that way had not made her a good team leader, so maybe it was time to try something else. </p><p>Even if the prospect did revolt her, just a little. </p><p>“I will… bear that in mind,” Weiss said, which was about all that she could bring herself to say at this point. </p><p>“Please do, Miss Schnee,” Professor Ozpin said. He paused. “You realise that, as Mister Winchester’s team leader, you must also bear some of the responsibility for this? I am afraid that we are past the point at which a plea of ignorance will suffice.”</p><p>“Meaning that if I had led my team better, this wouldn’t have happened, Professor?”</p><p>“It might not, certainly,” Professor Ozpin agreed. “Detention with Professor Port, Friday afternoon and evening. And I suggest that you pay attention; despite Professor Port’s manner, he does possess a great deal of wisdom.”</p><p>Weiss decided that lying that she always paid attention to Professor Port was unlikely to go down well with the headmaster. “I will. Thank you, Professor.”</p><p>“That will be all, Miss Schnee.”</p><p>She turned on her heel and walked briskly towards the elevator without looking back. Thankfully, there was more than one elevator leading up to the top of the tower, and she was not forced to wait for it to come back up from depositing Cardin and Bon Bon down at the bottom of the CCT; Professor Ozpin doubtless didn’t want anyone he had finished with idling in his office any more than they wanted to stay there waiting for a lift.</p><p>She climbed inside, and the metal box enclosed her as she pressed the button for the ground floor with a little more force than was perhaps necessary. </p><p>The elevator began to descend, thrumming as it passed floor after floor in its downward path. </p><p>Alone, unobserved, Weiss felt her hands clench into fists.</p><p>Professor Ozpin had advised her not to take too hard a line on Cardin, not because he didn’t deserve to have a hard line taken with him but simply because it would make it harder for her to lead him effectively if she did. That was good advice. That was sound advice. That was rational advice. </p><p>It was advice that seemed very difficult to follow because she felt like nothing more than screaming into his face. </p><p>Gods, what had she done to warrant this? What had she done to deserve – Professor Ozpin had spoken as though everyone got better than they deserved, but as far as Weiss was concerned, it was sometimes the complete opposite – such a boob on her team, reflecting upon her qualities and her potential? It was bad enough that he was lazy and academically incompetent, even when he roused himself to make an effort, but on top of that, he was personally unpleasant to be around – to say the least – and now, his overt racism had come to light and threatened to damage the whole team. To damage Weiss.</p><p>And for these many gifts that he had given her, she ought to treat him with kid gloves? It might be the best way to lead him, but that didn’t mean Weiss looked forward to the prospect. </p><p>How could he be this way? How could he act this way? How could he think this way?</p><p>Unfortunately, Weiss knew the answer to that last question rather too well. Cardin… Cardin was someone with whom her father might have found much in common. </p><p>Weiss shuddered. No, that was a little too hard on Cardin, who at least appeared to care about some people other than himself. He had cared about Skystar, at least. </p><p>Except that he’d lost her now, thanks to his own indiscretion. </p><p>
  <em>Thanks to whoever leaked that audio.</em>
</p><p>Nobody knew who that was, and with what had been revealed in the audio, those with the most interest in discovering the truth had too much else occupying their attention to devote any time to it. Aside from Blake herself, the two Atlesian students who had come to rescue her were obvious candidates, and yet, the fact that neither Cardin nor Bon Bon had noticed them recording the conversation suggested it was not them – and in any case, why interrupt a conversation that you were merrily recording up until that point? </p><p>There was another obvious suspect – obvious, at least, in the sense that she had been named in the last embarrassing data leak connected to Bon Bon – and Weiss had to say that he wouldn’t put this sort of thing past Sunset Shimmer, but at the same time…</p><p>At the same time…</p><p>Did Weiss blame her for it? Or rather, since there was no proof that it was really her, would Weiss blame her for it if she were guilty? On the one hand, she had certainly caused some trouble for Weiss; on the other hand, she was doing it to help her friend Blake, which was admirable until you got to the fact that it was probably the least helpful way of helping imaginable. </p><p>The question of blame gave way to the question of envy, and Weiss was left once again to ponder how Sunset seemed to have so much while Weiss had so little, in spite of the fact that Weiss was, by any reasonable measure, a much better person. </p><p>
  <em>Professor, you have it completely backwards when it comes to deservings.</em>
</p><p>Assuming, for the moment, if only because there were no other plausible suspects, that Sunset was the culprit, had she known what would happen when she released that audio? </p><p>Probably not; she struck Weiss as a rather short-sighted individual in many respects, and Weiss could quite believe that she had not thought any further than her revenge on Cardin. </p><p>Regardless of whether she had intended to harm Weiss or not – still, for the moment, assuming that it was her – Weiss had no intention of following in her example and seeking any kind of revenge. She was above such things… at least, she was in a situation where she could acknowledge that Cardin had rather had this coming. </p><p>No, she would not start a vendetta against the other student – that would do a great deal to convince her fellow students that she wasn’t a racist, wouldn’t it? – in fact… Sunset was one of those she was considering speaking to, to find out how leadership seemed to come so much more effortlessly to her than it did to a Schnee. </p><p>Or perhaps she could just scream into the other girl’s face; then she might not feel quite so much like screaming at Cardin. </p><p>The worst part of all this was that, on some level, this was precisely what she had come to Beacon for: to be treated as a student, not as a Schnee, to get away from her father’s influence, good and bad. Well, here she was, getting into trouble just like any other student, and her name meant absolutely nothing. </p><p>Wasn’t it marvellous?</p><p>The elevator door slid open, revealing the illuminated green interior of the CCT lobby; Cardin and Bon Bon were nowhere to be found, but as Weiss stepped out, she saw that Winter was waiting there for her, bearing erect and hands clasped behind her back. </p><p>Her expression was stern, and Weiss felt a flutter in her stomach as she walked, more slowly than she might, towards her. </p><p>“W-Winter?” Weiss asked, her voice trembling.</p><p>Winter glared down at her, but her expression began to soften immediately. “I came as soon as I heard,” she said. “How are you doing?”</p><p>“You came because you thought I was in trouble?” Weiss asked.</p><p>“I came because I thought you might appreciate a sisterly shoulder,” Winter corrected her gently. “Was I wrong?”</p><p>“No,” Weiss said quickly. “I just thought that perhaps… you might hold me responsible.”</p><p>Winter’s smile was thin and a little sad, “The academies hold team leaders responsible for their teammates,” she said, “but I’m only your sister, so I’m not obliged to do the same. As far as I’m concerned, what that oaf said and did was no fault of yours.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Weiss said, sighing. “At least somebody thinks that way.”</p><p>Winter reached out and placed one hand upon Weiss’ back, gently steering her towards the doors. “I’ll always be here for you, Weiss,” she declared. “Unfortunately, my duties will not always permit me to be here physically, but in some sense at least. And, since my duties presently <em>do</em> permit me to be here physically, here I am. And I know you better than to condemn you for words fallen from another’s mouth and sentiments I know you do not share.”</p><p>“Many people disagree with you, if only because my name is Schnee,” Weiss murmured.</p><p>“We are not born guilty of our father’s crimes,” Winter reminded her. “Whatever he has done, we bear no blame for it; if others seek to tar you with the same brush, then they reveal more about themselves than they do about you or I.” The two of them emerged out of the tower and into the morning light of the courtyard. Classes were going on right now, and Weiss should probably have rushed to get to Plant Science, but she didn’t want to say goodbye to Winter just yet. </p><p>If that meant that she got another detention, then so be it. </p><p>“And yet, the stain will stick to me nonetheless,” Weiss replied. “Have I caused any trouble for you? I know that Blake is working with you, and-”</p><p>“And if General Ironwood were going to hold my name against me, he would have done it already,” Winter assured her. “And his judgement is too sound to listen to gossip and aspersions.” She paused. “Or it might simply be that he doesn’t read Valish gossip zines and, thus, has no idea that any of this is going on.”</p><p>Weiss covered her mouth as a snorted giggle escaped out of her nose and mouth simultaneously. “That… is probably a good thing,” she said. “How are things going with the White Fang?”</p><p>“Since the capture of Roman Torchwick, dust robberies in the city and on the Cold Harbour line have ceased,” Winter informed her, although the first of these had been known to Weiss already via the news, which had proudly trumpeted the defeat of the White Fang’s crime spree. “Unfortunately, we’re no closer to locating their hidden base, nor to recovering the large quantities of dust and military equipment they have already stolen.”</p><p>“'Military equipment'?” Weiss asked. “The White Fang have stolen Atlesian weapons?”</p><p>Winter cleared her throat. “Forgive me,” she said. “I forgot that you were not… that is classified information; you should try and forget it.”</p><p>“I’m not sure that’s possible,” Weiss said dryly.</p><p>“Then at least don’t tell anyone else?”</p><p>“Atlas’ secrets are safe with me,” Weiss vowed. “Even if they do worry me a little.”</p><p>“Don’t let them,” Winter instructed her. “I told you that our forces would take care of everything, and we shall.”</p><p>“Your forces, or Teams Sapphire and Rosepetal?”</p><p>“One of those, at least, <em>is</em> part of our forces,” Winter reminded her. “As for the other… the point is that you have more pressing and more personal matters to deal with right now.”</p><p>“Mhm,” Weiss acknowledged. “What should I do?”</p><p>“About your reputation or your team?”</p><p>“Either?” Weiss replied. “Both?”</p><p>Winter’s thin brow was furrowed with thought. “I fear that any advice I could give you on leadership would be inapplicable to your situation.”</p><p>“Professor Ozpin says that I shouldn’t give Cardin cause to resent me any more than he does.”</p><p>“I am sure that is good advice for you,” Winter said. “Even if I would see things differently. This is not Atlas, after all, you cannot simply do as I did.”</p><p>“I suppose not,” Weiss murmured. “And my reputation?”</p><p>“How important is it to you?” Winter asked.</p><p>Weiss hesitated for a moment. “It… it means a lot to me. I want to be thought well of here, as a student… and as a person. I don’t want to be thought of as a smaller, younger, female version of our father.”</p><p>“Have you…?” Now it was Winter’s turn to hesitate. “Have you considered speaking to Father?”</p><p>Weiss stopped, in spite of Winter’s hand on her trying to push her own. “You… are you serious?”</p><p>“I know how it sounds-”</p><p>“Then why did you say it?” Weiss demanded.</p><p>“Because the SDC public relations machine is perhaps the most formidable on Remnant, you know this,” Winter told her. “If you want to make this go away – at least outside the school – then this may be the best, and certainly the most efficient, way.”</p><p>“But at what cost?” Weiss asked.</p><p>Winter did not respond immediately. “Only you can decide whether or not it’s worth it,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry,” she added. “It isn’t good advice, but it is the only advice I can give you other than to keep your back straight and your head held high and wait for all of this to blow over.”</p><p>“That might be preferable,” Weiss muttered. But really, would it? Professor Ozpin had spoken of providing fuel for opinion pieces for a couple of weeks, and while she could possibly have survived that, he had also mentioned a backlash of pieces in which, presumably, professional contrarians would insist that what Cardin and Bon Bon had said and done was perfectly fine, and if you objected to hearing it suggested that maybe the humans should have committed genocide, then you were just over-sensitive and needed to get over yourself. She was not at all sure that she wanted to be associated with that sort of thing. She thought about Flash and the way that his father’s death had been twisted to serve the cause of those whom Flash despised; could she really let that happen to him again, when she had the power to prevent it?</p><p>Sometimes, the hardest thing to do was to ask for help, Professor Ozpin had said, with the implication that, for all that it was a hard thing to do, it was nevertheless also a good and worthwhile thing to do. </p><p>
  <em>But not in all circumstances, surely?</em>
</p><p>No, or at least perhaps not, but in this case? It would benefit her teammates, it would benefit Flash, and the only cost? The only cost would be whatever her father asked of her specifically… and the cost to her pride in asking for it in the first place. </p><p>For herself, that would have been a price too great to pay, but for Flash? It did not seem so much then, and she seemed selfish for refusing to consider it. </p><p>“Do you really think that he’ll be able to take care of this?” Weiss asked her sister.</p><p>“If all else fails, he can always buy up these publications and direct them to write whatever <em>he</em> pleases,” Winter said, with a slight touch of wry amusement in her voice. “That would probably please him; Father hasn’t purchased a new asset in some time.” She paused. “It was only a suggestion; you don’t have to-”</p><p>“No,” Weiss agreed. “I don’t. But I will.” She got out her scroll. “Thank you, Winter. You should probably go, unless you want to speak to Father as well.”</p><p>“Not particularly,” Winter conceded. “But I won’t be far away, in case you need me.” She stalked across the square, striding as far away as the centre one of the two Beacon axes formed by the lighter stones of the courtyard. There, she turned upon the heel of her boot, her eyes fixed upon Weiss. </p><p>Weiss smiled at her, with a little more cheer in her smile than she felt in her heart, and then looked away from her sister and focussed her attention upon her scroll. Unbidden, her fingers had already found the entry labelled ‘Father’ in her directory. </p><p>Her hand trembled. Weiss took a deep breath and sought to control the sickly feeling in her gut. This was not just for herself; this was for her teammates. This was for Flash. </p><p>She selected voice only and pressed the green scroll indicator. </p><p>The scroll rang. No one picked up. Weiss found herself hoping that no one would pick up. Perhaps Father was in a meeting and could not be disturbed, perhaps he was having elevenses with Mother and did not wish to be disturbed – as if – or perhaps he was simply hard at work managing the most profitable business enterprise in Remnant and had no time to deal with his daughter and her small affairs. </p><p>Weiss found herself hoping that it was so. </p><p>Her hopes were in vain. The ringing ceased; her scroll indicated that her call was now connected a split second before the oily voice of Jacques Schnee began to drip out and onto the square. </p><p>“Weiss, darling,” Jacques said. “I’m so glad that you decided to call. It’s been so long since I’ve heard your voice.”</p><p>Weiss closed her eyes. She couldn’t see her father, and yet, despite the voice-only nature of this call, she found it all too easy to imagine him sat in his study, underneath a large portrait of himself from his more youthful days. She could imagine the cold of his eyes as his smile failed to reach them. “Good morning, Father,” she said, keeping her voice even and controlled. “I hope that I didn’t disturb you.”</p><p>“Not at all, my dear,” Jacques assured her. “I’m never too busy to speak to my daughter. How are you? How are you finding Beacon?”</p><p>“I’m the leader of my team,” Weiss told him. He probably knew it already – it had been some time, after all – but she hadn’t told him before, if only because they hadn’t spoken since she left for Beacon.</p><p>“Really? That’s wonderful to hear,” Jacques said. “Your mother will be so proud of you when I tell her the news.”</p><p>Weiss found herself licking her lips. “And you, Father?”</p><p>“Oh, I’m delighted, but I always knew that you could do it. You are a Schnee, after all; how could you settle for anything less?”</p><p>“I… see,” Weiss said softly. “My grades are good, and I’m in the very top ranking of our sparring class. I’d say that everything is going quite well.”</p><p>“Everything?” Jacques asked. “But I hear that you’re in a spot of bother.”</p><p><em>You already know why I’m calling, don’t you?</em> Weiss thought. “Well… there is… that is to say that something has come up. One of my teammates said some… ill-advised things about the faunus, and now, people are suggesting that I, that my entire team, are in agreement with him, which I am not.”</p><p>“Of course not,” Jacques agreed. “It’s such a shame that you’ve become a victim of these baseless allegations levelled at our family and the company. All our employees, human and faunus alike, are valued members of the SDC family; it just so happens that mining is dangerous work, and with the best will in the world, accidents will happen. The world isn’t a utopia just because some malcontents would like it to be.”</p><p>“I know,” Weiss murmured, hoping to get off the subject of labour conditions in the SDC – if only because she strongly suspected that her father did not have the best will in the world when it came to ensuring safety – and onto why she had actually called him. “But that doesn’t change the fact that we have been implicated in the actions of our teammate and…” She hesitated, hoping briefly that he might preempt her and guess – or pretend to guess – why she had called him. He did not. He would not. He would make her ask. “And I was hoping that you might be able to help us?”</p><p>There were a few moments of silence from the other end of the line. “You want me to make all of this bad publicity go away? Is that what you want, dear?”</p><p>Weiss hesitated. “Yes,” she said quietly.</p><p>“Consider it done, sweetheart; I’ll get my people on it right away,” Jacques declared. He paused. “Oh, and by the way, we’re <em>so</em> looking forward to having you home for the holidays. I understand you have a break between the end of semester and the beginning of the Vytal Festival.”</p><p>And there it was: the price. He would do as she had asked, and in return, he expected her to come home for the pre-festival break. </p><p>This was why she would not have called if it had just been her reputation at stake. She had no desire to return to that house, to return to her father’s side, to let him parade her around parties and high society gatherings… but this wasn’t just for her. This was for her teammates. This was for Flash. </p><p>“Yes,” she agreed. “That’s right.”</p><p>“Excellent,” Jacques said. “Your mother has missed you so much since you’ve been away, and I can’t wait to see you again.”</p><p>“I’m… looking forward to it already,” Weiss said, her voice dull and devoid of enthusiasm.</p><p>“That’s my girl,” Jacques said. “Now don’t you worry about what anyone says from now on. I’ll take care of everything.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0051"><h2>51. Regrets</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Cardin finally manages to get hold of Skystar, and makes a decision.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Regrets</p><p> </p><p>Bon Bon scuffed her foot against the courtyard surface as she and Cardin left the tower, wandering slowly and forlornly back in the direction of school. She folded her arms. “Well… this sucks,” she said.</p><p>“You have no idea,” Cardin muttered. He’d been trying to get hold of Skystar since last night when this broke – since his <em>mother</em>, of all people, had told him that it was breaking – and she wasn’t returning his calls, his texts, or his emails. It was… well, it wasn’t looking good. Not least because he didn’t even know what he was going to say if she did pick up the scroll. Please take me back? I didn’t really mean it? That hadn’t gone over too well with Professor Ozpin; he could only imagine how it was going to come over with Skystar. </p><p>“Yeah, I think I do, actually,” Bon Bon replied. “Seeing as how, you know, I’m in this mess as well.”</p><p>Cardin snorted. “Right, sorry. I mean that. I’m sorry that I got you into this mess.”</p><p>“It’s okay,” Bon Bon replied. “I mean, it’s not <em>okay</em>, but what I mean is that I got myself into this mess when I vandalised the Sapphire door. You know that this was Sunset again, right?”</p><p>“Does it matter who it was?” Cardin asked. “This isn’t like what she did to Lyra, where if it came out that she’d done it, everyone would think she was a jackass for it; if it came out that she’d done this, the dining hall would probably give her a round of applause.”</p><p>Bon Bon sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. Even more unfortunately, we’d deserve it.”</p><p>“Is that what you think?” Cardin asked. “Because you’re not a racist?”</p><p>“I’m not!” Bon Bon squawked. “You don’t believe me?”</p><p>“I’m not sure you can call for wiping out a whole people like that if you really think that saying so makes you a monster,” Cardin mused. “Even I was shocked when you said that.”</p><p>“I didn’t mean it!”</p><p>“You sounded like you meant it to me, and to Blake too.”</p><p>“From what I hear, you managed to convince your girlfriend that you didn’t hate her faunus in-laws for a while, even though you did.”</p><p>“I never hated Silverstream and Terramar,” Cardin insisted. Terramar… it had been nice to have somebody who looked up to him, who thought that he was cool. Maybe that was selfish, and it was certainly sad as hell, but at the same time… Terramar was a good kid, and Silverstream was just so darn nice that you couldn’t dislike her just because she had wings. It was the other faunus, the ones who were all surly and moody all the time like Blake, or who were always staring like Velvet, they were the ones who rubbed him up the wrong way. “Of course, I’m not so sure that they’ll believe that.”</p><p>“Especially not since, Mister ‘I was shocked at how awful you are,’ you agreed with everything I said.”</p><p>Cardin frowned. “No, I didn’t!”</p><p>“Those were your exact words.”</p><p>Thinking back, Cardin realised with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that he might well have uttered the words ‘every word she said is true.’ <em>Every</em> word. <em>Oh, God help me, Skystar must think… Silverstream and Terramar. </em>“Well, I didn’t mean it like that!” he cried. “I was pissed off and speaking… you know, generally. When I said every word, I didn’t mean every actual word out of your mouth.”</p><p>“Unfortunately, that’s not how words work,” Bon Bon informed him.</p><p>Cardin whimpered. “No matter everyone’s making such a fuss, they think I’m a… how am I supposed to… oh, God. Everyone’s taking it literally, aren’t they?”</p><p>“Probably, yes,” Bon Bon said, not without sympathy. “So,” she continued, “what’s our next move?”</p><p>Cardin’s eyes bulged incredulously. “I’m sorry, our next move?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Bon Bon said. “You know, how do we-?”</p><p>“There is no next move!” Cardin snapped. “Were you not in the same office that I was in just then? Did you not listen to the same headmaster that I did? We just got our asses kicked! We are this close to getting tossed out of Beacon on our asses! Now, maybe that doesn’t bother you, because you can just transfer to Atlas or something and try again next year, but I actually want to graduate from this school at some point!”</p><p>Bon Bon was silent. “You could have thought about that-”</p><p>“I never said I was perfect!” Cardin shouted. “The point is… the point is that I’m done. Yes, I don’t like a White Fang terrorist being here, yes, I’d like to see her gone, but I don’t see that me getting myself expelled is actually going to do her any harm, and it’s starting to look as though she’s bulletproof, so why don’t we just let it go, make the best of it, and hope that everybody forgets what we did sooner rather than later?”</p><p>Bon Bon was quiet. She didn’t look at him; she just walked along with her arms folded. “I can’t let it go,” she muttered. “I just… I can’t.”</p><p>Cardin’s jaw tightened. He didn’t know whether to envy her resolve or pity her stupidity. Both, maybe? Either way, it didn’t change his mind; he wasn’t going to put what remained of his future on the line just out of some sense of loyalty to her. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but… good luck,” he said. “I think you’ll need it if this is the road you want to go down.”</p><p>Bon Bon’s smile was wan, although Cardin wasn’t sure why, because it wasn’t like anybody was forcing her to do this, right? She could just give up, like he planned to do for his own good. Instead, she was choosing to keep on putting everything on the line to get at Blake – and for what? – but at the same time, she was acting like she was going to her execution. “Yeah,” she said. “Don’t I know it.”</p><p>Cardin didn’t know what to say to that – seriously, what was going on with her? – and to be honest, he wasn’t interested in finding anything to say, or in saying anything else to Bon Bon either. He started to turn away from her, walking not straight back to the greenhouses, where Plant Science was in session, but towards the lawns in the direction of the docking pads. </p><p>“You’re not coming back to class?” Bon Bon asked him, gesturing in the right direction.</p><p>“Not just yet,” Cardin grunted.</p><p>“You just got told off, and you’re already going to play truant?”</p><p>“I’m not ready to go back to class quite yet,” Cardin told her irritably. “Just… you go; I’ll catch up soon. There’s something that I have to do first.”</p><p>Bon Bon frowned. “How many times have you tried calling her?”</p><p>“What are you talking about?”</p><p>Bon Bon’s eyebrows rose. “Come on, Cardin. Who your girlfriend is and why she’d be mad at you were both part of the article. That was the whole point of the article: First Councillor’s daughter dates racist grandson of Lord Chief Justice, remember?”</p><p>“Yes, I remember, I’ve done nothing else <em>but </em>remember,” Cardin snapped.</p><p>“So,” Bon Bon insisted. “How many times have you tried calling her?”</p><p>Cardin sighed. “I’ve lost count.”</p><p>Bon Bon winced. “Dude, I’m sorry to say this, but… it’s over.”</p><p>Cardin was silent for a moment. “I know,” he replied. “But I need to… I have to try. At least… I need to hear her say it.”</p><p>Bon Bon nodded. “I guess I can get that,” she murmured. “For what it’s worth… I’m sorry.”</p><p>“It’s not worth much,” Cardin replied. “But… thanks anyway.”</p><p>“Good luck,” Bon Bon added, very quietly, as if she didn’t expect that he would have any luck, or else maybe she thought that no amount of luck would save him, or maybe she just thought that if she sounded too enthusiastic, he’d think that she was inappropriately happy about all of this. Whatever the truth, she didn’t say anything else but finally left him alone and headed off to Plant Science. </p><p>Cardin headed in the other way, crossing the empty courtyard as he pulled out his scroll and started flicking through the alerts on his social media feed. It was… not great. Besides the initial story itself… well, it was like Professor Ozpin said, but even worse. Councillor Aspen Emerald had felt the need to publicly insist that Cardin’s grandfather was not a racist, but was ‘a gentleman of immense courtesy whom I am proud to work alongside for the betterment of Vale’; that endorsement hadn’t stopped Sir Orange Peel from calling for Lord Winchester’s resignation – which was a bit bloody rich of him, in Cardin’s opinion, considering that Peel had been saying things at least as bad as anything Cardin had said since the White Fang had started all their robberies. Councillor Leo Aquas had been a little less supportive of Cardin’s father and had ordered an internal inquiry into racism and bullying at the Treasury. There were think pieces about endemic racism in the huntsman academies, former faunus students coming out of the woodwork to talk about how they, too, had been victims of racism… and there was the article that had started it all, about how Skystar was dating a racist and what did her faunus uncle and cousins think about that?</p><p>He didn’t know, but he suspected that it was nothing good. </p><p>He couldn’t get Skystar to reply to his messages, but he did have unopened messages from both his parents. He hadn’t had the guts to look at what was in them yet. </p><p>How had he managed to mess this up so badly? His grandfather facing calls for him to quit – okay, they weren’t serious calls, and it probably wasn’t going to happen, but that wasn’t really the point – maybe his father’s job at risk too, all because of him. And Skystar…</p><p>He didn’t realise how good he had had it until it was starting to look until he didn’t have it any more. How had he become so consumed with petty jealousy, with envy of Jaune Arc and Sunset Shimmer, with anger at Blake Belladonna, how had he let all of that stuff get so big that he hadn’t realised just how good he had it? Yes, he wasn’t the best student at the school, sure, nobody was giving him special favours or opening up doors for him, and he knew that he didn’t have one of the best partners in the school and certainly not the partner that he would have chosen, but so what? So what? Did Jaune Arc stay up at night worrying about how much he sucked? No! Because he was dating Pyrrha Nikos, the hottest student in school, and he was grateful for it! The guy was so grateful – and well he might be; she was way out of his league – that he was practically floating three feet off the ground most of the time. Cardin had found it insufferable, but why? It wasn’t as though he didn’t have anything of his own to be grateful for: an enviable social position as the heir to the Winchester family, an income that was almost sufficient to his needs – a gentleman’s income was never quite sufficient – and a girlfriend who adored him. </p><p>Why couldn’t he have been satisfied with that?</p><p>Of course, it had been partly for Skystar that he had tried to do this, but at the same time… she hadn’t asked him to, and she certainly hadn’t asked him to go about it like this. </p><p>When he and Skystar started dating, he had known that his attitudes might cause him problems down the line. That should have been a sign for him to do something about them, but instead, he had acted as though he could live a double life, the asshole at school and the model of tolerance with her. </p><p>How had he let it all come to this? How could he possibly have been so stupid?</p><p>Was there any way that he could make this right?</p><p>He tried to call Skystar again. </p><p>The ‘ringing’ icon rumbled on with no response. The scroll shook a little in Cardin’s meaty hands. </p><p>
  <em>Come on, come on. Pick up.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I don’t know what I’m going to say but still, pick up, please. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Just talk to me.</em>
</p><p>“Stop calling me!” Skystar’s voice squawked out of the scroll as her image appeared on the screen. Her usually immaculate face was blotchy with tearstains, her nose was running, and her big blue eyes were wet with tears that were still welling up with them. She was dressed, as far as Cardin could tell, in the turquoise dressing gown that he’d gotten her for her last birthday.</p><p>He couldn’t tell if it was a good sign that she hadn’t thrown it out yet or if it was a bad thing that she was so upset that she was still in her dressing gown at ten-thirty in the morning. </p><p>“Skystar,” Cardin begged. “Please, just listen for a minute-”</p><p>“'Listen'?” Skystar cried. “Listen to you? Why, so you can lie to me some more?”</p><p>“Is that Cardin?” Silverstream’s voice echoed out of the scroll from somewhere off screen. </p><p>Silverstream was there. Of course Silverstream was there, with Skystar in that state. He really should have seen this coming. </p><p>And yet, he was not prepared at all.</p><p>Skystar sniffed. “Yes,” she said.</p><p>“Tell him for me that he’s a big stupid jerk!” Silverstream screamed. “Actually, I’ll tell him myself!” She elbowed her way into the frame, her violet eyes blazing with anger. “You’re a big stupid jerk, Cardin Winchester!”</p><p>“If you’ll just both let me explain-” Cardin began.</p><p>“What is there to explain?” Silverstream demanded. “Are you going to tell me that I should be grateful that you haven’t murdered me already like you want to?”</p><p>“I don’t want to kill you, or Terramar, or any other faunus; I was angry, and I didn’t think about what I was saying,” Cardin insisted. </p><p>“Should I be grateful that you don’t want to kill me?”</p><p>“No!” Cardin yelled. “Please, whatever I said in there… I’ve never thought about you or your brother that way. You and Terramar, you’re not like other faunus-”</p><p>“Cardin!” Skystar exclaimed. “That’s a terrible thing to say!”</p><p>If he’d been speaking to someone else, Cardin would have asked why, exactly, it was such a terrible thing to say. He might have asked why it became a crime to say that water was wet. Some faunus – a lot of faunus – were not good people; they were cunning and conniving, callous and cruel; look at Sunset Shimmer for example, look at the White Fang. It wasn’t wrong to say any of that just because it hurt some people’s feelings, and it wasn’t wrong to have negative feelings towards them because of the way that they behaved. Was it wrong to have negative feelings towards criminals? </p><p>None of that, however, was likely to get him back into Skystar’s good books, and so Cardin showed a little wisdom – if only he could have started showing it sooner – and did not say it. Instead, he said, “I did this for you, Skystar.”</p><p>“What?” Skystar and Silverstream both cried out at once, and both in the same tone of disbelief. </p><p>“Blake Belladonna is a dangerous criminal, you know that as well as I do,” Cardin explained. “Your mom was worried that you’d be in danger if you came up to school with her around, so I tried to take care of it.”</p><p>“Mom didn’t mean for you to say things like that,” Skystar insisted. “She would never mean that.” She wiped at her eyes in a futile gesture since more tears simply welled up there immediately after she was done. “Cardin, I… I thought that I knew who you were.”</p><p>“You do know who I am,” Cardin insisted. “You know exactly who I am.”</p><p>“No, I don’t!” Skystar said. “It turns out that there’s this whole other side to you that I never knew existed. You must think that I’m such an idiot.”</p><p>“I’ve never thought that.”</p><p>“Really?” Skystar demanded. “All that time that you were lying to me, hiding what you really thought, pretending to be someone else.”</p><p>“I never pretended,” Cardin said, softly, desperately. “I never… it’s true that I act in a different way when I’m at school than I do when I’m with you, but that… that’s the act, the me at Beacon. When I’m with you… that’s the real Cardin Winchester.”</p><p>Skystar sniffed. “I wish I could believe that,” she whispered.</p><p>“You can believe it,” Cardin declared. “What can I do to show you that you can believe it?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Skystar said. “I don’t know if there’s anything that you can do, or anything that you can say. I thought I knew you. And I thought that you knew me too. I thought you knew that my family means everything to me. I thought you knew how much I love them.”</p><p>“I do know that.”</p><p>“And that’s why you lied and pretended not to hate us?” Silverstream demanded accusingly.</p><p>“That… that’s not what happened; that’s not what I was doing.”</p><p>“Cardin,” Skystar said. “Do you believe that the faunus are the equals of humans?”</p><p>Cardin was silent for a moment. He couldn’t lie, not to her, not any more, not like this. “Not all of them.”</p><p>Silverstream growled wordlessly. </p><p>Skystar shut her eyes, cringing visibly on the other side of the scroll. “Cardin,” she moaned. “I can’t believe that you would-”</p><p>“Please, Skystar, don’t say any more,” Cardin begged. “Please, I… I’ll do anything. I know that I’m not perfect, but if this means so much to you, then I’ll fix it. I can change. Give me a chance to prove to you that I can change, that I can be better, that I can… that I can move past this. Don’t… don’t let this be the end of it. I know that I shouldn’t have lied to you, but the reason I did it was because… because you mean so much to me. Because I knew that you would never look at someone who thought the way that I did, no matter what our families wanted. Because… because you mean so much to me, Skystar. Because… because I love you.”</p><p>“I believed you did,” Skystar whispered. “Just like I believe that… that you were one person who would never hurt me, ever. But that wasn’t true either. I don’t know what was true and what was a lie, but I do know that I can’t trust you. Goodbye, Cardin, don’t call me again.”</p><p>“Skystar, wait-” Cardin cried, but it was too late. She had already hung up on him. </p><p>He called again. The scroll rang for a moment, and then a red exclamation mark flashed up on the screen informing him that he had been blocked by that number. </p><p>Cardin closed his eyes. He couldn’t muster any anger or upset towards Skystar, or Silverstream. He deserved that. He didn’t like it, not one bit, but he deserved it. </p><p>That didn’t make him feel any less hollow inside. It was like he had been gutted, and everything ripped out of him. Everything good, anyway. </p><p>And it was all his fault. It was all, absolutely, his fault. </p><p>There were no tears. He didn’t shout or scream. He just stared down at the now-blank scroll in his hands that did not even shake. What was he supposed to do now?</p><p>What was he supposed to do?</p><p>He was <em>supposed</em> to go to class now, but he didn’t feel like it. He didn’t know how he was supposed to attend lessons, pay attention to his teachers, take notes on things that didn’t matter in the slightest any more. What was Plant Science when the light had gone out of the world? </p><p>With heavy, slow, ponderous, and solemn tread, Cardin made his way back towards the dorm rooms. He didn’t actually return to his room, although he thought about it; he wanted nothing more than to lie on his bed with his head on the pillow, doing nothing, thinking nothing, becoming nothing. He wanted to sleep until this was all past, like the memory of a dream. He wanted to wake up in bed and find that it was all a dream and had been from the first, that he hadn’t endangered his future and his family, that he hadn’t lost Skystar. He wanted to wake up and find that this had all been some sort of cautionary tale, to teach him to appreciate what he had and make the best of it. </p><p>But, since he knew perfectly well that this was nothing of the sort, he did not go back to the dorm room; that would be the first place he would be looked for, after all. Instead, he went to the second place he would be looked for, the roof above the dorm, and lay spread out on the roof next to the pipes. </p><p>He was still lying there, some time later – he didn’t know exactly how long – when he heard Weiss’ voice calling in the dorm room down below.</p><p>“Cardin?”</p><p>She didn’t sound as irritated as he’d expected her to be – irritated, sure, but not apoplectic, which was a surprise all things considered. </p><p>“Cardin,” Weiss repeated, a moment before a squeak of alarm. There was a moment of silence, and then Weiss appeared, leaping nimbly from one glowing white glyph to another before jumping onto the roof itself. From the way that she flicked at her slightly frizzled bangs with one hand, he guessed that she’d tried to climb up onto the roof and lost her footing. </p><p>Lucky she had such a useful semblance. </p><p>“There you are,” Weiss said, looking down on him. Somehow, she always managed to look down on him, even though she was half his size. </p><p>Cardin rolled onto his side. “What do you want?”</p><p>“I want you to come to class,” Weiss told him. “If I don’t bring you back, we’ll both be in trouble.”</p><p>Of course <em>that</em> was why she was here. “I don’t feel like classes right now.”</p><p>“That’s unfortunate, considering this is a school,” Weiss remarked dryly.</p><p>“Yeah, it’s really unlucky,” Cardin muttered. “Listen, I don’t feel like being yelled at right now-”</p><p>“That’s better, because I’m not here to yell at you,” Weiss informed him. There was a moment of silence before he heard her sigh. “Ugh. Listen, we’re probably both going to get into even more trouble at this point anyway, so let’s just… I’m sorry, Cardin.”</p><p>Cardin blinked. He rolled back over so that he could see Weiss sitting on a pipe beside him; weirdly, it didn’t look as though she was mocking him. “<em>You’re</em> sorry?”</p><p>Weiss sighed, and looked away. “Please don’t ask me to repeat myself.”</p><p>“I just… of all the things that I expected to hear today, that wasn’t one of them.”</p><p>Weiss rolled her eyes. “Have you managed to get Skystar to answer you yet?”</p><p>Now it was Cardin’s turn to sigh. “Once,” he confessed. “Before she blocked my number.”</p><p>Weiss winced. “I’m sorry for that,” she pointed out. “And for… everything else besides. It’s over, then?”</p><p>“It looks like it,” Cardin muttered. “Unless you know a way that I can get her to take me back. Show her that I’ve changed.”</p><p>“Have you changed?” Weiss asked.</p><p>“You don’t think I can?” Cardin demanded, starting to sit up.</p><p>“I think that we can all change, thank goodness,” Weiss replied. “But I’m not sure that we can all change that fast.” She paused, her brow momentarily furrowing. “I’m also sorry that I allowed things to reach this point.”</p><p>“You don’t tell me what to do.”</p><p>“No, I don’t; that’s the problem,” Weiss said. “I’ve never been a good leader. For the most part, I’ve barely even tried to lead. I resented the fact that you were on my team, and I never sought to make us more than very reluctant teammates. It’s little wonder that we haven’t been assigned a training mission yet.”</p><p>“It’s still early.”</p><p>“Iron and Sapphire both got a mission in the first week of semester,” Weiss pointed out. “The divide between the teams that are considered likely to succeed and those that are not trusted by the faculty is quite clear. Made even worse by the fact that I can’t really blame them. In Professor Ozpin or Professor Goodwitch’s place, I’m not sure that I would trust us either. And, while this probably hasn’t helped in that regard, as your leader, I shouldn’t have let things get that far.”</p><p>“Do you really think that you could have stopped me?”</p><p>“I think that I ought to have tried,” Weiss replied. “Why did you do it?”</p><p>“Not because I’m an advocate of faunus genocide,” Cardin declared. “And I don’t think Bon Bon is, either.”</p><p>“I don’t care about Bon Bon,” Weiss said quickly. “As far as I’m concerned, this is partly her fault.”</p><p>“I went to her,” Cardin informed Weiss. “I saw that she was… well, you know what Sunset did to Lyra-”</p><p>“Someone did that to Lyra,” Weiss corrected him.</p><p>“Oh, come on, who else would have done something like that?”</p><p>“I’m not interested in throwing blame around without proof,” Weiss told him, “and I don’t think that you’re in any position to be holding grudges.”</p><p>Cardin snorted. “Believe me, I’m done with revenge.”</p><p>“Good,” Weiss said. “And you’re done with Bon Bon too. You may have had the idea, but she didn’t tell you what a bad idea it was, which means that she isn’t good for you to be around. You still haven’t told me why you did it.”</p><p>Cardin did sit up now, and shrugged his shoulders. “It’s like the headmaster said, the plan was to goad Blake into crossing the line.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because she’s White Fang!” Cardin snapped. “I know, I know, you believe in second chances.”</p><p>“Luckily for you, yes,” Weiss said, as a touch of frost entered her voice.</p><p>“Is it really so hard to believe that a reasonable person could think that a former terrorist isn’t the best person to have around?” Cardin demanded. “Is it really so hard to think that I might not be overreacting just because of Blake’s race?”</p><p>Weiss was silent for a moment. She clasped her hands together and looked down at them for a moment. “Who raised you, Cardin?”</p><p>Cardin frowned. “What the hell kind of question is that?”</p><p>“Just answer it,” Weiss said. “Please.”</p><p>“I was raised by my mother; who do you think?”</p><p>“She had time?”</p><p>“What else was she going to do?”</p><p>Weiss sighed. “That explains so much.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, that was… not particularly called for. The point is that you had a stay-at-home mother to care for and look after you. That… was she a good mother?”</p><p>“She was the best,” Cardin said. “If I didn’t turn out perfect, that’s my fault, not hers.”</p><p>“Then you are very fortunate,” Weiss said, “to have been raised by someone who loved you without-” She cut herself off, abruptly and with a look upon her pale face that approached shame. When she continued, it was from somewhere else. “I was raised by my family’s retainers,” she informed him. “My father was preoccupied with the affairs of the company, as you can imagine, and my mother… had her own distractions. My care, as well as that of my sister and brother, fell to the staff. In particular, my father’s butler, Klein Sieben, and my mother’s nanny, Laberna Seacole. Laberna, Miss Seacole as I suppose I ought to say, had looked after my mother when she was a girl, had stayed on in her employ, and then looked after my mother’s children when we came along. Until my father dismissed her as the White Fang began to turn violent.”</p><p>Cardin’s eyes narrowed. “So, she was a faunus?”</p><p>“Yes,” Weiss said softly. “She was. More importantly, she spent more time with us than she did with her own family; she was there for us more than our own family… and yet, once the White Fang started to turn violent, father showed her the door. And no reasonable person would say that he was overreacting.”</p><p>Cardin frowned. “What happened to her?”</p><p>“I have no idea,” Weiss murmured. “I’ve sometimes thought about tracking her down, seeing how she’s doing now, but… what would I say? How would I even begin to make up for what my father did? Would she even want to have anything to do with me? After all, she was paid to care about me before; she’d be under no such obligation now.”</p><p>Cardin was silent for a moment. “Look, that’s… your old man should have had more loyalty to someone who’d been with the family for so long, sure.” His own family did not have many servants – it was just too expensive to keep them in the modern day and age, not to mention the fact that not a lot of people actually wanted to work in service these days, and with so many modern conveniences and technological advances, there wasn’t a lot of need for them anyway – but they did have a housekeeper, and when old Mrs. Byrd had gotten too old to carry out her duties, Father had found her a sinecure in the Treasury. She was nominally employed as Chief Messenger, with the tacit understanding that she would never be required to carry any messages. “But throwing her out just because she’s a faunus isn’t the same thing as an actual White Fang terrorist!”</p><p>“Former terrorist.”</p><p>“You say that, but it’s not as if you’re eager to become buddies with her.”</p><p>Weiss exhaled through her nose. “That… is true. Blake and I are not friends, and I’m not sure if we will ever become friends. But you don’t have to befriend her either; you just need to curb your hostility towards her.”</p><p>“Consider it curbed.”</p><p>“Not just because you’ve suffered from your attempts at… whatever it is you were attempting,” Weiss informed him.</p><p>“So you <em>are</em> asking me to like her.”</p><p>“I’m asking you… I’m asking you why you want to become a huntsman.”</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“Humour me,” Weiss said. “You could have chosen to enter politics, law, or the Civil Service like your family.”</p><p>“I still might go into politics when I get older.”</p><p>“So being a huntsman is about what?” Weiss asked. “Raising your profile so that you can say that you’ve fought for Vale to make yourself more electable?”</p><p>“No,” Cardin said quickly. “If that was all it was, I’d join the Royal Navy and serve out the minimum term in a position that guaranteed I’d never see combat. I want to become a huntsman because I want to <em>see</em> some action. I want to get stuck in, you know, against the grimm; I want to get stuck in for Vale. I want to have cool stories that I can bore my grandchildren with.” <em>Though who I’m going to have children with now is something I don’t know.</em> “I guess that I want… that I want people to hear those stories and think how brave I was, to go out and fight like that. I wanted people to think that I was cool.” <em>And they did: Terramar and Skystar. And I just had to blow it because I’m a dumbass.</em></p><p>He was a little surprised that Weiss didn’t laugh, or call him pathetic, or give any sign that she found his paltry ambitions to be laughable. Instead, she stood up and turned her back to him, raising one foot and placing it on the pipe which she had previously been sitting on. “I want to restore my family’s reputation,” she declared.</p><p>Cardin, likewise, rose to his feet. “Your family’s reputation,” he repeated. “The Schnee family’s reputation is-”</p><p>“One of rampant profiteering and a dubious regard for labour safety,” Weiss said, cutting him off. “But it wasn’t always thus. You know that my grandfather was known as much for his courage as he was for his business acumen. When he died, Councillor Bradley called him a model of Atlesian valour and an exemplar of the spirit that had made our kingdom great once more. It’s hard to imagine anyone saying anything like that about my father… and I don’t know if anyone will care enough to say anything like that about me when my time comes, but… but if I can make it so that it’s at least possible that someone could say that with a straight face? Well, then that will be enough for me. I don’t have to renew the glory of the Schnee name, but I should very much like to renew its honour.” She turned around to face Cardin once again. “I don’t know if I have it in me to become a great leader like my grandfather, but I think – I hope – that I can become a better leader than I have been so far.” She smiled. “So, do you think that we can start over? I think… I think it might be the only way that either of our dreams can come true.” She held out one hand to him. “I’m Weiss Schnee.”</p><p>Cardin looked down at her small, pale hand. Start over? Wasn’t it a little late for that?</p><p>Maybe, but at the same time, she was right: if they kept on as they were – if <em>he</em> kept on as <em>he</em> was – then there was no way that he was going to make it to graduation.</p><p>He had asked Skystar to let him prove that he could change. She wasn’t willing to give him the chance… but maybe if he changed first, then she might be willing to take another look. </p><p>And if she didn’t? Maybe just changing would be worthwhile. It wasn’t as if being himself had done him many favours. </p><p>
  <em>"I am not holding you back. Pyrrha isn't holding me back, Ruby isn't holding me back, Cadance- no one holds us back but us. If we have been deceived, it's by our blindness to our natures. If we have been restrained, it is by our unworthy hearts. But we can change, Cardin. Our hearts can mend, our souls can grow. I have to believe that we need not be these small and ugly things forever, or else... destiny is not beyond us, if only we can... there are lights that we can follow." </em>
</p><p>That had been what Sunset had said to him, in the forest. At the time, he hadn’t understood what she was talking about; it seemed like nothing more than a bunch of nonsense, words spewed out without any meaning. But afterwards… afterwards, it was like she’d turned her life around, and look at her now: successful and loved by everyone. </p><p>If she could do it, then maybe he could do the same? </p><p>It couldn’t hurt to try, right?</p><p>He took her hand. “Cardin Winchester,” he said. “Good to meet you.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0052"><h2>52. Two Lessons</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Pyrrha teaches Lyra, Dove teaches Jaune</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Two Lessons</p><p> </p><p>The BLBL dorm room was silent. And not the pleasant, comfortable kind of silent either. No, that would have been too lucky for Bon Bon, formerly known as Sweetie Drops. No, this was the kind of silence that felt like, if it were to be shattered, the shards would cut someone. </p><p>Bon Bon sat on her bed, resting her elbows on her knees, looking down at the plaid skirt of her Beacon uniform. She was very deliberately not looking at any of her teammates: not at Sky, not at Dove, and certainly not at Lyra. </p><p>She didn’t need to look at Lyra to know the expression on her face. Sunset might have humiliated Lyra in front of the rest of the school, but Bon Bon knew her well enough to know that Bon Bon’s actions had hit her far harder. </p><p>That was why she didn’t want to look; no, she couldn’t look.</p><p>
  <em>And this is just a drop in the bucket; what’s she going to think when she finds out what I really am?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Maybe I can argue incompetence? I never succeeded at anything I tried, so it doesn’t matter?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>…yeah, I’m not sure that’s going to cut it. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Not to mention the fact that if I don’t start succeeding at something, I’m probably going to die.</em>
</p><p>That was another issue weighing on her mind. While Doctor Watts might be a forgiving sort – might be; he had seemed genial enough in her youth, but that was before she found out more about his true colours – her new boss did not give quite the same impression. Mind you, Bon Bon wouldn’t have expected her to give some of the orders that she’d issued to Bon Bon lately, so really, who was to say? Bon Bon’s initial read on her seemed to have missed a few things.</p><p>That still didn’t make her safe, though. So far, Bon Bon’s record in fulfilling her mission was… pretty abysmal. She’d failed abjectly to get close to Pyrrha Nikos, or anyone of any relevance whatsoever; she was the leader of what was emphatically the D-team, and the only reason she wasn’t beneath the notice of everyone was because of what she’d done to Blake. The only things that she’d managed to find out were common knowledge. It was… not a great track record; in fact, it was the kind of track record that could very easily end with someone finding her body in a ditch somewhere. </p><p>And now she had this. This thing, this new revenge by Sunset Shimmer – Bon Bon had no doubt whatsoever that it was her; it was right up her tricksy alleyway – that had brought down new troubles upon her head. </p><p>The dorm room had been her sanctuary. The team had been her sanctuary. No matter how hated she was by Blake’s friends, no matter how badly she was doing in her mission, no matter how badly she seemed to be doing in school, her team, her friends, would always be there for her: Lyra, who had been by her side since Canterlot; Sky, who was game for just about anything; Dove, who had seemed like a part of the team long before he actually joined it officially. </p><p>They were her rock and her balm, and now both those things were under threat. </p><p>
  <em>How did I let it come to this?</em>
</p><p>She knew how: she had followed her instructions. But what instructions! What sense did they make? What was the point of it all? She wondered if the only point was to land her in this trouble, to take away the one thing that she could rely on, to punish her for her incompetence. </p><p>If it was so, she felt appropriately chastised, and punished far more than she deserved.</p><p>Just because she had yet to notch up a notable success didn’t mean that she deserved to have the only good things in her life right now taken away, did it?</p><p>Bon Bon found that her breathing was growing heavier. She needed some way to explain this. She needed some way to make it seem okay. She needed some way to make herself not look like a monster.</p><p>She needed an excuse, since she couldn’t exactly deploy the truth as a defence. </p><p>She needed someone to say something and give her some sign of where she stood with them all. </p><p>Of course, she also feared what they might say because it would give her an indication of where she stood with them all. </p><p>“So,” Sky said, breaking the silence, “are we just not going to talk about the fact that you’re a genocidal sociopath?”</p><p>“I’m not a sociopath,” Bon Bon moaned. “I’m not even genocidal. Wait, no, I didn’t mean to say it like that; I mean I’m <em>not</em> genocidal; I do not support genocide in any way, shape or form.” <em>At least I hope I don’t.</em></p><p>“Then why did you say it?” Lyra demanded, her voice sharper than her sword seemed most of the time. </p><p>Bon Bon ventured to look up at her. “I did this-”</p><p>“No!” Lyra snapped. “No, Bon Bon, you are not going to say that you did this for me. I never asked you to do this. I never asked for anything like this! I didn’t ask you to paint Team Sapphire’s door, and I certainly didn’t ask you to out yourself as a racist! Have you always felt that way? The entire time we went through Canterlot, were you hoping for Rainbow Dash to die? Or Ditzy? Were you just pretending to be cool with faunus all those years?”</p><p>“I <em>am</em> cool with faunus,” Bon Bon insisted. “And I never wanted Rainbow or Ditzy to die, or at least not just because they were faunus. I said those things to get a rise out of Blake!” She spread her arms out wide in exasperation. “I was acting! Why is that so hard for everyone to believe? Do you all really think that I… that I get off on the idea of mass murder or something? Just because of one thing that I said? Lyra, you’ve known me for years; do you really think that I could pretend to be someone else so seamlessly for all that time?”</p><p>Lyra frowned. “I… I don’t want to think that,” she said softly. “And… I guess you’ve never done anything racist before, at least not before the truth about Blake came out.”</p><p>“The thing with Blake has nothing to do with race,” Bon Bon vowed. </p><p>“Then what <em>does</em> it have to do with?” Lyra demanded.</p><p><em>Envy.</em> The truth of the matter was that Bon Bon really <em>didn’t</em> like Blake, and while she was acting on orders, the fact of the matter was that there were times when she came very close to hating the catgirl, just not because she was a catgirl. No,  Bon Bon hated Blake because of how infuriatingly lucky she was. Here was a terrorist, a former member of the White Fang, someone who had killed people, someone who had waged war against humanity, someone who had – until recently – been an enemy of mankind in every sense of the word. Someone who deserved to rot in jail for what she’d done. And yet, because she mouthed a few pieties about being sorry and regretting it and all that kind of stuff, people thronged about her, lined up to do her favours, showered her with love and praise. Rainbow Dash had used her precious influence with General Ironwood to extend the wing of Atlesian protection over her; Sunset Shimmer, the most self-centred person that Bon Bon had ever met, had put herself out to join with Rainbow in getting her out of prison and accepted back at Beacon; Team Sapphire had accommodated her in their room; Team Iron had accommodated her in their team; Dove, who was supposed to be Bon Bon and Lyra’s friend, had exchanged one of the best teams in the school for one of the worst in order to make room for Blake. Sunset had been willing to risk her reputation by resurrecting Anon-a-Miss to avenge a slight on Blake, of all people. Everyone loved Blake, everyone showered her with affection; the word was that she’d been offered the chance to transfer to Atlas at year’s end. Everything that she had done, every sin that she had committed, all forgotten. </p><p>And for what? What did she have that made her so awesome? She’d been a rotten team leader, she’d never shown any sign of giving a damn about anybody but herself, she either said nothing or else stuck her foot in her mouth, she didn’t look before she leapt, so why were so many people – people who ought to have known better – so enamoured with her?</p><p>And what stuck in Bon Bon’s craw, what made her burn with envious rage at all the good things that had been bestowed on Blake, was the scratching sense in the back of her mind that if her own, comparatively minor, offences came to light, there would be no flood of people willing to forgive, coddle, and accommodate her for what she’d done – and she’d barely done anything!</p><p>Case in point: right now! Blake had committed murders! She had cut down men and women serving Atlas and the SDC and for these horrors, Atlas sought her services, but Bon Bon had said a few ill-judged words, and yet, she was the most monstrous creature to ever draw breath, a plague carrier who had to be shunned by all good and virtuous folk. So much for tolerance, indeed. </p><p>“It has to do with the fact that she’s lucky,” Bon Bon declared. “It has to do with the fact that she has been handed everything, in spite of what she is – a terrorist – and everything she’s done. It has to do with the fact that I’m the bad guy for a few words when she is the reason why some poor kid doesn’t have a father any more. It has to do with -- you know what this has to do with? -- it has to do with the fact that she’s a bully. She’s a bully with a persecution complex, and I can’t stand it! Me and Cardin, were we bullying her? Two Atlesian students came to her aid and threatened to beat us up if we didn’t make ourselves scarce, in our own laundry room! She’s got General Ironwood and the Ace of Canterlot in her corner, and Sunset Shimmer lashing out on her behalf so that she doesn’t have to get her fair hands dirty. She plays the victim, acts like a few words are an assault on the sanctity of her person, and meanwhile, what do you think she did in the White Fang? She picked on people who were weaker than she was: shopkeepers, security guards, ordinary people just trying to get by. People who weren’t going to fight back against someone trained to huntress proficiency. Just people, like Granny Smith or the Cakes. She picked on them because they couldn’t stand up to her, because she could. But sure, she’s the victim in all of this, poor Blake. It makes me sick. I hate her – fine, I admit that – but I’m not a racist; I can get along with other faunus just fine. I only said the things I said because I knew it would push her buttons.”</p><p>“And you wanted to push her buttons because…?” Sky trailed off invitingly.</p><p>Bon Bon twisted her body around. “Isn’t it obvious?” she asked. “I wanted her to take a swing at me or Cardin so I could get her into trouble.</p><p>Sky was leaning against the wall of the dorm room. “Even though, with all the institutional support you’ve just described, didn’t it occur to you that something like that would slide off her like water? I mean, do you think anyone would care if she punched you after you insulted her like that?”</p><p>“Rainbow Dash wouldn’t care,” Lyra murmured. “After you said that, she’d probably cheer Blake on.”</p><p>“She would have cheered Blake on before I said that, because it’s Blake,” Bon Bon muttered.</p><p>“You’re overreacting to this,” Lyra insisted.</p><p>“She’s become Blake’s acolyte, and in the meantime, she acts like she doesn’t know us at all,” Bon-Bon protested.</p><p>“She’d probably rather that she didn’t know you after what you said in the laundry room,” Lyra declared.</p><p>“That still doesn’t answer my question,” Sky reminded them. “Why did you think you could get rid of someone who, and I want to point out <em>again</em> that you just proved you know damn well how many friends she has, is at the centre of such a wide and formidable network? Did you really think that a few petty incidents of harassment were going to make Beacon too hot for her?”</p><p>Bon Bon wouldn’t claim to know what was going on inside the mind of her dear leader, but she was starting to think that it wasn’t really about Blake at all anymore. It had started out as being about Blake, Bon Bon had been ordered to pass on the footage to the VPD in order to get Blake arrested so that she’d stop interfering in the operations of the White Fang, but now? Now, Bon Bon had begun to think that all of this wasn’t about Blake so much as it was about making Sunset Shimmer mad. Of course, Bon Bon wasn’t sure why Sunset needed to be enraged – still less enraged at Bon Bon – but it was about the only thing that made sense at this point. </p><p>For a given value of sense, anyway. </p><p>She sighed, and she didn’t even have to fake it; she genuinely felt exhausted by all of this. “Someone had to do something,” she said feebly. </p><p>“You did something, alright,” Sky muttered. “You ruined your own life. And ours, for that matter.”</p><p>“Sky, that’s enough,” Lyra whispered.</p><p>“You do realise that we’re all tarred by association at this point?” Sky asked her. “Our lives aren’t going to be worth living in this school. It doesn’t help that your defence is, like, the worst defence in the history of defences.”</p><p>“That’s enough,” Lyra said, more in weariness than in annoyances. “It’ll be rough for a while, but it’ll blow over. These things always do. Remember Anon-a-Miss? After a while, it just became something that had happened.”</p><p>Bon Bon hesitated. “So… we’re good?”</p><p>“Well, I think you’re an idiot,” Lyra said. “Which is a new thing for me, feeling like the smart one.” She grinned. “Seriously, you shouldn’t have done any of this stuff. I’m just glad you didn’t do it to try and avenge me or something, because then, I would have felt guilty.”</p><p>Bon Bon rolled her eyes. “I’m glad I could help.”</p><p>“I think it’s a little disturbing how vindictive you’ve been,” Sky admitted. “But I’m glad that you’re not… what you sounded like.”</p><p>“Then you believe me?” asked Bon-Bon pleadingly.</p><p>“Don’t sound so happy about it,” Sky told her. “But, yes, I believe you. You’re our team leader, and I’m not going to turn on you just because you made a mistake.”</p><p>Bon Bon started to smile, but the smile faded as she remembered that she hadn’t shown Blake the same loyalty; she wondered if Sky was commenting on that, but didn’t quite have the heart to ask. He might think that she was a hypocrite, but at least he had her back still; that was the main thing. She looked at Dove, who had remained silent throughout, not a word passing his lips. </p><p>“You’ve been very quiet,” she said. “What do you think about all this?”</p><p>“I’m new here,” Dove said. “It doesn’t matter what I think.”</p><p>“That’s not true,” Bon Bon said firmly. “You’re our friend, you’ve been our friend since the year began, and what you have to say matters to us. It matters to me.”</p><p>Nevertheless, Dove held his piece. “I… I could believe that you meant those things you said.”</p><p>Bon Bon’s eyebrows rose. <em>Maybe I should have known better than to ask.</em> “Right… thanks,” she muttered dryly.</p><p>“Do you two remember what a hayseed I was when I first got here?” Dove demanded, gesturing to both Bon Bon and Lyra from where he sat on his bed. “I’d never seen a faunus before I came to Beacon. I thought they were… I thought they were the strangest things I’d ever seen. Sunset really tore into me when she caught me staring at her pony ears at lunch on the first day of class. No faunus ever came to our village, which meant that the White Fang never came there either. I’d never even heard of the White Fang, and when I did… it’s horrible, and it’s the sort of thing that huntsmen should be fighting against, but at the same time… it wasn’t something that I’d had to endure. Not like you two, in Atlas, or even Sky. I know that prejudice is wrong, and I know that as huntsmen and huntresses, we probably have a duty to stand against hatred and ignorance, but at the same time… if I’d had to live under the shadow of the White Fang, I don’t think I can say that I wouldn’t have started to feel… you know. And, thinking about what you said… I see where you’re coming from. A huntsman of Beacon swears that his might will uphold the weak, but so many of our fellow students seem ranged around the strong.”</p><p>“Did you miss the part where Bon Bon said she wasn’t really a racist?” Sky asked.</p><p>“I heard,” Dove said quietly. “And I’m glad that you don’t want to kill everyone just because of how they’re born. But I understand a little better now why you don’t like Blake. Thank you, for sharing that with us, for trusting us with it.”</p><p>“You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?” Bon Bon asked.</p><p>“You’re asking that?” Sky demanded. “You, of all people?”</p><p>“I’m allowed to not want Dove to follow in my footsteps,” Bon Bon replied. “Seriously, don’t do anything about Blake; you’ll regret it.”</p><p>“I won’t,” Dove assured her. “I can see why you feel the way you do, but at the same time, I also trust… not Professor Ozpin, maybe, but I do trust our teachers. We’ve been put under our care because they’ve proven themselves worthy of that charge, and we have to respect that. If they think Blake deserves a place here, then I’m not going to disagree with them.”</p><p>“Why don’t you trust Professor Ozpin?” Sky asked.</p><p>Dove shook his head. “It’s too long a story, and I’m not going to tell it now. The point is, you don’t have to worry, I might see your point about Blake, but I’m not going to act on it. And I’m not going to turn away from you because of some words said in anger. I’m a member of Team Bluebell, your teammate, and your friend.” He smiled. “You could say and do much worse, and you wouldn’t be rid of me. I… I am at your service, in war and peace.”</p><p>Bon Bon felt a little sickly to hear him say that; he had no idea what he was saying, what he might be getting himself into… and yet, there was a part of her which thought that he would say the same thing even if he did know, because that was the kind of person he was. She forced a smile onto her face. “You’ve got to start talking less like the girl from that book you gave to Ruby.”</p><p>“Olivia? I wasn’t talking like Olivia,” Dove protested. “If I was talking like Olivia, I would say this.” He rose to his feet, only to drop to one knee in front of her. “I know not the events that lie ahead, only a general foreboding of many storms of war to break upon our heads, yet not from fear of any thunderous clamour shall I break with thee. Verily, I say that not for honour nor renown would I be parted from you, because I-”</p><p>“Oh, stop it!” Bon Bon said, hitting him with a pillow snatched from atop her bed. “I get the point,” she added as Sky sniggered.</p><p>Dove bowed to her as he rose to his feet. “There is something that we need to discuss,” he said. “If you’re sure that Sunset did this-”</p><p>“I’m sure,” Bon Bon declared.</p><p>“Then shall I tell Pyrrha that our agreement is void?” Dove asked, glancing from Bon Bon to Lyra. “It… there is a part of me that thinks it doesn’t seem right to associate with them after what their leader has done to you.”</p><p>Lyra frowned. “That’s just guilt by association, isn’t it? As bad as… well, it isn’t right.”</p><p>“Or do you just want to learn from Pyrrha Nikos?” Bon Bon asked.</p><p>“Do you want me not to?” Lyra asked. “If you don’t want me to, then-“</p><p>“No,” Bon Bon said. “It’s fine. Like you said, it isn’t Pyrrha’s fault or Jaune’s. Go, both of you. Have fun. Or learn lots, or whatever. Don’t worry about me.”</p><p>
  <em>Let me worry about me. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>And whatever I’ll be asked to do next. </em>
</p><hr/><p>The sword flew out of Lyra's hand and hit the stony ground with a metallic clang.</p><p>Lyra sighed dispiritedly. "Great," she murmured. "Perfect."</p><p>"I'm sorry," Pyrrha apologized. "I should have-"</p><p>"Held back even more?" Lyra asked. "Don't pretend that you weren't holding back."</p><p>"Of course I was," Pyrrha replied mildly. "Do you think that I don't hold back when I'm with Jaune? Exerting all my strength against you might inflate my ego, but it will not help either of you to learn; it wasn't my intention to discourage you."</p><p>Lyra exhaled through her nostrils. "Maybe it wasn't," she said, leaving it unspoken but implicit that Pyrrha had managed to do exactly that regardless.</p><p>Pyrrha's arms fell, letting Miló and Akoúo̱ fall to her sides. They stood before the garages, bathed in moonlight, alone and unobserved; no one was taking their vehicles out for a spin on a school night. "Do you want to be a huntress?"</p><p>"Yes," Lyra replied immediately. "I'd like to be a great huntress."</p><p>"If that is so, then you shouldn't give up so easily."</p><p>Lyra bent down to recover her sword. "Why not?"</p><p>"Because if you do, then you will never become a great huntress," Pyrrha told her. "Or even a good one."</p><p>Lyra scowled. "What if I can't? What if Professor Goodwitch was just full of it when she said that those at the bottom could climb up and those at the top could fall? I've not seen much sign of it."</p><p>"Then you haven't been paying enough attention," Pyrrha said softly.</p><p>Lyra was silent for a moment. "I guess Jaune has been getting better," she conceded. "What's his secret?"</p><p>"He works hard," Pyrrha summarized.</p><p>Lyra winced. "Point taken," she said, twirling her sword experimentally in her hands. "All the same, he's not improving <em>that</em> much; does he ever wonder what the point is?"</p><p>"Sometimes," Pyrrha admitted. "That's why I asked Dove to help him tonight, so that he can see how much progress he's making against someone closer to his own level."</p><p>"While still being above it," Lyra declared. "You might disagree, but I don't think that he'll catch up to Dove, even if Dove is closer to him in skill than either of them are to you. Dove works hard himself, and he's stronger than he looks."</p><p>"So is Jaune," Pyrrha said.</p><p>Lyra smiled. "I don't suppose you'd like to bet on it."</p><p>"No, I'm afraid I wouldn't," Pyrrha said. "Jaune… might not appreciate it if he found out."</p><p>"Suit yourself," Lyra replied. "Dove might not like it either; I don't think he'd approve of gambling, so I probably shouldn't." She hesitated. "But all the same, I hope that Jaune doesn't surpass him."</p><p>"For the pride of Team Bluebell?" Pyrrha guessed.</p><p>"I suppose so," Lyra acknowledged. "But not just in the bragging rights sense. But there's a line between the chosen and the rest, and I think that I'd like to know that at least one member of our team was on the chosen side of the line."</p><p>Pyrrha's brow furrowed. "Do you really believe that?"</p><p>"Don't you?" asked Lyra in disbelief.</p><p>"You say that like I should."</p><p>"Because you ought to," Lyra said. "You're the princess of Mistral-"</p><p>"No, I'm not," Pyrrha told her. "Even my epithet remembers that I have no crown, and it's not a name that I'm particularly fond of in any case." If she had to be called something other than Pyrrha Nikos, then she would rather be the Invincible Girl than the Princess Without a Crown; the former name, at least, she had earned by her own skill in the arena; the latter was the result of nothing more than birth.</p><p>"You're the heir to the throne-"</p><p>"The throne is empty; Mistral has no Emperor now."</p><p>"You are living proof that some people are just born better than others," Lyra continued, unabated. "What are the odds that the last scion of the royal line would also become the Champion of Mistral? Not only the rightful inheritor of the kingdom, but also its greatest warrior too."</p><p>"That is just a title, not a truth," Pyrrha informed her. "And a title, what is more, for which I worked very hard to overcome some very challenging adversaries. I wasn't handed those trophies because of who I was."</p><p>"Don't Mistralians believe that those of high blood, with a family history of great and noble deeds, inherit the virtue of their ancestors?" Lyra asked. "The history and honour of the city passed down through generations?"</p><p>"That… is an old-fashioned belief," Pyrrha said. "But I suppose… I cannot deny that I feel something like it. For me, though, it is less of an entitlement than an obligation, to honour the line of my ancestors by doing as they did, taking up arms in a noble cause, fighting valiantly, defending those who shelter beneath my sword as a shepherd defends their flock. But it is still my choice. My… inherited virtue, if you wish; it inspires me, but it does not command me. And I do not believe that it makes me… it does not make me skilled."</p><p>"No?"</p><p>"No," Pyrrha repeated firmly. "Or else why is my closest rival in the arena a girl of no family, born in poverty, on the lower slopes of the mountain, who nevertheless has attained fame and glory and enviable prowess all through nothing but toil and sweat? Arslan is… far more admirable than I am, a better role model, an example to follow. If I discourage you by my mere existence, then look to her to be encouraged once again." She paused. "It is unusual to hear an Atlesian talk of inherited virtue in that way."</p><p>The corner of Lyra's lip twitched upwards. "I sometimes wish that I'd been born a Mistralian instead of an Atlesian," she confessed. "Heresy, I know; Rainbow Dash would freak out if she heard me say it."</p><p>Pyrrha smiled momentarily. "She loves her country very much."</p><p>"A little <em>too </em>much, don't you think?" Lyra asked.</p><p>"I… I'm not sure that it's possible to love too much," Pyrrha replied. "Whether we talk of love of country or of people. Love is such a gift, with the power to change, if not the world, then how the world appears to us. Is it ever possible to have too much of it?"</p><p>"I think it depends on how that love is returned," Lyra said. "If Jaune didn't give a damn about you, then yes, you could love him too much, and easily."</p><p>"You think that Atlas… doesn't love Rainbow back?"</p><p>"I'm not sure that our kingdom knows how to love."</p><p>"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean," Pyrrha admitted. "General Ironwood esteems her highly and rewards her loyalty with honour-"</p><p>"General Ironwood isn't Atlas, no matter what Rainbow or Twilight think," Lyra said. "General Ironwood is just one man. Those who call Rainbow Dash the Ace of Canterlot are just a handful of students who clustered around her and her friends. In Mistral, the deeds of the heroes of a thousand years ago or more will be remembered as long as the tales are told of their deeds to inspire future generations, but in Atlas, we don't even remember who led the armies of Mantle in the Great War. Our monuments are not to those who gave their lives but to the idea of them, the sons of the north who did their duty. Atlas doesn't know how to love because it expects devotion as its due; Atlas doesn't remember its dead because it expects its children to die for it. Rainbow can fight for Atlas until her body gives out, but Atlas will not remember her when she's gone."</p><p>Pyrrha was silent for a moment. "I must confess… as much as I think that my Atlesian friends would take issue with some or all of that, you make it sound… rather grim. I think that if Ruby were here, she would say the question of memory is irrelevant so long as we get the job done, but… I suppose I am sufficiently Mistralian that I'm not sure I could be satisfied with that. Is that why you chose Beacon instead of Atlas?"</p><p>Lyra nodded. "Atlas is… not for me. I don't think I'll ever go back. I may not have the skill to be celebrated in song, but I can at least write Dove's song, or Bon Bon's. In Atlas, we don't even do that."</p><p>"I'm a little surprised you didn't go to Haven," Pyrrha murmured.</p><p>"Maybe in another life," Lyra replied. "But Haven… it's just not that good, is it? I guess that's why you're here at Beacon, too."</p><p>"Beacon's pre-eminence is one of the reasons." Pyrrha admitted. She hesitated for a moment. "Thank you, Lyra."</p><p>"For what?" Lyra asked curiously.</p><p>"For not mentioning Sunset, or trying to turn me against her."</p><p>Lyra waved one dismissive hand. "I wouldn't do that. I don't like her, but you do, and if you've chosen her as a friend, then I'm not going to try and get in the way of that. We need our friends to get by in this world; taking them away from others is… it's just a dick move, isn't it?" She grinned. "Thank you for not mentioning any of the weird things that I believe in."</p><p>"It's not my place to comment," Pyrrha murmured.</p><p>"I suppose," Lyra said, "that I just want the world to be a little more… idiosyncratic, you know? That's another reason why I'd never go to Atlas; it feels like we're trying to make the whole world samey, you know? Identical airships, identical ranks of soldiers; instead of huntsmen and huntresses in cool outfits that speak to their souls, we get specialists in uniforms. It's all so… drab and boring. I'd like for something to shake it up a little, you know? Even if it is something bizarre like a magical talking horse coming to our world to save us all."</p><p>"I… think I understand, even if I do not share your wish," Pyrrha said gently. "And now, I think that we'd better try again, don't you?"</p><p>"I guess," Lyra replied. "I've probably stalled for long enough."</p><p>"You were stalling?"</p><p>Lyra looked abashed for a moment. "Yes," she said. "And you're about to see exactly why."</p><hr/><p>Dove had his free hand tucked behind his back as he slashed downwards with his sword. </p><p>Jaune took the blow upon his shield, turning it aside and leaving Dove’s guard wide open for his counterstroke, a diagonal cut of his own across his temporary sparring partner’s chest.</p><p>Dove retreated in the face of the blow, scuttling backwards as Crocea Mors cut the empty air before him. Jaune followed up, his shield held before him, using it as a weapon, the way that Pyrrha had taught him, to lash out at Dove’s face, forcing him backwards. </p><p>Dove fell back. If this had been Pyrrha, then she would have tried to manoeuvre around his shield and flank him, but Dove simply fell back in a straight line, allowing Jaune to pursue. </p><p>They sparred around the farm, swords ringing to disturb the chickens trying to sleep not far away; their excited clucking formed a backdrop to the struggle as though they were invested in it. In reality, they probably just wanted the two boys to shut up. It seemed that they would never get used to it, no matter how much time Pyrrha and Jaune spent there. </p><p>Jaune led with his shield again, thrusting it out, jabbing with his sword from over the top of his shield. Dove fell back, maintaining the curiously old-fashioned posture, one hand clasped him as though he were about to bow. </p><p>Jaune and Dove stared at one another, two pairs of blue eyes locked together. </p><p>Jaune lunged forward, teeth gritted, lashing out with his shield-</p><p>Dove brought his free hand and grabbed the lip of Jaune’s shield, pulling it downwards and towards him. Jaune slashed at Dove’s fingers with Crocea Mors, but though Dove grimaced, he endured the pain, pulling Jaune’s shield and Jaune with it, pulling him forwards irresistibly – Dove was pretty strong for his size, almost as strong as Cardin – even as Dove sidestepped, tossing Jaune aside with such force that he was flung to the ground, rolling onto his side.</p><p>He had to get up quick; he had to be ready to-</p><p>Dove kicked him in the face as Jaune rose into a crouch, punting him flat onto his back as Crocea Mors slipped from his hand. </p><p>Dove stood over him. His expression was even for a moment before he held out one hand to Jaune. “Pyrrha never fights dirty when she’s teaching you, does she?”</p><p>Jaune accepted his hand and allowed the stronger boy to help him to his feet. “No,” he admitted. “I’m not sure if Pyrrha even <em>knows </em>how to fight dirty.”</p><p>“Oh, I’ll bet she knows, someone with her experience,” Dove replied. “From what I have seen since coming here, there is little honour to be found in battle.”</p><p>Jaune recovered his sword. “It depends, don’t you think?”</p><p>Dove blinked. “How do you mean?”</p><p>“I mean that the cause is honourable, even if our methods aren’t,” Jaune said. “If we save lives, I’m not sure that it matters how we did it.”</p><p>Dove nodded. “I agree,” he said. “We should always strive to do the right thing, but the right thing should be defined by ends, not means. We do right by those we care for, by those we have sworn to protect… by whatever means.” He hesitated for a moment and cracked a wry smile. “I’m not sure that Lyra would agree with me.”</p><p>Jaune snorted. “I’m not sure that Pyrrha would agree either,” he replied. “Mind you, I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to her about it. Maybe you’re right, maybe she does have an arsenal of dirty tricks I haven’t seen yet.”</p><p>“Or maybe she is simply so skilled that she has no need of such,” Dove said. “Unlike mere unskilled mortals like us.”</p><p>“You’re pretty good yourself,” Jaune told him.</p><p>“So are you,” Dove said.</p><p>Jaune shrugged. “If you say so. If that’s true, it’s because I’ve had a great teacher.”</p><p>Dove chuckled. “Pyrrha said that you lacked confidence; that’s why I’m here. To show you that you are making progress. How am I doing so far?”</p><p>“Not that great,” Jaune admitted.</p><p>“Would you like to go again?” Dove asked.</p><p>“Sure,” Jaune agreed, walking a few feet away from Dove before turning to face him again. Dove stood as he had before, his short sword held before him and his free hand clasped behind his back. </p><p>
  <em>I won’t make that mistake again.</em>
</p><p>The moonlight shone down upon them both. Jaune stared into Dove’s eyes, trying to divine what he might do. </p><p>There was no one there to announce the beginning of their second bout; rather, they arrived at an unspoken mutual consent: they were both ready, armed and well prepared, and so they could and would begin. </p><p>
  <em>Dirty tricks, huh?</em>
</p><p>Jaune charged with a great shout, throwing out his shield to his side, leaving himself wide open as he rushed forward, Crocea Mors raised overhead. Dove stepped eagerly into the opening, thrusting with the point. Jaune arrested his progress, or tried to at least, and brought his shield back to strike Dove on the exposed arm hard enough to knock him off balance. Dove stumbled, turning to present his side to Jaune, and Jaune brought Crocea Mors down in a slashing stroke that raked Dove down the flank. </p><p>He stepped back, bringing his blade up for another stroke. </p><p>Dove lunged at him, not with the sword but with his whole body, bulling into Jaune shoulder-first. Jaune would have looked to sidestep it, ideally, to flow around Dove like water, but he was too close and too fast for Jaune to get out of the way in time, and the best he could manage to do was check the attack with his shield rather than his body. Nevertheless, Dove pushed him backwards, Jaune’s trainers making trails in the earth before him. Dove was bent down, almost bent double, jabbing at Jaune with his sword even as Jaune whacked him with his own blade. </p><p>Jaune quickened the pace of his retreat, hoping to use Dove’s momentum against him the way that Dove had done to him, but Dove simply let go of Jaune’s shield and allowed Jaune to retreat while he stood still. </p><p>Dove lowered his sword a little. “You learn quickly,” he said.</p><p>“Thanks.”</p><p>“No, I mean it,” Dove insisted. “Lyra…” He trailed off.</p><p>“Like I said, I’ve had a good teacher,” Jaune said. His eyes widened a little as he realised how that might sound. “I mean, not that I’m not sure you’re a good teacher yourself, it’s just-”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Dove assured him, raising his free hand. “I don’t expect to be put on the same level as Pyrrha Nikos. That’s the main reason I agreed to this: Lyra’s going to get a better class of instruction for one night.”</p><p>“Pyrrha knows what she’s talking about,” Jaune agreed. “She really knows… but I know from experience that there’s nothing quite like being taught by a friend. Knowing that they’re on your side… it’s a big help.”</p><p>“'Friend'?”</p><p>“We didn’t start off dating,” Jaune pointed out.</p><p>“True,” Dove murmured. “Still, just because Lyra and Pyrrha aren’t close, I hope that she gets something out of this. She… needs more than I can give her.”</p><p>Jaune was silent for a moment. He wasn’t sure what to say, what would be permissible for him to say, what Dove would take offence at. And besides, he really wasn’t sure that he had the right to judge anyone else considering what a state he’d been in when he arrived at Beacon. “Are you worried about her?”</p><p>Dove huffed, turning away from Jaune, presenting his profile. “She’s my friend; I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t worry,” he declared. “I joined their team because I didn’t want to see another friend disappear, to be left to wonder what had happened to them… without me. But I’m not Yang; I can’t protect a whole team by myself.”</p><p>“Lyra graduated from a combat school, right?”</p><p>“Yes, but…” Dove trailed off. “I worry anyway.” He glanced at Jaune. “What’s it like?”</p><p>“What’s what like?”</p><p>“Not needing to worry about your teammates because they’re all so much stronger than you?”</p><p>“You think that I don’t worry about Pyrrha?” Jaune asked, an incredulous note entering his voice. “You think that I don’t worry about all of them? Sure, they’re all stronger than I am, but that doesn’t make them invincible, and I know that. Ruby almost died last semester, and then… you’ve been to Benni Havens’ right?”</p><p>Dove nodded. “Sure I have; we all like it there.”</p><p>“I’m afraid that we’ll end up like so many of those pictures on the wall,” Jaune murmured. “With our smiles gone and empty spaces. That’s why I train every night, so that I can pull my weight alongside the people who mean so much to me.”</p><p>Once more, Dove nodded, but more slowly now, as if he was considering what Jaune had said. “You know what?” Dove said. “I think that’s the best reason to be here, so help me. Maybe that makes me a poor fit to be a huntsman, maybe it makes us both a poor fit and we should be chastised for not living up to the ideals of the school and we should be eager to fight for all mankind. But I don’t know all mankind, I can’t imagine all mankind, I can’t… I can’t get my arms around it. So I’ll fight for the people I know and care about, and good for you for doing the same.”</p><p>“Uh, thanks,” Jaune murmured. “I hadn’t quite thought of it like that before, but… yeah, I guess that is why I’m here now.” His childish dreams of comic-book heroism were gone now; he no longer thought that he could or would save the day simply by striding out onto the field. He was here for them, for Team Sapphire, for three great girls whom he was privileged to stand beside. </p><p>Maybe that wasn’t the right thing, but it felt good enough for him. </p><p>Dove sheathed his sword upon his hip. “I don’t know if you want to go again,” he said. “If you do, that’s fine, but before we do, can I… put a dampener on the mood for a second? You know that your team leader is Anon-a-Miss, right?”</p><p>“I know that’s what Bon Bon said,” Jaune replied, his voice chilling a little. “I don’t think that she has any proof.”</p><p>“Bon Bon isn’t the type to make wild accusations with no basis,” Dove replied.</p><p>“Apparently, she’s the kind of person who wants to kill all the faunus,” Jaune pointed out.</p><p>Dove cringed. “And you know that Sunset leaked that audio as well.”</p><p>“Even if that were true, it still wouldn’t be as bad as Bon Bon wanting to <em>kill all the faunus</em>, I mean… come on!” Jaune cried.</p><p>“I’m not defending what Bon Bon said; it was stupid and wrong, and if I was a faunus-”</p><p>“You don’t have to be a faunus; you just have to know a faunus,” Jaune replied hotly. “I didn’t think you had anything against Blake.”</p><p>“I don’t,” Dove insisted. “But Bon Bon… was an idiot, but she’s my idiot, my friend, and so I won’t turn against her or abandon her or… or judge her too harshly, even if others do. Even if she deserves it. Just like how you don’t want to believe that Sunset is the one behind these leaks because she’s your friend, and you don’t want to judge her.”</p><p>Jaune frowned. “What’s your point? That what Bon Bon did is okay because-”</p><p>“No,” Dove said firmly. “No, I’m not saying that. You won’t hear me say that. But… I would like for this to be the end of it. I promise that I’ll do everything I can to stop Bon Bon taking any more asinine actions against Blake, and I would like to know that Sunset is going to leave well enough alone for now. Standing up for her friend I can understand; tit for tat, I can understand; but it’s done now. She’s won. She’s destroyed Bon Bon’s reputation and made Lyra a laughing stock, which she didn’t deserve, no matter what Bon Bon did. I… don’t want to see that continue. I won’t let it continue.”</p><p>“You don’t know that Sunset did this,” Jaune insisted. “You don’t know that Sunset did <em>anything.</em>”</p><p>“Who else would have done it?”</p><p>“I don’t know, that doesn’t prove anything!”</p><p>“Can you look me in the eye,” Dove said, “and tell me that you’re certain that she couldn’t have done this? That she wouldn’t?”</p><p>Jaune said nothing. It was a harder question to answer than he would have liked it to be. He remembered how Sunset had reacted when Cardin had tried to blackmail him; sure, she’d helped him out of that particular spot, but she’d gotten very… very territorial about it. </p><p>
  <em>“Cardin Winchester isn’t going to get what’s coming to him.” That’s what she said.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Well, that certainly came true in a big way, didn’t it?</em>
</p><p>Dove gave a knowing nod in response to Jaune’s silence. “That’s about what I thought,” he said.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0053"><h2>53. No Peace for the Wicked</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sunset tries to get some thinking done. Emphasis upon 'tries'.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>No Peace for the Wicked</p><p> </p><p>Jaune and Pyrrha were training, and Ruby was in the dorm room still working on her coursework with Rainbow Dash. Supposedly, anyway; that was what they said she was doing, but as Penny had been with Rainbow Dash coming in as Sunset had been going out, she thought that there might be something more informal planned. </p><p> But, if Ruby wanted to have some fun, play some video games, or watch a show or something with her friend, then Sunset wasn’t going to object. In any case, in anticipation of Ruby using the dorm room, Sunset had taken herself down to the library where she could work in peace. </p><p>It was dark. Mister Tukson – fancy him being here, the Beacon librarian – had retired to… wherever he went – Sunset presumed that he had some sort of grace and favour apartment somewhere on the campus – and there were no other students in the library this late. Most of the lights, which worked on motion sensors, had been turned off, and Sunset sat at a table in one of the rare patches of illuminated space, with darkness pressing in all around her. </p><p>It was quite cosy, really. It reminded Sunset of when she was a filly, studying magic by the light of her horn, sneaking into the palace library after hours, with only the guards on night patrol for company. </p><p>Funnily enough, studying magic was exactly what she was doing right now. </p><p>She had her books with her – the books on myth and legend that Twilight had given her – but they were not opened. Sunset would check details if she had to, but she trusted herself to remember most of the salient details. </p><p>Which was good, because the other piece to this puzzle was something that she didn’t have written down. </p><p>It was written down, but not in a place that she had immediate access too.</p><p>Sunset hadn’t spoken to her teammates about the things that she’d read about: the prophets or the Red Queens or whatever else you wanted to call them. She hadn’t really seen the point; it didn’t affect them, and there was little purpose in bringing up mysteries to which she had no answers and which had no relevance to the issues at hand. The pursuit of magic was Twilight’s interest, and she knew all of this already and – presumably, Sunset hadn’t talked to her about it – had all of the same questions and the same lack of answers that Sunset did. In any case, Ruby’s only interest in magic was with her silver eyes, of which Sunset had no more information, and Jaune and Pyrrha had no interest in it at all. </p><p>So Sunset had kept her findings to herself; she was fortunate that Ruby was not so close-mouthed. </p><p>But then, everyone in the team was interested in Summer Rose and her magical eyes. </p><p>And what a story Ruby had had for them, about the latest entries in her mother’s diary. </p><p><em>“Fire, wind, lightning, </em>and<em> ice?” Jaune said. “So, she wasn’t using dust?”</em></p><p>
  <em>“I don’t think so,” Ruby replied. “I mean, I guess she might have been, but that doesn’t explain why my Mom sounded so impressed by what she did. I mean, Mom wasn’t some ignorant yokel from the middle of nowhere… or at least, I don’t think she was. Dad doesn’t really talk about where Mom came from. He doesn’t really talk about her at all.” She bowed her head, momentarily falling silent. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sunset and Pyrrha each reached out from where they sat on either side of Ruby to place a hand upon her shoulder. Pyrrha said, “From what you’ve told us, your mother seems to imply that she came from outside the kingdoms.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I guess,” Ruby said. “But even outside the kingdoms, they have dust, right? It might not be SDC dust, but they know what it is? I don’t think that Mom would be gushing about something that’s so… normal, you know? Plus, it doesn’t say anything about her using a weapon to channel dust, just that she created fire and all the rest. And how would you use ice dust to freeze leaves? No, I don’t think that’s it, I don’t see how it can be.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“It might be a semblance,” Pyrrha suggested.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“A very versatile semblance, if so,” Sunset said.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Versatile semblances exist,” Pyrrha countered. “The hereditary Schnee semblance, for one.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Sure, but the Schnee semblance stands out because it’s so ridiculous it isn’t fair,” Sunset said. “Most people aren’t that lucky; that’s the point.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You… are not wrong,” Pyrrha murmured.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“It’s a pity that your mother didn’t get the chance to ask this Auburn how she did it,” Sunset said.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Uncle Qrow needed help,” Ruby replied, a touch defensively. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I know,” Sunset assured her. “But… all the same, it is a pity.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Jaune licked his lips. “Well… since somebody has to bring up the goliath in the room… could it be magic?”</em>
</p><p><em>Sunset blinked. “I can’t say,” she said, and she wasn’t lying because she really </em>couldn’t<em> say for sure, having no proof or firsthand experiences and nothing but myths to go on. At the same time, she could have said a lot more than she did say; she could have told them about the prophets and about how Auburn’s abilities matched with the fantastical feats that were recorded of those chosen by God or the gods; she could have told them what she had surmised about the way the powers were passed on, based on all the stories taken together. She could have told them a great deal.</em></p><p>
  <em>But she didn’t, because she wanted to get it all straight in her own head first. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>All she said was, “Certainly, you could produce a lot of the effects described using… my kind of magic. But I don’t think that’s what we’re looking at here.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Why not?” Ruby asked. “How do we know that Auburn wasn’t… someone like you?”</em>
</p><p>One of these days, I’ll have to tell you what I really am, and then you’ll get it.<em> “Because, amongst… amongst my people, powers are separated in ways that wouldn’t allow for one person to do all of this.” The wind was a pegasus power, as was the lightning, depending on exactly how it was conjured, while pyromancy was a unicorn technique. The only way one pony could deploy both was if Auburn had been an alicorn, and Sunset highly doubted that; she had never heard of any alicorn named Auburn, nor or any alicorn going missing. There hadn’t been any alicorns bar Celestia in two lifetimes before Cadance’s ascension; Sunset knew that for a fact. She had spent quite a lot of time researching the subject. “But it does sound similar to Twilight’s story of her and her family being saved on the road by a mysterious woman wielding the power of the elements.”</em></p><p>
  <em>“Huh,” Ruby said. “Do you think I should go and talk to Twilight about this then?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I… I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Sunset said, remembering how Twilight had been quite dispirited about the whole business the last time they had spoken about it. “Leave it with me for a little bit, okay? I want to see if I can find a little more to go on.”</em>
</p><p>Perhaps she ought to have told them that she already had more to go on. Perhaps that would have been the right thing to do? But why did they need to know? It wasn’t as if any of them were particularly interested. If it had been Silver Eyes, then it might have been different; that was something that Ruby was interested in and that the others were interested in because it involved Ruby; if Sunset had more knowledge about that, then she would have told them all at once. Sadly, the books that she had found so far made no mention of them. </p><p>Knowledge of their existence had faded far more completely than knowledge of what, for want of a better word, Sunset was calling prophets; it sounded better than Red Queens.</p><p>If there was one thing that might make Sunset doubt her certainty that Professor Ozpin was at the sinister web of intrigue and malevolence, it was the fact that he had failed to make knowledge of prophets disappear to the same extent as the knowledge of Silver Eyes. Surely, a true spider could have done both?</p><p>But there were so many other things to make her suspicious of the man that this one thing hardly counted. </p><p>That was another reason why she had kept all of this to herself: her friends had made it clear that they found her suspicion of the headmaster to be risible, and she wasn’t inclined to have another argument with them about it. She would just go her own way, following where the evidence led, until she reached the point where her proof became so incontrovertible that they had to believe her. </p><p>She felt as though she might be getting closer to that now. </p><p>When Sunset had finished reading through the mythology surrounding the prophets, their replacement by the Red Queens, and those queens’ own fall, she had been left with the question of what had happened to their powers. The wizard and his five familiar-sounding companions had hunted down the tyrants who had, between them, held too much of Remnant under subjugation, and then after that… nothing. Magic had, to all appearances, gone out of the world. The Age of Magic had ended, and in its place, the Age of Heroes had begun, the age – if Sunset had understood the chronology that she was piecing together out of myths and legends and fairy tales – of the <em>Mistraliad</em> and <em>The Song of Olivia</em>, the age of great deeds and mighty warriors, when warring kingdoms rose and fell with dizzying speed, and when Vale established itself as the third great realm of Remnant. It was a world not yet dominated by dust-fuelled technology – that would come later, and the rise of Mantle would come with it – but a world in which kings and warrior princes dominated the battlefield and the political landscape, ruling unchallenged, doing as they wished with those over whom they ruled. Some were good and some were bad and some were ineffectual, but there were no old men to counsel them, no prophets to challenge them, no alternate sources of power and authority whom the people might look to. Magic was gone, and none now wielded it.</p><p>Except that was not so, was it? First, there was Twilight’s account of her mysterious rescuer on the road, and then there was the account of Summer Rose, which was much more substantive, first in that it was not the fragmented memory of a child who had just taken a bump on the head, and second in that it put a name to one of these latter day prophets: Auburn, an old friend of Professor Ozpin. </p><p>The name Merida might also be relevant. </p><p>Sunset had already gone through the online yearbook of past Beacon students; there were a few too many Auburns, but only one Merida: Merida Heathermoor, who had dropped out of Beacon in her third year – a couple of years ahead of Team STRQ, which fit with Summer Rose’s impression of her age – for reasons that went unstated; Sunset was not wholly unwilling to break into the archives to find out what those reasons were, but right now, she wasn’t sure of their relevance. She was willing to hypothesise that Professor Ozpin had not held her quitting against her and had kept an eye on her nonetheless. An eye that was in some way connected to Auburn, one of the prophets. </p><p>Because magic wasn’t gone; someone just wanted everyone to think that it was, to cast it into the realm of fairy tales and legends, to dismiss it as a childish fantasy. </p><p>And the worst part was that Sunset could see why. </p><p>
  <em>Let’s work this forward from the beginning. Four… let’s call them four sets of wings – although we might equally call them four horns, but let’s go with what I wanted to make myself an alicorn, not what Cadance got – to go around at any one time. The means of acquiring these wings, of ascending to power, has nothing on real ascension as far as a means of judging whether or not you deserve it, because… well, because there is no way to judge whether you deserve it. As far as I can tell, there’s no attempt at that even made. The only criteria is that you need to be a young woman when you ascend, although the powers don’t appear to fade with age. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>You get your wings either by being closest to the person who had them last when they die, or you get them completely at random, or you kill the person who had them last. </em>
</p><p><em>And it’s once people figure </em>that<em> out that the system breaks down and the prophets make way for the Red Queens, who acquire their powers through murder. </em></p><p>
  <em>Seeing this, the old man – or the wizard – decides that the only way to get things back under control is to take back the magic through murder, the same way that it fell into the hands of the unworthy.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Although the extent to which any of these people could be said to be worthy is very much up for debate. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Anyway, he assembles a company of heroes, and together they hunt down and kill the Red Queens. At which point, so the stories go, the magic disappears.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Except not. Since four of the five heroes mentioned were female, it’s a pretty good bet that they ended up with the magic after killing the Red Queens. Hurrah. Happy days are here again. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Until they die, of course, or are killed for the powers by more murderous opportunists.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Even the mightiest warrior may be felled by a single arrow, as Lady Nikos reminded me, and the fate of the prophets and the queens alike are proof that having this magic does not make you invulnerable.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>So, what to do?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Apparently, the magic cannot be gotten rid of, however much you might want to; it’s… it’s like energy; it can’t be created or destroyed, there will always be four prophets, four saints, four people empowered beyond the run of common men. That being the case, how do you stop the era of bloodshed from returning the moment the power passes to someone, for want of a better word, unworthy to possess it?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You convince the people who have the power now to lay low, you rules lawyer the succession criteria to ensure that the powers pass only to those you can trust to use them wisely – which is to say, not using them at all – and you hope that everyone forgets that this was ever anything more than a fairytale. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>And the system has endured to this very day.</em>
</p><p>This, by the way, also had the advantage of answering the question that Rainbow Dash had posed at the Skydock when they had discussed the matter: if there were individuals with power, with magic, then where were they? Why didn’t they show themselves and join the fight to protect humanity? Well, if Sunset’s hypothesis was correct – and it seemed to fit the facts, to her mind – the answer was: because they were under strict instruction <em>not</em> to use them and had been selected, in fact, for their ability to resist the temptation. </p><p>Sunset had to admit that she could see the reasoning behind this course, but at the same time, as a unicorn, she could not help but be saddened by it. She knew what it was like to have to hide your magic away, to conceal a fundamental part of yourself, to be ruled by the fear of what would happen to you if your true potential, your true self, were discovered. However irrational it had turned out to be, Sunset had lived with that fear all through Canterlot and, with it, borne the resentment of having to pretend to be so much less than she was, to be so much less than those she knew full well that she was better than. She thanked Celestia that here at Beacon, she could be open about her abilities, that in her teammates, she had found friends who would accept her gift for the wonder it was, with whom she could be honest. She couldn’t imagine having to hide for her entire life the way it seemed these prophets had to. It must have been – must be – unbearable suffering for them. </p><p>Surely, another way could have been found that didn’t involve such complete denial of self? That didn’t involve denying the world of a gift intended to make it better? Sunset had read the stories; yes, the deeds of the Red Queens were cruel and terrible, but it wasn’t as if mankind had suddenly become much kinder and more compassionate in their absence. Men were just as brutal, treacherous, warlike after as they had been at the time, and as they had been before… but the prophets, so it went, had exercised a counter to that: they had been a light of hope and gentleness in an often savage and unforgiving world, and they had done much to bring people together, to spread… harmony amongst peoples and kingdoms. </p><p>In that, they came closest to resembling alicorns in Sunset’s mind, and if they had not proved themselves worthy of the wings before they came to power, Sunset was willing to concede that many of them – those most remembered, at least – had proven by their deeds that they had not been poorly chosen. </p><p>All of that was gone now, and Sunset could not but find it a pity. Society moved forward, technology advanced, but some things – some fundamental parts of the souls of creatures and of the needs they felt – could not be changed. Equestria would be a poorer place if Celestia and Luna – and Twilight, if what Twilight said of herself was true, and, yes, okay, Cadance as well – were to disappear, still moreso if nopony else arose to take their place. </p><p>In just such a state lay the world of Remnant, devoid of anyone to show the way.</p><p>Devoid, at least, of anyone who was willing to do so. </p><p>But it had stopped magic from falling into the hands of evildoers, and Sunset supposed that might be enough for some people. </p><p>Of course, if it had been hidden completely, then Sunset would never have gotten wind of its continued existence in the here and now. Auburn, she could explain, or thought she could; by looking at the ages, she was convinced that the Auburn in question was Auburn Perry, who had had… an unhappy life, to put it mildly. She had been the only member of her team to survive to graduate from Beacon, and she died around the end of Team STRQ’s first year – or the beginning of their second – of stomach cancer. She might have known she was ill when she set out on her mission with Team STRQ. If she did, it would explain everything: Auburn had been chosen by Professor Ozpin to hold one of the four magical powers, but she found out that she was dying, so they arranged to have her meet with Merida Heathermoor, whom Professor Ozpin regarded highly, so that she would be the one to inherit the powers when Auburn passed away. </p><p><em>And then Merida did nothing at all of note with them, </em>Sunset thought. After all, there had been no magical warrior leading the defence of Vale at Ozpin’s Stand, just huntsmen and huntresses and the headmaster himself. </p><p>
  <em>It always comes back to Professor Ozpin, doesn't it?</em>
</p><p>Sunset's ears pricked up, literally in the case of the equine ears atop her head; she could hear footsteps in the hitherto silent library.</p><p>She twisted around in her seat and saw the lights begin to flicker on, triggered by the motion sensors as the owner of the heavy footsteps made their way through the stacks in her direction.</p><p>Sunset pushed back her chair and climbed to her feet – the lights directly above her, which had turned off during her period of nearly stationary thought, stirred to life once again – wondering who else was feeling the need to use the library at this hour and why they felt the need to disturb her.</p><p>It turned out to be Cardin Winchester, dressed in an old T-shirt and a pair of well-worn blue jeans that looked as though they were about to be worn through at the knees. Sunset, who had never seen him dressed in anything quite like that before, could only raise a single curious eyebrow.</p><p>He didn't get too close to her, keeping about six feet of distance – maybe a little more – between the two of them. He looked uncertain, and yet, at the same time, he managed to spit out, "Great, I found you."</p><p>Sunset's other eyebrow rose to join the first. That could mean a great many things, and yet, Sunset was not too concerned; it was only Cardin after all, and she had never found him intimidating. "What do you want, Cardin? Have you come to tell me that you're a disgusting racist, because I figured that out already." She smirked. "You might not know this, but I think most people have figured it out by now."</p><p>Cardin grimaced. "You're having so much fun with this, aren't you?"</p><p>"Am I enjoying your humiliation? Yes," Sunset replied. "You've had this coming for a long time, quite frankly, and I don't see why I should pretend otherwise."</p><p>Cardin was silent for a moment. "It was you, wasn't it? You were hiding somewhere, and you made that recording, and you sent it to that zine."</p><p>"I have no idea what you're talking about," Sunset lied. She wasn't about to admit what she'd done, however low the chances that anyone would judge her for it. "And, quite frankly, I think that the question of who took that recording and who distributed it is a little beside the point. You said those things, you and Bon Bon, and now, you have to live the consequences of that. Forgive me if I'm not overflowing with sympathy."</p><p>Cardin stared at her. "How is it that you have so many people thinking that you're such a good person?" he asked.</p><p>"I <em>am</em> a good person, to them," Sunset declared. "Good to my friends and fierce to my enemies."</p><p>"And what about the people in between?"</p><p>"What about them?" Sunset replied. "What do you want, Cardin? I'm a little busy, and I don't want to spend my night bandying words with you."</p><p>Cardin was silent. He looked down at his feet. As he stood, quiet and averting his gaze, something seemed to snap inside of him; his shoulders buckled as though beneath a great weight, and he slumped forwards a little. "I give up," he said.</p><p>Sunset's eyes narrowed. "You give up?"</p><p>"Yes!" Cardin snapped. "Skystar broke up with me, my father and grandfather's careers are at risk, people are starting to shun my mother, Silverstream and Terramar think I want to murder them, everyone thinks that I'm a monster… I surrender. You win. However you want to say it, I'll even get down on my knees if you want, but… just let me be. I won't do anything to you or Blake or Jaune or anyone else. You've beaten me, just… just please be magnanimous in that."</p><p>Sunset stared at him. He might not have physically dropped to his knees yet, but he had already done so metaphorically. He was, indeed, defeated; helpless and humbled before her as much as the sovereigns of Mantle and Mistral had been when they had descended into the dirt and laid their crowns at the feet of the Last King. A part of her, a very substantial part, felt jubilant at that. A part of her wanted to jump up and down in triumphant joy, punching the air. A part of her exulted in the fact that she had won! She had won!</p><p>Another part of her felt incredibly guilty. Another part of her focussed upon the first words that he had said. "Skystar broke up with you?"</p><p>"She loves her cousins like they were her own brother and sister," Cardin said. "Did you expect that she wouldn't break up with me? Isn't that part of the reason you did this?"</p><p>It had, in fact. Every word that he had said in that regard was true. She had hoped to break up his happy relationship, to show Skystar what kind of a man her beloved Cardy really was. But, now that it had happened… she was filled with a deep sorrow.</p><p>
  <em>"Please, Flash, wait! Please don't leave me. I know that things haven't been perfect, but I can change, I swear! If you tell me what's wrong, then I can fix it! You… you're all I have."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"That's your problem, Sunset, not mine."</em>
</p><p>And he had turned away, leaving her outside in the rain, soaked through with no place to go and no one to turn to. It took a lot of self control not to shudder at the memory and to suppress the spike of anger that ran through her at what Flash had done.</p><p>She had brought that same grim fate on Cardin, and now… now, she regretted it. She regretted it so much that, for a moment, she came very close, within a whisker, of apologising to him, of telling him how sorry she was and promising to make it up to him.</p><p>But she didn't. She didn't quite have the weakness, or the strength. All she said was, "I didn't ruin your life, Cardin; you did this to yourself."</p><p>Cardin scowled, but nodded. "Yeah, I did," he admitted. "And I know that I don't have much left to lose at this point, but… please, I won't give you any trouble, and I… I don't want any more trouble either."</p><p>Sunset's expression was impassive. She had won, and yet, he wasn't making it very easy for her to enjoy her victory. The longer this went on, the more her glee was replaced with squirming guilt and a pervasive feeling of embarrassment. "I… haven't done anything to you," Sunset lied, "but… if I had done, it would stop, if your actions cease. I bear you no malice, Cardin, except that you went after my friends."</p><p>"I already admitted that I brought this on myself; isn't that enough?" Cardin snapped. He took a deep breath. "Did you mean what you said in the Forever Fall that day?"</p><p>Sunset blinked. "You mean-"</p><p>"You said that we could change," Cardin reminded her. "That we could become better than we were. Did you mean it?"</p><p>"Of course I meant it," Sunset murmured. "I still believe it." She didn't like seeing herself reflected in Cardin Winchester at the best of times, still less right now, when he had hit rock bottom and lost everything: his love, the respect of those around him, any good opinions that anyone might have had of him. It cut too close to home, reminded her too much of what it had been like for her at Canterlot, when even Flash had abandoned her to face the derision of the mob. But she had risen and enjoyed a sea-change in her fortunes and a lesser change in her attitudes. Perhaps Cardin could do – and enjoy – the same.</p><p>"Good," Cardin whispered. "I hope you're right." He paused for a second or two. "How… how do you make them like you so much? We're both jackasses, but you… what makes you better than me?"</p><p>Sunset wondered if perhaps he'd like the list alphabetically, but didn't say so because she knew what he meant, and honestly, she didn't have a good answer. What had she done to deserve the love of such excellent and virtuous people as Pyrrha, Ruby, Jaune, or even Blake? It wasn't as though she could blithely say that somewhere in her youth or childhood she must have done something good, because she'd lived through her youth and childhood, and there was nothing approaching goodness in it.</p><p>The question was not what made her better than Cardin but, rather, what made her more worthy to be loved than Cardin.</p><p>To which there was, really, no good answer at all. "I got lucky," Sunset said, because that was really all there was to it. She had gotten lucky that the three kindest people in the year had embraced her as their own, for all her faults.</p><p>"Lucky, right," Cardin muttered. He scratched the back of his head with one hand. "Well, I… I mean, I'll… uh, that is-"</p><p>"Off you go, Cardin," Sunset dismissed him, offering him a way out of a conversation that no longer had any road left in it.</p><p>Cardin looked for a moment as though he wanted to, or felt he ought to, say more, but in the end he did not; he simply turned away and walked away, his steps a little shuffling.</p><p><em>And with luck, I won't need to have anything more to do with him,</em> Sunset thought.</p><p>She stood a moment, torn between her desire to jump up in the air in triumph and her feeling that she had done something wrong.</p><p>
  <em>He deserved it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But that doesn't mean that I should have done it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I've beaten him at last; all my friends are safe.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Let's not pretend that any of this was necessary. Are you going to write to Princess Twilight about this? Or Princess Celestia?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>…No.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Well, that says a great deal, doesn't it?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Shut up, I won. Get over it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If only I could.</em>
</p><p>Sunset frowned and turned away, sitting down back at her desk. She didn't want to think about this any more. Now, where was she?</p><p>Ah, yes, Professor Ozpin.</p><p>That Professor Ozpin was deeply involved in this business was something that Sunset accepted without question. She did not for a moment consider the possibility that he might be a pawn of Auburn herself, facilitating without understanding. Frankly, whatever one thought of him, the headmaster had shown himself to be too canny for that, and that he should have intimate knowledge that he was keeping to himself made perfect sense when one considered that he was keeping what he knew of Silver Eyes confidential in the exact same way.</p><p>No, he knew the truth about these prophets, and he was keeping it from the general public; the question was why. Or rather, the question was whether there was malice in it.</p><p>Sunset was inclined to say that there was, but as she sat here in the library, as the light flickered off against because she was once more still and unmoving, Sunset had to wonder if that was true.</p><p>She could not deny that there were reasons to hide the existence of this magic from the rest of Remnant: look at what had happened when its existence had been widely known. It could be argued to be mere pragmatism, a decision made for the greater good; Professor Ozpin, like a father, knowing what was best for others better than they knew themselves.</p><p>Sunset had no ideological objection to such paternalist thinking; Equestria was built upon just such a maternalist attitude, after all: Princess Celestia sat on high, keeping her secrets, nudging Equestria and all the little ponies who dwelt in it towards their destinies in the name of harmony.</p><p>Sunset hadn't much liked that attitude when it applied to her, but time and distance had brought her to a point where she could admit that Princess Celestia meant no ill by it and only sought to do what was best by her subjects and by those she cared for.</p><p>Could she apply the same generosity to Professor Ozpin?</p><p>She found that harder to do, and not just because these lies and secrets affected her directly once again. Professor Ozpin had inherited knowledge of great light, and regardless of the intentions of those who had passed that knowledge down to him, it had been within this gift to open up the shutters and let the light shine out upon the world, as it had done in days of old. But he had not. He had continued with the old, long-standing policy, which was – to Sunset's mind – like asking Princess Twilight to bind up her wings and go about cloaked so that none might know that she was more than just a unicorn. Why? It was true that there were greater dangers here in Remnant – no one could ascend to become an alicorn themselves by killing another alicorn, and even if anypony could do so, such wicked crimes were just not committed amongst ponies – but there were other solutions to that: set true and valiant guards around them, range armies in their protection, lodge them in the hearts of mighty fortresses if you must, but do not hide them. None of the legends that Sunset had yet come across were clear on where, precisely, the magic had come from, but it had come from somewhere to be used for good. Sunset believed that too. She had to believe that. That was just how it worked: such gifts as were bestowed upon the one were gifted for the good of many; that was just the way of things. So it was in Equestria, at least – and Sunset's original sin had been to forget that – and she knew of no reason why it should not also be the case in Remnant. There were four gifts in the world that might have done much to bless the world, save that men had caused them to be hidden, and Professor Ozpin was the latest in a line of those who aided in that concealment.</p><p>That was malicious, in Sunset's view, especially when you took into consideration how much else he was hiding, like Silver Eyes and who knew what else.</p><p>And by what right?</p><p>Sunset's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of more footsteps approaching; it was not Cardin coming back; these footsteps were lighter, and faster too, a swift beat on the library floor like the rattle of a snare drum.</p><p>It turned out – as Sunset saw as she, once again, twisted around in her chair – to be Weiss Schnee. She was dressed in her silver-white huntress outfit, with a hint of red showing on the interior of her bolero as she advanced rapidly towards Sunset, taking a seat at the table next to her.</p><p>"Please," Sunset said, likewise returning to her seat, "have a seat."</p><p>Weiss did not respond to that remark; she simply said, "Ruby told me that I'd find you here."</p><p>"Ruby was correct," Sunset said softly, waiting for Weiss to get to the point. It was not that she objected to the company of the Schnee heiress in general – although they hadn't really spent much time together since… it must have been that trip into Vale when Blake got found out, unless you counted the battle at the docks. Anyway, the point was not that she didn't like Weiss – she could take her or leave her alone – but that she didn't really want to be disturbed. She had a lot of thinking to do.</p><p>Weiss clasped her hands together upon her lap. "Not many people use the library this late," she said. "Although I can't say that I blame you for wanting somewhere quiet to study, especially with what's going on in your dorm room."</p><p><em>I knew they weren't going to study.</em> "What's going on in my dorm room?"</p><p>"Ruby, Penny, and Rainbow Dash are playing videogames with some girl over the CCT," Weiss explained. "I could hear her voice on the other end of their scrolls. I didn't recognise the game, but it seemed to involve ships shooting at one another."</p><p>"Hmm, that might be Juturna," Sunset murmured. "Juturna Rutulus, that is, some Mistralian socialite; she and Ruby hit it off over the vacation."</p><p>Weiss' eyebrows rose. "<em>Ruby Rose</em> hit it off with a socialite?"</p><p>"She's not entirely what the term suggests, but yes, it is a little surprising," Sunset conceded. "But it happened."</p><p>"I see," Weiss said quietly. Her snowy brow furrowed. "Rutulus… I could swear that I've heard that name before, but I can't quite recall… never mind; I'm sure that it's not important. Anyway, as I was saying, I understand that you might want some peace and quiet in here. Flash and I have been here this late studying some times."</p><p><em>I'll bet you have. </em>"Studying," Sunset said through gritted teeth. "Sure."</p><p>Weiss' blue eyes narrowed. "Despite what you may think, there's nothing going on between us, not that it would be any of your business if there were."</p><p>Sunset ignored that last bit. "What, is he not good enough for you?"</p><p>"I'm sorry, do you <em>want</em> me to date your ex?"</p><p>"No!" Sunset cried. "But I won't have you saying he isn't eminently… dateable. It… would be… a slur on my excellent taste."</p><p>"Hmm," Weiss mused sceptically. "As a matter of fact… I don't disagree with you on that. Flash is, as you put it, eminently dateable. He is the kind of boyfriend that I would look for, if I were looking for a boyfriend." A soft smile played upon her features for a moment, and Sunset was forcibly reminded that Weiss Schnee was really quite astonishingly pretty. Lovely might be a better word for it. Small wonder Jaune had been besotted with her when the year began.</p><p>That all seemed so long ago now.</p><p>The lights went off, dimming due to a lack of motion beneath, but that hardly mattered because Weiss Schnee <em>was</em> light, a shimmering figure like the moon in human form descended amongst the mortals.</p><p>"However," she went on, "for the time being, I have no interest in such things. I'm here to become the best huntress I can, not to find a boyfriend."</p><p>"I see," Sunset said quietly, unsure if she believed Weiss or not.</p><p>Weiss drew in a breath. "Cardin was looking for you," she said.</p><p>"Cardin found me," Sunset replied. "But I can't believe that you were looking for me just to tell me that someone else was looking for me, especially not Cardin."</p><p>"Cardin and I are… starting over," Weiss informed her. "I'm going to be a better leader, and he is going to be a better teammate."</p><p>"That's… nice for you both," Sunset said. "I'm not sure what it has to do with me."</p><p>Weiss was silent a little while. "He thinks that you are the one who released that damaging audio."</p><p>"I do not admit that," Sunset said, leaning back in her chair a little. "But, as I told Cardin himself, if he hadn't said those things, then nobody could have released audio of him saying them."</p><p>"I'm not here to make excuses on Cardin's behalf," Weiss declared. "Whatever his motives, his words were absolutely reprehensible." She paused. "I'm not a bigot because my name is Schnee, and I resent that assumption and the assumption that I must agree with Cardin's professed sentiments because I am his team leader."</p><p>"That… is unfortunate," Sunset said. It had not been her intent to damage Weiss along with Cardin, although with hindsight, she could see how people might make assumptions.</p><p>"There's Flash, too," Weiss reminded her. "After what happened to his father and the way that it was seized upon by… some of the worst elements in Atlas… you can see how it looks."</p><p>Sunset winced. It certainly hadn't been her intent to get Flash involved in this. "That is… even more unfortunate," she said. "But I'm not sure what you expected me to do about it."</p><p>"That's not why I'm here," Weiss said briskly. "I have… spoken to my father. He assures me that SDC public relations will be taking care of such things."</p><p>"How fortunate for you," Sunset murmured. "I still don't see what this has to do with me."</p><p>Weiss stared at her. "I don't know exactly what Cardin wanted to speak to you about," she said, "but don't you think this feud between the two of you has gone on long enough?"</p><p>Sunset couldn't restrain a snort. "A feud, is that what you think this is?"</p><p>"Isn't it?"</p><p>"Can the jackal feud with the lion?" Sunset asked.</p><p>"You aren't a lion," Weiss reminded her. "Any more than Cardin is a jackal. You're both people, with exceedingly big egos. Although Cardin's seems to have deflated at the moment."</p><p>"I can't imagine why," Sunset muttered.</p><p>"Don't you think the time has come when you might deign to be magnanimous?" Weiss asked. "Cardin has been unpleasant, but in return you-"</p><p>"You really ought to have some proof before you accuse me of anything."</p><p>"In return, you have destroyed his life," Weiss continued. "It's gone far enough, don't you think?"</p><p>Sunset nodded. "As a matter of fact, I do," she agreed. "And I believe that Cardin feels the same way. But… none of this would have happened if he had left well enough alone."</p><p>"I'm aware of Cardin's faults, just as I think he is aware of them now and wishes to move beyond them," Weiss said. "But this is getting out of hand, and I want it done. I want what's best for my team-"</p><p>"So do I."</p><p>"And I think that we can get that without being at each other's throats. Don't we have enough enemies outside the school?"</p><p>"Probably," Sunset conceded. "As a matter of fact, Cardin already asked… for a ceasefire." She decided to spare his blushes in front of his team leader. "I believe that he has had enough of what you call our feud."</p><p>"And you?"</p><p>"As you say, I only ever wanted what was best for my team."</p><p>"I'm glad," Weiss said. "Then we are in agreement?"</p><p>Sunset nodded. "I never wanted to be your enemy," she said.</p><p>"Nor I," Weiss agreed. "I hope that circumstances do not force us into opposition." She paused, and for a moment, she seemed about to say something, but then thought better of it. "I'm glad we understand each other," she said, rising to her feet and, in the process, turning on the lights once more.</p><p>Sunset looked up at her. "I almost think we always did," she said.</p><p>Weiss considered that. "Perhaps," she allowed, before beginning to walk away. After but three steps, she stopped and looked back at Sunset. "May I ask you one more thing?"</p><p>"Why not?"</p><p>"How is it that you have taken to leadership so easily?" Weiss asked.</p><p>Sunset thought about it for a moment. What <em>did </em>make her a good leader? <em>Was </em>she a good leader? They had had a successful mission, that was something, but at the same time, there had been very little actual leadership involved. And yet, despite that, Sunset couldn't accept the idea that she was a bad leader; her team worked well together, fought well together; surely, she was entitled to a little credit for that? But to what did she owe it? Natural born talent? Her time studying at the feet of Princess Celestia? Or something… more prosaic?</p><p>"I got lucky," she said, just as she had told Cardin not too long before.</p><p>Weiss stared at her. "Yes," she agreed. "I suppose you did." She turned around and walked away. This time, she did not stop.</p><p>Sunset turned back to the table as soon as she was out of sight. <em>What was I thinking of?</em></p><p>
  <em>Ah, yes, Professor Ozpin. Always Professor Ozpin.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Professor Ozpin and his secrets.</em>
</p><p>By what right did he hoard knowledge like a dragon hoarding gold? By what right did he sit in his high tower, knowing so much and telling so little? Sunset had, with time and a great deal of distance, accommodated herself to the fact that Celestia had kept secrets from Sunset – and even more secrets from Twilight – for their own good and the good of Equestria. But Princess Celestia was an immortal alicorn, one who had ruled the realm wisely and well for more than a thousand years. She had seen the tides of history ebb and flow, she had seen society grow and bloom like a garden all around her, she had seen the ways in which ponies changed and the ways in which they did not. She understood, through long experience, the hearts of ponies of all kinds. What could Professor Ozpin boast of, to set against such wisdom and experience? In his whole life, he had made but a single move, and that the journey from his house to Beacon Academy, where he had remained for practically the rest of his adult life. If he knew anything about the world beyond the cloistered halls of Beacon, it would be a miracle. And yet, this man, a mere mortal and a mortal at that with no qualifications to be in such a lofty position, was the arbiter of all the world’s mysteries, the man with all the answers which he refused to supply. </p><p>By what right? It was intolerable… and intolerably sinister, what was more. It was impossible for Sunset to see anything good or noble in the actions of Professor Ozpin and his predecessors. The others thought that she was paranoid because she didn’t trust his silence over Silver Eyes; well, perhaps it could be argued that he kept silent because Ruby did. Maybe if she went up to the top of the tower and asked him the questions, then he would supply all the answers. Maybe, but Sunset doubted it. Because Silver Eyes were not the only secrets he was keeping; he was hiding much more than that, and much more important than that. Silver Eyes were a potent weapon, but magic… he was hiding hope as well, and that was harder to excuse, at least to Sunset’s mind. How could people better themselves without symbols to inspire them? Where were they supposed to look for exemplars of…</p><p>Sunset stopped. Her eyes widened. No. No, she didn’t want to believe that but… but now that the thought had occurred to her, she couldn’t dismiss it. It was all too, much too plausible. </p><p>A system in which magic was bestowed upon the worthy, not by ethereal, numinous recognition of their worth but by appreciation of it by Professor Ozpin, who gamed the system so that his choices ascended in accordance with his will; it stood to reason, therefore, that you could predict his choices by looking at those in whom he took a special interest: like Team STRQ, like Merida, like Auburn. </p><p>
  <em>And Raven said that it would start with missions.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He’s going to grant these powers to Ruby, isn’t he?</em>
</p><p>And Sunset didn’t know how to feel about that. Well, no, that was not quite true; she felt a degree of jealousy at the idea that Ruby would be selected to ascend, but if she made the effort to look past her selfishness and think about it from the perspective of someone who wasn’t obsessed with her own aggrandisement, she could admit that Ruby would be a very good choice. A near-perfect choice, in fact, to encourage and inspire people. </p><p>But she wouldn’t get the chance, would she? Professor Ozpin would make her his prophet, and then he would lock her away or shove her into the shadows or whatever it was he did to keep them and their powers hidden, and Ruby… Ruby would be broken by it. Not immediately, but unable to help people, unable to pursue her dream of becoming a huntress, unable to be risked for fear that her powers would escape the grasp of Professor Ozpin, she would wither away like a rose starved of sunlight, her petals wilting until there was nothing left of them. </p><p>She couldn’t let that happen. </p><p>But how could she stop it?</p><p>“You.”</p><p>Sunset sighed and put her head in her hands for a moment. <em>It’s like Canterlot Central Station in here.</em></p><p>She ran her hands through her hair and looked up into the face of Phoebe Kommenos, dressed in the uniform of an Atlas student, looming over her and looking down. Her look was cold, and her eyes were as sharp as talons. </p><p>Sunset pushed her chair back a few inches. <em>I didn’t even hear her coming. </em>It was... worrying, to say the least, that she could be snuck up on by someone like this. She did not like this girl. She wasn’t scared of her, but… there was something about her that Sunset didn’t like. Maybe it was just the fact that she had been able to so completely intimidate Cinder, but… Sunset didn’t like the fact that Phoebe had been able to get the drop on her. </p><p>
  <em>I would rather Cardin be able to sneak up on me than her.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Hopefully, it was just the fact that I was lost in thought and not that she’s actually that stealthy. </em>
</p><p>Sunset hoped that she succeeded in keeping her surprise hidden behind a mask of calm. “Can I help you?” she asked softly.</p><p>An ugly smile crossed Phoebe’s face as she sat down upon the edge of Sunset’s desk. “You, help me?” She let out that grating, high-pitched laugh she had. “What an absurd idea. As if I need any help from a faunus, or from Pyrrha’s team leader!” She laughed again. “I give you fair warning that I intend to make sure that our paths cross in the Vytal Festival, and when they do, then I will trample Pyrrha Nikos beneath my feet and triumph over her. You may depend upon it.”</p><p>“It would be the first time, if so,” Sunset murmured.</p><p>Phoebe’s face flushed with anger. “Insolent-” She cut herself off and took a deep breath, visibly seeking to calm herself. “It’s true that Pyrrha has been very fortunate in all our previous encounters. But then, she’s a very lucky girl, isn’t she?”</p><p>“Pyrrha is very skilled.”</p><p>“Does her ghastly mother tell you to say that as a condition of her financial support?” Phoebe asked. She chuckled. “Yes, I know all about your little arrangement with the House of Nikos. Everyone knows that Lady Nikos has taken an interest in a little stray horse. I understand it makes for quite the amusing little anecdote at parties: the poor faunus, so desperate for acceptance that she mistakes a business transaction for acceptance.”</p><p><em>I’m a pony, not a horse. </em>Sunset pushed her chair back a little more and got to her feet. “Forgive me, my lady,” she said, reaching for her courtly manners in order to show this woman that she was not an inferior just because she had ears and a tail, “but I am greatly preoccupied at present and have little time for the bandying of superfluous verbiage with you. If you will excuse me.”</p><p>Phoebe gave no sign of moving. “From what I understand, you are an ambitious sort. From what is said of you-”</p><p>“And what has my lady heard said of me, and from whom?” Sunset asked. “I did not see you in Mistral when I was there.”</p><p>“No,” Phoebe acknowledged. “I didn’t go home for the vacation. I prefer Atlas in the springtime: that crisp northern air. But I have friends amongst the other good families of our fairy city of Mistral: the Rutulus family, for one. From them, I heard that you had been… sponsored. What’s it like being the teammate of the great Pyrrha Nikos?”</p><p>“It is a privilege to be the team <em>leader</em> of the illustrious Pyrrha Nikos, the pride and glory of Mistral reborn,” Sunset declared. “She is well worthy of her reputation; in fact, she surpasses it.”</p><p>“More flattery,” Phoebe muttered. “One might almost think you were worried someone might hear you.”</p><p>“I am not beyond flattery, my lady, but when it comes to our princess of the battlefield, my tongue speaks only truth, albeit truth spoken in a fair and gentle fashion, fitting for a fair and gentle subject of my speech,” Sunset said. “Have you yourself not had opportunity often enough to taste of her skill upon the battlefield?”</p><p>Phoebe’s eyes were unblinking. Her gaze moved nowhere away from Sunset’s face. “I’m told that you are an ambitious girl, and yet I find before me a simpering toady. Is that what it does to you, to be too close to the Invincible Girl? Does it fill you with resentment, the way that she bestrides the world of our professions like a colossus, blotting out the sun to cast us all in shadow? Doesn’t it irk you that all the glories of this world, all the deeds your team has accomplished in the field, accrue to her, and you are forgotten?”</p><p>As a matter of fact, it did, at least as far as the bit about accomplishments went; Sunset would have had to be a far humbler person than she was not to be a little annoyed at the way that she – and the rest of the team, but herself especially – were pushed to one side so that Pyrrha could hog the limelight. Yes, she understood that Pyrrha didn’t <em>mean</em> to have that effect; it was an unfortunate side effect of being on the team with the Princess Without a Crown, and the many positives of being Pyrrha’s team leader, of being her friend, more than made up for it. </p><p>And yet, it still made her feel a twitch of irritation every now and then. </p><p>Not that she was going to admit <em>that</em> to the little stirrer sitting in front of her. “As I said, my lady, I have little time for idle chit-chat.”</p><p>“Then I suppose I’d better get to the point then, hadn’t I?” Phoebe replied. “There’s nothing that you can do for me, but I do want something from you: your sword, Soteria.”</p><p>Sunset blinked. “My lady jests.”</p><p>“Not on this occasion,” Phoebe said. “Do you know what that sword is?”</p><p>“I am aware of its heritage, my lady,” Sunset replied. “One might find it strange that Lady Nikos chose to bestow so venerable and esteemed a weapon upon a business transaction.”</p><p>Phoebe’s face was expressionless for a moment. “Well,” she said, her voice sounding a little less sure of herself now. “I may have underestimated your… in any case, she had no right to place that weapon in your hands.”</p><p>“Is it not Lady Nikos’ own property, to do with as she will?”</p><p>“That sword belonged to Achates <em>Kommenos</em>, bodyguard to the Emperor,” Phoebe declared. “It is true that he was sworn into the Emperor’s service, and it is true that that blade was bestowed upon him by the Emperor himself, and for those reasons, the House of Nikos kept the blade as a treasure of their own house when the war was done. But I am Achates’ descendant through his brother, Ilioneus; that blade is mine by rights. And yet, such is my generosity that I am prepared to buy it from you. Name your price.”</p><p>Sunset laughed. “Would my lady have me put a price upon my honour? Upon my reputation? This sword was gifted to me, by the Lady of the House of Victory, that I might wield it in battle beside the heiress to that ancient name. What kind of ingrate would I be to sell this mark of Lady Nikos’ esteem for mere lien? Think not, my lady, that simply because I am a faunus, or that because I am not Mistral-born, that I am some base creature, slave to ignoble sentiments; indeed, I will show you that a faunus from beyond the kingdoms may have as much gentleness about them as any noble in Mistral. Soteria is not for sale.”</p><p>Phoebe growled. “Soteria is-”</p><p>“If it were truly yours, it would be in your hand,” Sunset observed.</p><p>Phoebe leapt off the table on which she had been sitting. “Perhaps the Nikos family had the right to keep this blade for themselves,” she said, “but they certainly had no right to bestow it at will, and certainly not to a beast like you. That sword is mine, and I will have it.”</p><p>“I doubt that, my lady,” Sunset declared, for what could she do? Steal it? Perhaps, but Sunset would know exactly where it had gone, and she would have to leave Vale in order to escape; Sunset wasn’t sure exactly what being known as a thief – and a thief from the Nikos family at that – would do for her reputation back home in Mistral, but she trusted it would be nothing good. She could not get the blade unless Sunset relinquished it, and that she would not do. </p><p>Phoebe’s lips curled into a sneer. “We shall see,” she said, and thankfully, at this point, she decided to go, leaving Sunset alone once more. Except not completely, because she stopped and glanced back at Sunset over her shoulder. “You speak gently, it’s true, but you are not of the Nikos family. You are a hireling, nothing more, and little better than a slave. Think on that and upon the fate of my illustrious ancestor.” She snorted and disappeared into the darkness; the lights did not turn on for her, as though they could not sense her passing. </p><p>Sunset stared at her, brow furrowed. Lies. Lies and petty, empty words designed to wound her, the last shriek in retreat of someone who had failed to get their way. </p><p>And yet how many other Mistralians saw it so? They knew her not, they did not understand the terms of her arrangement with Lady Nikos… and yet, they judged her nonetheless. </p><p>It stuck in her craw. </p><p>Sunset shook her head. There were more important things to think of right now, by far: Professor Ozpin and his secrets and what plans he might have for Ruby.</p><p>
  <em>Let’s be fair here; I don’t know for sure that he has any plans for Ruby. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He gave us a mission, sure, but he also gave a mission to Team YRDN, as was. Perhaps he means to ascend Yang or Nora. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>That would be a mistake; Ruby’s worth ten of either of them… in every way other than fighting men, I suppose. Anyway, it would still be a mistake. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>But that doesn’t mean that he won’t or isn’t making it.</em>
</p><p>If that was his plan, then Sunset was not so concerned; Ruby would probably find that a terrible thing to say, writing off her sister like that, but Yang… Yang didn’t seem driven to help others in the same way Ruby was; she might not find cloistered anonymity so wearing upon her spirit. The same could be said of Nora, with an added dash of Sunset not really caring a whit one way or another about Nora Valkyrie. She was genial company at lunch and dinner, to be sure, but Sunset felt no especial connection with her and no desire to protect her from the malice of their headmaster. </p><p>And yet, the fact that Professor Ozpin might be seriously considering her for ascension only served to reinforce Sunset’s view that this whole system was fundamentally broken. How could Nora deserve to ascend, or Yang for that matter? What had they done to prove themselves worthy of it?</p><p>
  <em>I didn’t ask myself any of these questions before I demanded my ascension.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Shut up, me.</em>
</p><p>Sunset sighed and once more ran one hand through her hair. This was getting nowhere; she needed to get it out of her head, she needed… she needed to talk to Twilight about this, see what the magic obsessive thought about it all. </p><p>She needed to get some sleep. </p><p>Sunset gathered up her things and left the library, crossing the courtyard towards the dorms. She stopped for a moment, looking up at the tall tower that loomed above the rest of the school and the emerald lights that glimmered in the darkness. </p><p>
  <em>What are you planning, old man?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>What fate do you have in store for us?</em>
</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0054"><h2>54. Secrets and Lies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Jaune confronts Sunset; Sunset has breakfast with Twilight</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Secrets and Lies</p><p> </p><p>Sunset tied the red ribbon tied around her neck, putting the finishing touch onto her uniform. “Oh, just so you guys know, I’m not coming to breakfast with the three of you.”</p><p>Ruby frowned. “Why not?”</p><p>“I’m taking Twilight to breakfast at Benni Havens’,” Sunset replied.</p><p>Silence fell upon the other three members of the team. “By yourself?” Jaune asked.</p><p>Sunset blinked. “Yeah, why?”</p><p>“You’re buying breakfast, and you didn’t invite us?” Ruby demanded.</p><p>Sunset smirked. “You haven’t done anything to earn it lately,” she said. “Why, is there a problem?”</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha said. “There’s no problem, it’s just… a little unusual. Is there a special occasion?”</p><p>“No, I just need to talk to Twilight about a couple of things.”</p><p>“Magical things?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“Things that will be of interest to Twilight, but not the three of you,” Sunset replied. “Anyway, that’s that, so have fun, and I’ll see you guys… later. Before class, hopefully.” She paused. “Hey, Pyrrha.”</p><p>“Yes?” Pyrrha asked.</p><p>“Soteria,” Sunset said. “The sword that your mother gave me, its previous owner was Achates, yes?”</p><p>Pyrrha nodded. “That’s correct.”</p><p>“His surname wouldn’t have happened to be Kommenos, would it?”</p><p>Pyrrha’s brow furrowed. “Has Phoebe said something?”</p><p>“She came to see me last night in the library, blustering about her right to the sword,” Sunset explained. “I think she was fairly upset that it was your family’s to give in the first place, and even more upset that it was given to me, a faunus.” She paused. “Is there any truth to it? Was it an ancestor of hers who wielded the sword for the Emperor?”</p><p>Pyrrha bowed her head. “It… is complicated.”</p><p>“'Complicated' as in 'tangled' or 'complicated' as in 'awkward to talk about'?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Pyrrha pursed her lips together. “I… fear the latter. It is… not the finest hour of Mistral or my family.”</p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose. “You mean she really is entitled to the sword?”</p><p>“That depends upon your point of view,” Pyrrha declared, looking up at Sunset. “Ilioneus Kommenos, Phoebe’s ancestor, was a-” She cut herself off and looked guiltily at Jaune and Ruby. “While Achates was a trusted and honoured retainer of the Emperor, Ilioneus Kommenos fought for Vale during the Great War.”</p><p>“There were Mistralians who fought for Vale during the Great War?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“And Mantleites, too,” Sunset informed her. “They disagreed with their kingdom’s policies on the suppression of culture and fled into exile in Vale. Vale’s harbouring of such exiles was one of the causes of tension leading up to the Great War.”</p><p>“Ooh, look at me,” Ruby said. “I’m Sunset; I can recite from out of a textbook at the drop of a hat.”</p><p>Sunset snorted. “Sorry.”</p><p>“But Mistral wasn’t suppressing culture, right?” Jaune said. “I mean, they only pretended to, didn’t they?”</p><p>“Yes,” Pyrrha agreed. “But Mistral in the old days… we of Mistral choose to remember the glory of our history: proud lords and just, warriors noble and brave, a grand old kingdom, proud of the heritage in which it is steeped. And all of that is true and may be true again… but there is another side to Mistral, one in which it is ill indeed to be caught on the wrong side of the shifting currents of power and influence. Ilioneus Kommenos fled to Vale to escape the waning of his fortunes in Mistral and was rewarded with a place of honour in the Last King’s court. When the war was over, the King’s favour was enough to see Ilioneus restored to his lands in Mistral… but he was regarded as a traitor by many, including my ancestors. It was not thought proper that the sword of a hero should be placed in a traitor’s hands. Achates, after all, had fought for the Emperor and given his life in the cause against which his brother had fought. My ancestors felt it would be improper to give his weapon over to one who had fought against that cause and our kingdom.”</p><p>“I see,” Sunset muttered. “I… I can see why your forebears took that view. It wasn’t a family sword, was it?”</p><p>“No, it was given to Achates out of the Imperial armoury by the Emperor,” Pyrrha said. “That was the legal basis of our claim.”</p><p>“Was it ever tested?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“No, none of the Kommenos family even raised the issue until Phoebe’s mother,” Pyrrha explained. “The Kommenos family is… somewhat reduced in status, and my mother always believed that Lady Kommenos wished for the sword to raise the family’s prestige. Certainly, it would have been a great fillip for Phoebe to bear it in the arena. Can you imagine it: a would-be Champion of Mistral, bearing the sword which her ancestor had used to champion Mistral on the battlefield? It would have been quite the stirring spectacle.”</p><p>“Until she lost,” Sunset said.</p><p>“She might not have,” Pyrrha replied. “The sword might have inspired her.”</p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose. “Pyrrha, I am willing to go along with a certain degree of romanticism – I am a romantic myself, after all – but let’s not go crazy here. It’s a sword. A venerable blade, and one which I am honoured to bear as a sign of your family’s trust in me, but it’s still just a sword. I couldn’t beat you with it, and I’m pretty sure that preening wannabe couldn’t either.”</p><p>“Sunset’s got a point,” Jaune said. “I mean, if we were all as good as our weapons, then I’d be a better huntsman than you, and… well, you know.”</p><p>“Perhaps I <em>am</em> exaggerating a little,” Pyrrha admitted. “In any case, my mother was not above wagering Soteria upon the outcome of matches between Phoebe and myself.”</p><p>“I think your mother was less ‘willing to give the sword away’ and more having some fun at the expense of Phoebe and <em>her</em> mother,” Sunset suggested. “But at least she had faith in you.”</p><p>“I suppose, in the arena at least,” Pyrrha murmured. “In any case, you know the truth now, so… I suppose it’s up to you whether you feel as though Phoebe deserves the sword.”</p><p>“Of course I don’t think Phoebe Kommenos deserves the sword!” Sunset exclaimed. “It’s mine! Given unto me as a mark of my distinction.” Made all the more precious because she had been given very few marks of distinction in her life. “I know… I know that it doesn’t exactly make you feel great to see your mother favour me so, but I have been given very few marks of favour in my career, and so… to be recognised for my quality… it means a lot to me.” </p><p>Since combat school, she had always shunted aside in favour of others, and frequently others who were – in Sunset’s wholly objective opinion – less than her. She had been overshadowed and outshone, first by the Ace of Canterlot and then by the Invincible Girl. Her magic made up for her deficiencies in other respects, and yet, it seemed she lacked a certain glamour about her that drew men to her and won their hearts. They did not see her worth, nor recognise the talent she possessed. But with Lady Nikos, it was different; here was a lady of high birth and noble blood, wealthy and well-respected, blessed with such a daughter as might never again be seen in Mistral. And yet, Pyrrha’s light had not prevented Lady Nikos from perceiving Sunset in a way few others did and honouring her with symbols of her respect. If Sunset gave Soteria away, she would throw away that symbol of respect as though it meant little to her, instead of meaning so, so much. As much to the point, she would insult Lady Nikos by doing so, and that, she was not willing to do. </p><p>“I will not give it up just because its previous owner has living relatives. I will not give it up out of obligation and certainly not for lien.”</p><p>“My mother will be pleased to hear it,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>“You could always tell her so,” Sunset suggested.</p><p>Pyrrha sighed. “Sunset-”</p><p>“Okay, I’m sorry, forget I said that,” Sunset said quickly, holding up one hand.</p><p>“I’m afraid… that may not be the last time you hear of this,” Pyrrha warned. “Phoebe can be… persistent, if nothing else, and Arslan tells me that there are some amongst the Haven students who are not happy that Soteria was bestowed on you.”</p><p>“Phoebe told me that people think I’m your family’s hireling,” Sunset remarked.</p><p>“Is that bad?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“Only for my self-respect,” Sunset replied.</p><p>Pyrrha cringed a little. “I’m sure that mother would never have phrased your arrangement in that way.”</p><p>“I know,” Sunset said. “But it doesn’t surprise me that people think that way. I suppose I’m not the sort of person who ought to attract the favour of the House of Nikos, am I?”</p><p>Pyrrha didn’t seem to know how to respond to that. Her cheeks reddened a little, and she glanced away from Sunset.</p><p>“Sorry,” Sunset repeated. “I didn’t mean to… I just… anyway, thanks for explaining to me; it doesn’t change my mind, but at least I understand. So… I should probably go; I’ll see you guys later.” She turned away from her teammates and took the first step towards the door. </p><p>“Sunset, wait a second!” Jaune called out and by his voice arrested Sunset’s progress. “I was actually hoping we could talk… alone.”</p><p>Sunset blinked. “'Alone'?”</p><p>“'Alone'?” Ruby repeated. “What’s going on, Jaune?”</p><p>“Nothing,” Jaune said hastily, and not particularly convincingly in Sunset’s opinion, what with the way that his voice rose up an octave. “I just need a quick word. I’ll catch up with you guys at the cafeteria.”</p><p>“I’m sure we’ll be fine to leave the two of them in peace,” Pyrrha said, her voice sounding calmer once more, and more composed as she sidled past Sunset and reached the door. “I’ll save you a seat, Jaune, but don’t be too long.”</p><p>Jaune chuckled. “I won’t.”</p><p>Pyrrha nodded. “Are you coming, Ruby?”</p><p>“Uh, sure,” Ruby said, leaping over her bed. “Later, Sunset!”</p><p>“Later, Ruby, Pyrrha,” Sunset said as they both took their leave and the door closed behind them. Sunset walked back her steps towards her own bed and leaned against the wall with one outstretched arm. She focussed her attention upon the awkward-looking Jaune. “So,” she said. “What’s going on, Jaune?”</p><p>Jaune dry-washed his hands. “Well… you see… there’s something that I need to ask you, and… well, I don’t really know… ugh, how do I say this? Did you leak that audio about Cardin and Bon Bon? Were you Anon-a-Miss?”</p><p>Sunset stared at him for a moment. He asked her that? He had the gall to ask her that? Yes, he was right on both counts, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t a little upset about it. “I’m a little hurt, Jaune,” she said. “I thought we were friends.”</p><p>“We are friends,” Jaune protested.</p><p>“After all I’ve done for you-”</p><p>“It’s <em>because </em>of what you did for me that I know you could have done this,” Jaune informed her. “In fact… you’re the only person I can think of who might have done this.”</p><p>Sunset did not reply. She felt her appetite start to ebb away as her stomach chilled noticeably. So, he suspected her. He thought her capable of such things. He could not think of anyone else who might be so capable as she was. </p><p>And here, Sunset had thought that she’d been changing for the better, that she had a fresh start here, that these new friends didn’t realise what she was capable of. </p><p>Apparently, that was very naïve of her. </p><p>“You can’t possibly be able to prove that.”</p><p>Jaune’s brow crinkled a little. “No,” he admitted. “I can’t. But my sister Aoko is pretty savvy with technology, and she probably doesn’t hate me for coming to Beacon, so I bet if I ask her to look into this-”</p><p>“What do you want, Jaune?” Sunset demanded, as she flopped down onto her bed. With one hand, she reached out and grabbed her stuffed unicorn, feeling the soft felt fur beneath her fingers, squeezing the toy for comfort. “Is it lien? I don’t have very much of that. Do you want your essays done for you? Do you want yours and Pyrrha’s essays done for you so that you two have more time to-”</p><p>“Sunset,” Jaune cut her off. “What are you talking about?”</p><p>Sunset’s eyes narrowed. “I assumed you were about to blackmail me.”</p><p>“'Blackmail?' Come on, Sunset!” Jaune cried. “This is me you’re talking to! Jaune Arc, remember? Goofy guy with a heart of gold?”</p><p>“Did you just describe yourself as possessing a heart of gold?”</p><p>Jaune shrugged. “It’s pretty shiny, don’t you think?”</p><p>“I…” Sunset shook her head. “Well, if you didn’t want to blackmail me, then why did you clear the room? If you wanted to call me out, then why didn’t you do it in front of Ruby and Pyrrha?”</p><p>“Because I know that it matters to you what Ruby and Pyrrha think, just like I know that they wouldn’t understand; they’d think you did something wrong,” Jaune said. “And you know that too, don’t you? That’s why you don’t want them to find out.”</p><p>Sunset stared up at Jaune. When he had asked her if she was the one responsible, she had felt as though the floor had disappeared to reveal only an ocean beneath; now, Jaune was throwing her a lifeline. “I know that they wouldn’t understand,” she muttered. “They would see only a despicable act.”</p><p>“Well, it was pretty rough, what you did to Lyra,” Jaune said.</p><p>“And Cardin and Bon Bon?” Sunset asked. “Was it pretty rough what I did to them?”</p><p>Jaune hesitated. “I… I don’t think it’s my place to say whether a faunus ought to get upset about stuff like that.”</p><p>“But you think it’s your place to say whether a faunus should get upset about having the White Fang symbol painted on her door?”</p><p>“I think that it’s my place to say that you shouldn’t go around hurting people who have nothing to do with the thing that you’re upset about,” Jaune said. “Why Lyra? Why not Bon Bon?”</p><p>“I couldn’t get into Bon Bon’s scroll,” Sunset explained. “It was too heavily protected.”</p><p>“That’s weird.”</p><p>“Some people are security conscious, I suppose,” Sunset murmured. “Why… why did you think it was me?”</p><p>Jaune folded his arm. “Something happened to Blake and then something bad happens to the people harassing her? It reminded me of what you did when Cardin did something to me.”</p><p>“Right,” Sunset whispered. She looked down at the floor. “Are you mad?”</p><p>“I’m… disappointed,” Jaune replied. “I thought you were better than that. I thought you’d gotten better than that.”</p><p>“I <em>have </em>gotten better,” Sunset protested. “I’m not a bad person; I’m a good person who… occasionally does bad things. Which does not include what I did to Cardin, by the way; he had it coming.</p><p>“Doesn’t it?” Jaune asked. “Are you sure that it doesn’t?”</p><p>Sunset hesitated. “No,” she admitted. “His girlfriend broke up with him.”</p><p>“I can’t say I’m surprised.”</p><p>“Neither can I, but… I felt sorry for him when I found out.” Sunset sighed. “I… you know, he came to see me last night to surrender. He waved the white flag and begged me not to do anything else to him. Promised that he wouldn’t trespass against us.”</p><p>Jaune stared down at her. “And did that make you feel better?”</p><p>“No,” Sunset confessed. “Not the way that I thought it would.”</p><p>Jaune was silent a moment. “Why?”</p><p>“Because they hurt Blake.”</p><p>“I’m sure Blake’s dealt with much worse than school bullies with loud mouths in her time.”</p><p>“That doesn’t mean that she should have to!” Sunset exclaimed. “What happened to it not being your place to decide what faunus should be mad about?”</p><p>“What happened to you being a better person?” Jaune asked. “What happened to you being past that kind of thing?” He frowned. “Is this going to be a thing now? Is this what you’re going to do every time somebody says the wrong thing to Blake, or to one of us?”</p><p>“You say that like it’s a bad thing for me to care about you all,” Sunset snapped. “You make it sound like it’s a bad thing that you guys matter to me. You make it sound like it’s a bad thing for me to want to take revenge against any wrongs done to you.”</p><p>“It kind of is,” Jaune cried. “Don’t get me wrong; it’s great that you care, but… well… the way that you show it is… is this going to be a thing?”</p><p>“Come on, Jaune, I’m a lot of things, but a bully isn’t one of them,” Sunset said. “When have you ever known me to make the first move?”</p><p>“You didn’t make the first move this time, but that doesn’t make it any less…” Jaune trailed off.</p><p>“Less what?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“Less wrong?” Jaune suggested. “Okay, with Cardin and Bon Bon, it was complicated, but with Lyra? Are you going to go after Weiss because she’s associated with Cardin?”</p><p>“Weiss and I are good now, and Cardin has given up.”</p><p>“Until he annoys you again?” Jaune demanded. “Did Cinder have anything to do with this?”</p><p>Sunset got up off the bed. “What does Cinder have to do with this?”</p><p>“You tell me,” Jaune said. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with her and… well, don’t you think she’s kind of creepy?”</p><p>“'Creepy'?” Sunset repeated flatly.</p><p>“She can be creepy to me,” Jaune said. “The point is… I don’t think that you would have done this before you met her.”</p><p>“I make my own decisions, Jaune,” Sunset declared. “No one is manipulating me or forcing me to do anything.”</p><p>“Are you going to make your own decision to stop doing stuff like this?” Jaune asked. “Sunset… you’re a good friend, to all of us. And you’re right, it’s not a bad thing that we can always count on you to help us out when we’re in trouble. No matter what, we know you’ve got our backs, and that is… that’s great. But you don’t need to do this stuff, and I think you know that.”</p><p>Sunset huffed and pouted her lips. She <em>did</em> know that, that was the worst part. Blake had told her so already, and Blake… Blake was right. </p><p>And she knew that she had done… well, she might not say that she had done wrong over Cardin, but she hadn’t needed Blake to give her a lecture in order for her to feel guilty about it. Breaking up a relationship, that… that was just a wicked thing to do. </p><p>It was her decision and no one else’s, and it had been a cruel decision. </p><p>They had both been cruel decisions. Cruel decisions which had belonged to an older Sunset, one which she had thought to leave behind. </p><p>She closed her eyes. “I… I am very fortunate,” she said. “If you were not such a kind man, then you could have ruined me.”</p><p>“I’m not that guy,” Jaune told her.</p><p>“No,” Sunset agreed. “You’re a better man than that, and than me.” She smiled wanly up at him. “It won’t happen again. You call me out rightly for it, I… I’m not sure what I was thinking.”</p><p>“<em>Was </em>it you thinking?”</p><p>“Yes!” Sunset said firmly. “Cinder had nothing to do with this.” Okay, Cinder had helped her out with the technical side, but it had been Sunset’s idea, and that was what mattered. “This was me. It was all me.” She paused. “Thank you, Jaune.”</p><p>“For what?”</p><p>“For reminding me of who I’m trying to be,” Sunset told him. “And now…” She didn’t really know what to say about now. She wouldn’t do it again? Only her actions could demonstrate that. He had done her a service, but the fact was, right now, being in the same room as Jaune felt suddenly very awkward, embarrassing, almost shameful. </p><p>She wanted to get out; she just wasn’t sure how to extricate herself from the situation. </p><p>“You should probably go,” Jaune told her. “Don’t want to stand up Twilight, do you?”</p><p>Sunset chuckled nervously. “Right,” she said, and made her exit as swiftly as she reasonably could. It was only with great restraint that she didn’t teleport out of there.</p><p>She left the dorm rooms and trudged across the grounds of the school towards Benni Haven’s, passing students from all four academies headed the other way in the direction of the dining hall. There was no sign of Twilight Sparkle, and Sunset quickened her pace against the possibility that Twilight – not burdened with needing to discuss things with Pyrrha and Jaune – had gone on before her and would be waiting when she arrived. </p><p>She thrust her hands into her pockets. Jaune had been right to call her out. It was good that she had someone like that on her team, someone who wasn’t… someone who didn’t… Pyrrha and Ruby were too nice, was what Sunset was trying to get across inside her head. Which wasn’t to say that Jaune wasn’t nice as well; it was just… a different kind of nice, a less trusting kind. Yes, trust. That was the issue. It wasn’t that Jaune was less forgiving than Ruby or Pyrrha – in fact, Sunset thought it likely that Ruby would be the least forgiving of anyone who fell short of her high standards of good conduct – but that he had, strangely for a boy who had lived his entire life in a backwater village, seen a little more of the world than the tournament champion or the huntsman’s child. He was a little more willing to suspect jackassery; possibly because he’d been on the receiving end of it more often than either of the girls had. </p><p>They needed someone like that on the team. Sunset needed someone like that, someone who would call her out as he just had, but at the same time kind enough to do it in private and give her the chance to mend her ways without exposing her in front of the rest of their friends. </p><p>It occurred to Sunset that she had squandered just such a chance from Rainbow Dash, whom she hadn’t spoken to since she had exposed Cardin and Bon Bon. She had no idea what the Atlesian huntress thought about that or what she meant to do about it. She hadn’t done anything yet, but that was no guarantee she wouldn’t. Perhaps Twilight would be able to shed some light on that front.</p><p>Either way, Sunset probably owed her an apology. </p><p>She would not, however, apologise to Bon Bon; she could accept that she’d been wrong without abasing herself before someone who had, quite frankly, had it coming. </p><p>And besides, to actually apologise to her victim would involve admitting guilt, and that could lead to all kinds of problems. </p><p>No, she would, as the saying went, keep moving forward, improving her future without stopping to make amends for her past. </p><p>As she walked down the gravel path towards the restaurant, Sunset wondered why it was that Jaune blamed Cinder for Sunset’s behaviour. Yes, they had talked about what Sunset meant to do, and Cinder had even given her a hand with some of the technological aspects of it, but she hadn’t pushed Sunset into any decisions. She had been a sympathetic ear but a largely compliant one, making the right noises but not putting any thoughts into Sunset’s head. </p><p>Sunset made her own decisions, and she wasn’t going to cut Cinder out of her life because she’d made some mistakes. </p><p>She was certain that, if she were to ask Princess Twilight about it, she would be told that blaming your friends for your own problems was a great big friendship no-no.</p><p>
  <em>See how well I’m learning, Princess? I don’t even need to ask you to hear your opinion.</em>
</p><p>Sunset pushed open the door to Benni Haven’s and was confronted by the familiar sight of Fluffy the Beowolf; he wasn’t a real beowolf, of course, any more than the ursa’s head on the other wall above the fireplace belonged to a real ursa, but it looked real enough, and it gave the place a little bit of that hunting lodge character. </p><p>Besides, the team photos steadily engulfing the wall wouldn’t have been the same without him; he elevated something that could have felt officious or perfunctory and made them fun. </p><p>Every team that came to Benni Haven’s was invited to have their photo taken with the mock grimm, one copy going to the team themselves and the other being kept by the eponymous owner of the restaurant to hang on the wall as part of her constantly expanding collection. As Sunset waited – the restaurant was deathly quiet, and empty too; Sunset was the first and only person in here – she walked past Fluffy and looked at all the photos on the wall. The largest picture by far was, notably, the only one in which Fluffy did not feature: it was a photograph of Benni’s own team, from her Beacon days before she retired to become a restaurateur. Sunset didn’t look at that one long; her gaze was focussed on the more recent pictures, sweeping from frame to frame, over the quartets of smiling, laughing, joyous faces. </p><p>Team YRDN was there, in its old configuration, with Dove glancing up at Fluffy as if he was afraid the fake was going to come to life and try to bite his head off; Ren, standing at the edge of the picture, was managing the difficult feat of looking deathly serious even as he fended off Nora’s attempts to drag him closer to the centre of the shot. Team YRBN didn’t have a photo – they clearly hadn’t come here with Blake yet – but the new configuration of Team BLBL did while, as far as Sunset could see, they hadn’t had a photo taken while Blake was their leader. </p><p>Sunset felt a tinge of melancholy at the fact that Blake had no picture upon this wall. Team SAPR had one – their copy hung on the wall beside the door – with Jaune leaning on Fluffy and Sunset leaning on Ruby; the other three members of Team YRBN had one; Team RSPT had one, with Penny making peace signs with both hands while Rainbow beam proudly; even Trixie’s team had one, with purple smoke pooling at the bottom of the frame suggesting Trixie had accidentally set a bomb off. But there was no Blake. There was no record of her here. </p><p>Okay, yes, there were records in the archive, but… this place was a record all its own, a place where you could look upon the faces of the huntsmen and huntresses who had come before – and wonder how bravely they fought, how fiercely they loved.</p><p>Sunset found herself wondering how many of them had been used by Professor Ozpin and how many had paid dearly for it. </p><p>“Sunset?” Benni said, coming out from the kitchen and into the restaurant area. “You’re here early. All by yourself?”</p><p>Sunset straightened up and turned to face Benni Haven, a middle-aged squirrel faunus with a cybernetic arm and a big bushy tail that curled up at the top before it rose higher than her head. “I’m meeting someone here,” she explained. “I thought she might be here already, but it seems I’m the early one.”</p><p>“Well, you can pick whatever table you like,” Benni told her, gesturing all around the empty restaurant. “Just the one other person you’re expecting?”</p><p>“That’s right.”</p><p>“Well, you sit down, and I’ll get you a couple of breakfast menus,” Benni said. “You want a cup of coffee while you wait?”</p><p>“Can you bring a pot?” Sunset asked. “Hopefully, Twilight won’t be too long.”</p><p>“One pot of coffee coming right up,” Benni declared. “Hey, Stan did you get that?”</p><p>“Yeah, I got it,” replied a male voice from the kitchen. Benni’s husband did all of the cooking, but Sunset had never actually seen his face. He was just an ethereal creature on the other side of the door, producing meals to order.</p><p>Sunset took a table in the back corner of the restaurant, sitting down with her back to the wall and facing the door so that she could see Twilight come in when she arrived. </p><p>Benni strode over to her with the morning menus, putting one down in front of Sunset and the other before the empty space opposite her.</p><p>“Thank you,” Sunset said.</p><p>“So,” Benni said. “What’s up?”</p><p>Sunset looked up at her. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“Having breakfast alone, with only Twilight for company; you got something to talk about you don’t want to share, right? Something going on?”</p><p>Sunset grinned. “You realise that if there was something going on, I probably wouldn’t tell you.”</p><p>“Hey, your secrets are safe with me,” Benni told her. “Eight years, I’ve been running this place, and I’ve never spilled a student’s confidence yet.”</p><p>Sunset hesitated. Benni had been here for a while, both as a student and as the owner of this place; she had seen a lot of students come through here – although given what she’d just said about confidence, there would be limits to what she was willing to say. “You ever… have you ever noticed anything weird going on around here?”</p><p>Benni snorted. “Kid, this is Beacon Academy; it sometimes feels like weird is all there is around here sometimes.”</p><p>Sunset rolled her eyes. “Yeah, sure, but you know what I mean, right? More than just the usual stuff, like…” She groped for a way to say ‘magic’ without actually saying ‘magic.’ “Anything strange, even for this place?”</p><p>Benni shrugged. “It depends what you mean by 'strange,'” she said. “You know Dove Bronzewing in your year, right?”</p><p>Sunset nodded. “I know Dove a little, sure.” <em>You don’t mean to tell me that Dove’s mixed up in this magic stuff, is he?</em></p><p>
  <em>How can he be? He’s not a girl.</em>
</p><p>“One time, when Dove and his friends were in here, I hear them talking about this girl, Amber. I tell them that I know who they’re talking about; she hung around the school for about a year or so. Not a student, though. No team; I don’t think she went to classes, judging by some of the times she turned up here, but she lived in the school all the same. That was a little weird.”</p><p>“Did you find out what she was doing here?”</p><p>Benni shook her head. “Professor Ozpin told me that she was his niece. He brought her in here sometimes for dinner.”</p><p>“Did you believe him?”</p><p>Benni nodded. “He treated her like family, although I never heard of him having any other relatives; still, the Professor is the kind to keep things close.”</p><p><em>You don’t know the half of it.</em> “Maybe she didn’t have anywhere else to go.”</p><p>“Maybe,” Benni conceded. “Sometimes, she’d come in here by herself; she was always… it was like she was scared of something. Scared of everything. Skittish like. I tried to talk to her, make her feel a little welcome, but she always… it was like she was scared of me.” She chuckled. “Poor kid was even scared of Fluffy.”</p><p>“Maybe there’s a good reason she wasn’t a student.”</p><p>“Probably. Then, one day, she just… disappeared. Stopped coming around. No word or anything.”</p><p>“It doesn’t sound like you two were close.”</p><p>“No,” Benni allowed. “But she didn’t tell Dove where she was going either; now that’s a little weird, right?”</p><p>Possibly, but hardly the sort of weirdness that Sunset was interested in. “I guess,” she murmured. “What about Professor Ozpin?”</p><p>“What about him?”</p><p>“I’ve heard that he has favourites,” Sunset said. “Like Team Stark, back in the old days.”</p><p>Benni was still for a moment, and quiet. At length, she nodded. “Yeah,” she agreed. “I’d say that was about right for Team Stark. I mean, to be fair, we all knew that those four were something special even before they saved the day at Ozpin’s Stand. Everyone – and I mean <em>everyone</em>, even the upperclassmen – looked up to Team Stark. They walked around the school like they owned it, and from what I heard, they’d been that way even in Freshman year. People recognise talent, and Team Stark had it to spare.” She grinned. “From what I hear, people are starting to look at Team Sapphire that way, what with you catching criminals and stopping bad guys.”</p><p>Sunset chuckled as she felt a faint blush rise to her cheeks. Ordinarily, she would have been quite content to drink deep of the flattery, but right now, she had other concerns on her mind. “And Professor Ozpin?”</p><p>Benni nodded. “Sure,” she said. “Ozpin gave them more missions than any other team, and juicier missions too. Like… they were the only ones he could count on when things got really tough.”</p><p>“So the headmaster does have favourites.”</p><p>“There are favourites,” Benni said. “And then there are favourites of favourites. Every year, there’s one team that starts school that Professor Ozpin is particularly interested in, like last year, it was Team Coffee. But sometimes, it doesn’t stay that way, like… maybe they’re not as good as he thought they were going to be, I guess, or some other team with more motivation overtakes them. But other times, like with Team Stark, it’s like he gets really interested, like he can see something in them. Of course, we could all see something in Team Stark, so that wasn’t a big surprise.”</p><p>Sunset nodded. Favourites of favourites, that made sense. Professor Ozpin would want to take some time to make sure that the ones he had his eye on were what he thought they were, the same way that Celestia had taken the time to decide that Sunset wasn’t what she was looking for and Twilight Sparkle was. </p><p>What it also told her was that they might have to wait until second year to find out if Team SAPR was one of those special favourites, or if it was Team YRBN, or if nobody had impressed him enough at all. </p><p>There was a certain irony to the fact that the surefire way to protect her team from the Headmaster’s machinations was to screw up, and that was something that Sunset’s pride would not allow her to do. She was done hiding her light beneath a bushel, even for safety’s sake.</p><p>“Thank you,” she said. “I just heard a few things, and I thought you’d know the truth.”</p><p>“It’s what I’m here for,” Benni said. “Now, I’ll see how your coffee’s getting on.”</p><p>The coffee was done, apparently, because Benni brought the pot over shortly afterwards with two plain china cups, a very small jug of milk and a bowl of sugar cubes. Sunset poured herself a cup with ample amounts of sugar in it and sipped the hot, brown liquid while she waited for Twilight. </p><p>The door opened, and Twilight walked in, wearing a silly smile on her face as she looked down at her scroll; so engrossed in it was she that Twilight almost walked into Fluffy, stopping herself only just in time. </p><p>Sunset waved at her as Twilight looked around the restaurant.</p><p>“Hey, Twilight!” Benni hailed her. “Good morning.”</p><p>“Good morning, Ms Haven,” Twilight replied, as she jogged quickly across the restaurant and sat down in the free seat next to Sunset. “Sorry I’m late.”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Sunset said. “I haven’t been here long.”</p><p>“Good,” Twilight said. She looked down at her scroll again, and the smile returned to her face as she put the device away.</p><p>“What’s got you in such a good mood?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“Oh, nothing,” Twilight said, as she blushed furiously. “Just some texts from Neptune.”</p><p>Sunset blinked. “'Neptune'? Neptune Vasilias?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Twilight said, sounding a little embarrassed about it. “He, uh, he asked me out last weekend.”</p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows. “Really? And you said yes?”</p><p>“Why not?” Twilight asked. “He’s nice, he’s funny, he’s-”</p><p>“A player?” Sunset suggested.</p><p>“I think that’s just an act,” Twilight replied. “I think he’s a lot sweeter than he seems.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Sunset murmured. It wasn’t really any of her business, but she was a little afraid that Twilight was setting herself up for disappointment here. As like as not, she’d catch him cheating on her before the year ended. He seemed that kind of guy; he didn’t have any of his team leader’s sincerity. Personally, Sunset wouldn’t have trusted him as far as she could throw him without magic.</p><p>But it really wasn’t any of her business, and if Twilight thought she could handle it, well, she was a big girl. And it wasn’t what Sunset had asked her to breakfast for. “Well, best of luck,” she said. “What do you want for breakfast?”</p><p>“Oh, um,” Twilight looked at the menu in front of her. “Have you had the crepes here?”</p><p>Sunset ordered two sets of crepes with strawberries for herself and Twilight and, while they were waiting, asked, “How are things with Penny?”</p><p>“Do you mean herself or,” Twilight’s voice dropped a little as she leaned forward, “her swords?”</p><p>“The swords,” Sunset murmured. “Although if you want to talk about anything else, that’s fine.”</p><p>“Penny’s doing great,” Twilight said. “Well, she’s happy at least, and so far, her performance in every trial she’s been engaged in has been exemplary. Her father is very impressed; so is General Ironwood and the authorities back home. On all the evidence currently available, the project is a complete success. I, on the other hand, am not a success.”</p><p>“No more luck?”</p><p>“None,” Twilight groaned.</p><p>“Maybe you should ask Ruby for help,” Sunset suggested. “She was able to get that monstrous scythe to fold up; maybe she can help you shrink the swords?”</p><p>“Ruby?”</p><p>“She’s smarter than she looks,” Sunset informed Twilight. “Or acts, sometimes. The point is that she really does get this stuff; maybe she can be the fresh pair of eyes you’re looking for.”</p><p>“Maybe,” Twilight agreed. “It’s worth a shot at least.” She hesitated. “And, have you thought anything more about-?”</p><p>“Don’t,” Sunset said firmly. “If my answer changes, I will let you know.”</p><p>“Right,” Twilight said softly. “Sorry.”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Sunset told her. “Just… don’t push it.”</p><p>“I won’t, and I am sorry,” Twilight repeated. “I’m just… anyway, why did you-?” She stopped, as Benni brought their crepes over. “Thank you, ma’am.”</p><p>“Don’t call me 'ma’am'; I’m not that old,” Benni said. “You girls enjoy it and let me know if you need anything else.”</p><p>“Will do,” Sunset replied, pouring herself another cup of coffee. “You were saying?” she asked as Benni retreated.</p><p>“I was about to ask why you invited me to have breakfast with you,” Twilight said.</p><p>Sunset chewed on some crepe wrapped around a strawberry. The fruit was soft and gave way easily before her teeth, which didn’t stop it from tasting good in any way. Once she had swallowed, she leaned forward a little, “I’ve been reading those books you gave me,” she said, “and I think I know what happened to all the magic.”</p><p>“Really?” Twilight demanded in a voice laced with sarcasm. “A mystery that has baffled a whole community for years, but you’ve got it all figured out just like that?”</p><p>“I’m smarter than anyone else,” Sunset declared breezily, sipping some of her coffee.</p><p>Twilight stared at her flatly.</p><p>“Plus, I had some information that no one else had access to,” Sunset explained.</p><p>“Hmm,” Twilight murmured. “Go on, what happened?”</p><p>“Professor Ozpin hid it away,” Sunset said.</p><p>Twilight snorted some of her coffee out of her nose and spent some little time getting the rest out before she was able to speak again. “Professor- that’s ridiculous!”</p><p>“I thought that General Ironwood was the man you all admired so much you couldn’t believe him capable of fault.”</p><p>“He is,” Twilight said. “I mean, he isn’t-”</p><p>“Yes,” Sunset said. “Yes, he is.”</p><p>“Yeah, he really is,” Twilight admitted. “But anyway, this has nothing to do with admiration and everything to do with the fact that he’s not old enough. If you had read those books I gave you-”</p><p>“I did.”</p><p>“Then you’d know that magic ‘disappeared’ centuries ago, maybe even longer; Professor Ozpin isn’t nearly old enough-”</p><p>“Okay, so he didn’t start it,” Sunset conceded. “But he’s the one doing it now?”</p><p>“Why do you think that?”</p><p>“Ruby’s mother told me.”</p><p>Twilight’s eyes narrowed. “Isn’t Ruby’s mother dead?”</p><p>“She left a diary,” Sunset explained. “Which I… came into the possession of in the course of a story which has no relevance to this matter.”</p><p>“Please don’t tell you found the journal of Ruby’s late mother and kept it for yourself.”</p><p>“Why does everyone always assume the worst of me?” Sunset demanded. “After all I’ve done for you people, why is it that I am yet denied the benefit of the doubt and continually must endure accusations-”</p><p>“Because the accusations are often true, Anon-a-Miss,” Twilight declared acidly.</p><p>Sunset blinked, pursing her lips together. “Rainbow told you, didn’t she?”</p><p>“Uh-huh,” Twilight said flatly.</p><p>“How’s she feeling about me right now?”</p><p>“Ambivalent,” Twilight replied. “She doesn’t like what you did, but… what Cardin and Bon Bon were saying to Blake… I think that it’s hard for her to get too angry at you when she’s so upset at Bon Bon.” Twilight hesitated. “Bon Bon did say those things, didn’t she?”</p><p>“Do you think that I could fake that? Well enough to fool journalists?”</p><p>“Probably not,” Twilight conceded. “To think that Bon Bon could be so vile, could hold such horrible opinions. We were never close, but I thought we were all on good terms, and all the times she was being pleasant and polite to Rainbow Dash, she was secretly thinking stuff like that. I would never have believed it.”</p><p>“I would,” Sunset replied. “The only reason to be that self-righteous is if you want to distract attention for your own wickedness.”</p><p>“Maybe, and maybe it was just my naivete showing that I didn’t see it until it was obvious,” Twilight murmured. “I just thought we were better than that now. I thought that wasn’t who we were any more.”</p><p>“People?”</p><p>“Atlesians,” Twilight clarified.</p><p>Sunset shrugged. “Society can move as fast or as slow as it wants; there will always be those who refuse to move with it.”</p><p>“I suppose,” Twilight sighed. “Do you think this will affect Blake’s view of Atlas?”</p><p>“I wish it would,” Sunset muttered. “Sadly, I think the fact that Trixie and that other girl-”</p><p>“Starlight.”</p><p>“Yeah, her, came to back her up will count for more than where Bon Bon was born.” Sunset swallowed some more strawberry. “After all, she’s Beacon’s problem now.”</p><p>“Lucky you,” Twilight said quietly. “But, anyway, you were saying about the diary of Ruby’s mother.”</p><p>“Summer Rose, yes,” Sunset agreed. “As I was saying before I was impugned, I did give it to Ruby, but she has kept me informed on what she’s found out from it. That’s how we found out about Silver Eyes; her mother wrote about them. Just like Summer also wrote about a mission that she and her team went on while they were students, to escort a woman named Auburn to a village out in the sticks. On the way, they were attacked by grimm, but Auburn defended them using ice, fire, wind, and lightning.”</p><p>Twilight’s eyes widened. “The same as when-”</p><p>“You were saved as a child,” Sunset agreed. “Now get this: Professor Ozpin assigned that mission to Team Stark personally. He introduced Auburn to them as an old friend.”</p><p>“That doesn’t prove he knew-”</p><p>“He knew,” Sunset insisted. “Else why would he have assigned Team Stark the mission? What did he think Auburn was going out into the countryside to do?”</p><p>“What <em>was</em> Auburn going out into the countryside to do?” Twilight asked.</p><p>“She found a young girl, a former student named Merida who had dropped out of Beacon, and took her away with her.”</p><p>Twilight frowned. “But why?”</p><p>“Auburn died, no more than a year after that mission,” Sunset explained. “Cancer.”</p><p>Twilight’s eyes widened. “In the legends, magic always passes upon death.”</p><p>“And to the person the last wielded of the magic is closest to,” Sunset added. “Or to whoever kills them, but if we assume that Auburn really did die of natural causes, then she went to collect her successor and keep her close until the end came.”</p><p>Twilight’s eyes flickered back and forth. She looked away from Sunset and down at the table in front of her. “So… when the Red Queens were vanquished-”</p><p>“My theory is that the heroes who killed them had come into possession of their magic.”</p><p>“And in order to make sure that they or their successors were not hunted down-”</p><p>“They went into hiding, allowing the memory of magic to fade away,” Sunset continued.</p><p>“Until the present day?” Twilight asked. “And Professor Ozpin knows about this? Why? How?”</p><p>“I can’t answer how,” Sunset said. “Perhaps… perhaps there is no one Old Man; there are a succession of Old Men who have been initiated into the world’s mysteries, and he is the latest of them. The point is that he knows, he knows so much more than he is letting on, and he is keeping magic from the rest of us. He and those who came before are part of a conspiracy to make sure that magic is not seen in the world again.”</p><p>“Then how do you explain my accident?” Twilight said. “Whoever our rescuer was, they used magic.”</p><p>“Maybe they got tired of hiding?” Sunset suggested. “Maybe they didn’t realise that you were awake and thought that nobody would see them cutting loose? Maybe their conscience wouldn’t allow them to stand by and let a family die for the sake of their secret? But that was a one off-”</p><p>“It’s not the only incident that’s been recorded.”</p><p>“Let me guess,” Sunset said. “All isolated, just like yours; all with a lack of credible witnesses, just like yours; all completely deniable, just like yours.”</p><p>Twilight nodded mutely. “Pretty much.”</p><p>“So maybe they’re not hiding it all the time, but they’re not going out of their way to make a spectacle of themselves,” Sunset said. “We’re a long way from the prophets.”</p><p>Twilight sagged in her seat. “Yeah, we are, aren’t we?” She sighed. “Well, that’s that, I guess.”</p><p>Sunset frowned. “What do you mean, that’s that?”</p><p>“Well, it would have been nice to be able to officially solve the mystery, but that can’t happen-”</p><p>“What do you mean 'that can’t happen'?” Sunset demanded. “We know what we’re looking for now; we have to keep digging and-”</p><p>“And what?” Twilight asked. “If we’re right, then magic disappeared for a pretty good reason-”</p><p>“There is no good reason for hiding what you can do,” Sunset declared. “Still less for hiding who and what you are.”</p><p>“Not even to protect yourself?” Twilight asked. “Or to protect others who would be in danger if the powers fell into the wrong hands as they did before? You have… everything that you’ve said makes perfect sense, and I believe it, but… with what you’ve told me, I’m not willing to go on, not now that I understand what happened and why. If you’ve read the account of the reign of the Red Queens, then you know what’s at stake.”</p><p>“This isn’t the olden days; I don’t believe that one person, even with magic, could just take over like that,” Sunset said.</p><p>“It’s too big a risk,” Twilight insisted. “There are other mysteries to pursue, other questions to answer, phenomena that aren’t – or don’t seem to be – connected with the prophets or the Red Queens. But on this matter, we have to trust that Professor Ozpin knows what he’s doing-”</p><p>“Why?” Sunset demanded. “Why do we have to trust him when he hasn’t given us any reason to?”</p><p>“Because we have to put our trust in authority, or who can we trust?” Twilight asked. “If we can’t trust our headmasters and generals, then… what, do we just make our own choices?”</p><p>“Oh, how terrible, we might actually have to think for ourselves.”</p><p>“And when your thoughts conflict with Ruby’s?” Twilight asked. “Or Pyrrha’s? When you and Rainbow Dash butt heads with no one higher up to resolve it because you’ve rejected the notion of responsible authority, what then? Are you going to fight it out? Break heads to establish your dominance? Anarchy and barbarism, that’s where this leads, we need authority, we need order-”</p><p>“You sound like a tin pot despot.”</p><p>“And you sound like a savage!” Twilight snapped. She sighed. “I’m sorry, I just… I don’t think we should risk breaking the world just to prove that we were right.”</p><p>Sunset stared at her for a moment. “That’s the difference between us, Twilight. As far as I’m concerned, a world where magic has been hidden like this is already broken.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0055"><h2>55. Black Sword, Blue Eyes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Jaune confronts Cinder</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Black Sword, Blue Eyes</p><p> </p><p>“Ruby, is something wrong?” Pyrrha asked as the two of them walked towards the cafeteria. The sun was up, the day was bright, Pyrrha could think of nothing that ought to be troubling Ruby, and yet, it seemed that Ruby was troubled. Her head was bowed, and she was playing idly with her fingers as she walked. </p><p>“Huh?” Ruby asked as they walked past Professor Ozpin – who nodded genially to them, which Pyrrha acknowledged with a bow of her head – going the other way. “No, sorry. It’s just… I was thinking about what you said about Sunset’s sword. About how the two brothers fought on opposite sides of the Great War. I was just thinking about how terrible that must have been for them.”</p><p>“War has a habit of turning brother against brother, friend against friend,” Professor Ozpin lamented. “All the moreso when ideology and the demands of faction mingle with the call of kingdom and comradeship.” He smiled sadly. “Forgive me, ladies, I happened to overhear.”</p><p>“That’s quite alright, Professor,” Pyrrha said, turning to face the headmaster as Ruby did likewise. </p><p>“So, it happened a lot?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“Regrettably often, yes, Miss Rose,” Professor Ozpin replied. “With exiles from Mistral and Mantle, and of course, there were some amongst the Valish to whom the philosophies of Mantle and their emphasis upon the suppression of individual feelings resonated greatly.”</p><p>“Uh, of course,” Ruby said nervously, reminding Pyrrha that she had missed on a great deal of history by skipping two years of combat school. “I can’t imagine anything that would make me fight against Yang.”</p><p>“War is a terrible business,” Pyrrha agreed. “That is why we train to uphold the peace that blesses our world.”</p><p>“Of course,” Ruby said. “I’m just saying that it would have been hard on them.”</p><p>“No doubt, although neither of them left any testimony to that effect,” Pyrrha said. “But, brave as Achates was, he was only human, and I am sure he felt the pang of separation from his family.” She looked down at Ruby. “What do you think should be done with the sword?”</p><p>Ruby’s eyes widened in surprise. “Why are you asking me about something like that?”</p><p>“Because you are righteous and kind, and you have a good heart,” Pyrrha explained. “One that is not clouded by tradition or what my family has done in the past or Sunset’s desire to hang on to the sword.” She smiled. “So, what do you think?”</p><p>Ruby stopped walking, clasping her hands together for a moment as her lips moved without speaking. </p><p>“I think… I think that maybe your family should have given the sword to his brother,” she said. “After all, the war was over; there was no reason to hold a grudge just because you’d fought on different sides. I mean it was still his family.”</p><p>“You are… correct, of course,” Pyrrha murmured. “But I don’t think we should be too quick to judge those who came before us. I’m sure it must have been a lot harder to forgive and forget for those who had just emerged from the war.”</p><p>“That’s the other thing,” Ruby said. “I’m not sure if they would have really wanted it. I mean… he was still dead. If Yang died… if I lost her, I don’t think having Ember Celica with me at home would make me feel any better. I don’t think having Mom’s weapon would make me feel any better. Maybe that’s why nobody made a big deal out of it at the time.”</p><p>“You may be correct,” Pyrrha said. “Although in Mistral, we certainly act as though it will bring comfort to those we leave behind to receive our effects.” Her brow furrowed. “If I die-”</p><p>“You’re not going to die, Pyrrha,” Ruby declared, cutting her off.</p><p>“<em>If</em> I die,” Pyrrha repeated. “Will you bear my circlet home to my mother, and Miló too, if it can be found? So that she might have something to remember me by?”</p><p>“Do you think it would make her feel any better?” Ruby demanded. “Do you think that having a circlet will make up for not having a daughter any more?”</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha admitted. “Probably not.” <em>Although if she yet has Sunset, that might offer some consolation.</em> She chuckled softly. “As I told you, you can see things much more clearly than the rest of us because you’re an outsider to all this.”</p><p>Ruby shrugged. “I just know a little bit about losing someone. Anyway, I don’t think that the sword belongs to that Phoebe girl. It’s all so long ago now, too long ago to suddenly insist that it matters. If it’s been in your family since the Great War, you should be allowed to do what you like with it. And besides, she sounds like a bully.”</p><p>“I fear that she can be,” Pyrrha confessed. “Please, Ruby, if you can, stay out of this matter while Phoebe is around; I fear that she can hold a grudge against those whom she perceives to have wronged her.”</p><p>“I’ll try,” Ruby said softly. “Is Sunset going to be okay?”</p><p>“I hope so,” Pyrrha replied. “Sunset… can usually handle herself. Although I do wish that Phoebe hadn’t brought her into this; I would tell her so myself, but it would do more harm than good.”</p><p>“Are you one of the people she’s holding a grudge against?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“Yes,” Pyrrha replied candidly. “Phoebe… does not accept defeat in the same good sport that someone like Arslan does.”</p><p>“Hey, guys!” Jaune called out as he jogged across the courtyard to catch up with them. “Thanks for waiting for me.”</p><p>“No problem, Jaune,” Ruby said, winking at Pyrrha.</p><p>Jaune grinned at her. “What were you just talking about?”</p><p>“Sunset’s sword,” Ruby explained as the three of them now – Jaune fell in easily in between Pyrrha and Ruby – started walking towards the dining hall, as more and more students from Beacon, Atlas, Haven, and Shade descended upon it from all four corners of the school. “And whether or not she ought to give it back.”</p><p>Jaune snorted. “Even if she should, there’s no way that it’s going to happen,” he said.</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha admitted. “But I was hoping – and Ruby agreed with me – that Phoebe has no real claim upon the blade. Sunset is under no obligation to do other than what she wishes.”</p><p>“Is there anything that she can do to take the sword away from Sunset?” Jaune asked.</p><p>“Legally, no,” Pyrrha replied. “She could challenge Sunset to a duel with the sword as the prize of victory-”</p><p>“Like her mother tried to do with you?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“Yes,” Pyrrha said. “But I think that, against Sunset, Phoebe would more likely have someone else challenge Sunset on her behalf.”</p><p>“Why?” Jaune said, his brow furrowing a little. “Surely that would mean that whoever she got to do it would get the sword.”</p><p>“Yes, but they could make arrangements beforehand,” Pyrrha explained. “Or Phoebe could buy it from them once it had been won.”</p><p>“Why not just challenge Sunset herself?” asked Jaune.</p><p>“Because…” Pyrrha hesitated for a moment. “Phoebe is very proud; I think that she would fear losing to Sunset, because she has never fought in the arena and…”</p><p>“And she’s a faunus,” Ruby murmured.</p><p>“Exactly,” Pyrrha confirmed. “We Mistralians are supposed to surpass all others in single combat; if Phoebe is defeated by Sunset-”</p><p>“<em>Would</em> she be defeated?” The question came from Jaune. “I mean, is she any good?”</p><p>Pyrrha considered what she could say that would be both kind and accurate towards Phoebe Kommenos. “She is… not one of my great rivals,” she admitted. “I think that Sunset would defeat her and, in so doing, destroy Phoebe’s reputation, or she would fear it would be so. As I say, if she goes down that route, she will most likely use an agent.”</p><p>“It doesn’t seem to me like she has many other routes to go down,” Jaune said as they neared the dining hall doors. “I mean, it’s not like she has a deed or anything, right?”</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha allowed. “But… there may be something else that I haven’t thought of.”</p><p>“I’m sure that Sunset can handle it, whatever it is,” Ruby said, and on that, they were, all three of them, in agreement. </p><p>They entered the dining hall, picked up their trays, and joined the queue of students waiting in line for the counter. </p><p>“So, Jaune,” Ruby said, “are you sure that you can’t tell us what it is that you and Sunset had to talk about?”</p><p>“I’d really rather not,” Jaune murmured.</p><p>“You know that if you’re in trouble, Pyrrha and I can help out too.”</p><p>“I’m not in trouble!” Jaune squawked. “I just needed to… please, Ruby, just drop it, for Sunset’s sake.”</p><p>“We won’t pry into anything private, of course,” Pyrrha said, a tad reproachfully. She hesitated. “But you’re not in any trouble, are you?”</p><p>Jaune chuckled. “No, I’m really not in any trouble.”</p><p>Pyrrha smiled. “I’m glad. Then everything went okay with Dove?”</p><p>“Ooh, right, you two switched partners last night, didn’t you?” Ruby remembered. They had both been quite tired when they were done and hadn’t talked at length about what went on. “How was that?”</p><p>Jaune shrugged. “Dove… he fights dirtier than you do.”</p><p>Pyrrha’s eyebrows rose. “How do you mean?”</p><p>“You fight… formally, I guess,” Jaune elaborated. “But Dove, he… does things that might not be in the rulebook, like grabbing my shield with his bare hands to pull me off balance, or kicking me in the face when I’m down.”</p><p>“I see,” Pyrrha murmured. It was true that she never did anything like that when she sparred with Jaune, although it was not quite accurate of him to say that it was because they were not in the rulebook. There was less of a rulebook when it came to fighting in the arena than there probably was in Professor Goodwitch’s class, but Chiron <em>had</em> taught her to fight with a certain dignity and poise, and the fact was that she was sufficiently skilled fighting in that fashion that she didn’t need to stoop to low tricks… unless one counted the way she used her semblance. </p><p>Jaune, on the other hand, was not that skilled – not yet, at least – and Pyrrha was beset by worry that she had been letting him down by neglecting this area of his development. “Would you like me to fight dirty?” she asked. “Or show you how?”</p><p>“Do <em>you</em> know how?” Jaune asked, a touch of amusement in his voice mirroring that which was on his face. </p><p>Pyrrha hesitated for a moment. “No,” she said, turning away from him briefly and focussing on the queue that was bearing her forwards towards the counter.</p><p>“Uncle Qrow likes to say that fighting fair is a good way to end up dead,” Ruby said. “Maybe it’s something you could both learn.”</p><p>“Perhaps,” Pyrrha conceded. “But from who?”</p><p>“Dove?” Jaune suggested.</p><p>“I can’t train with Dove if I’m training with Lyra,” Pyrrha pointed out.</p><p>“That’s a good point; how was Lyra?”</p><p>“Lyra… would be much more skilled if she applied herself more,” Pyrrha said quietly, and hoped she wasn’t overheard.</p><p>They all got their breakfast – protein-heavy sausages and bacon for Pyrrha, cereal for Ruby, waffles for Jaune – and sat down at their usual table, which either by luck or habit was still free to receive them. Pyrrha sat down opposite Jaune, with Ruby sitting next to him. </p><p>“Guys,” Jaune said, as he sat down. “There’s something that I’ve been meaning to talk to you about – especially you, Pyrrha – for a little while, since we got back from that mission on the train. I think that someone might need to talk to Flash and find out what the story is between him and Sunset.”</p><p>Ruby pursed her lips together. “Aren’t they exes?”</p><p>“Yes, exactly, but I’d like to know what he did and why, and… and does he know how badly he messed Sunset up?”</p><p>“That’s rather a harsh way of putting it,” Pyrrha murmured. “Not least to Sunset herself.”</p><p>Jaune took the opportunity of eating to not reply, or perhaps he simply couldn’t reply because he was eating. In any case, it took him a few moments of chewing and swallowing before he said, “Did you guys know that Sun’s teammates locked him out of their dorm room for a bit?”</p><p>“No,” Ruby said.</p><p>“Blake mentioned it,” Pyrrha said. “But she also said that they had relented and that Sun was taking his responsibilities much more seriously now.”</p><p>Jaune nodded. “But before that, while you were all out, Sunset let Sun nap on the camp bed in our dorm room when she found him… on a sofa, I think. Anyway, she told him that he hadn’t done anything wrong and that he ought to put Blake first above everything else, because that was what a guy was expected to do if he was in love.”</p><p>Pyrrha pursed her lips together. The vision of romantic commitment outlined by Sunset was, she had to admit, a tempting one. As the current recipient of Jaune’s affections – now and hopefully forever – there was something alluring about the idea of him devoting his life wholly, solely, and only to her, dropping everything and anything to time and again put her at the centre of his life.</p><p>And in the privacy of her own heart, she had to concede that there was something… rather magical about Sun stowing away on the RSPT airship to join Blake on her mission. Blake might have affected to be annoyed by it, she might have genuinely been annoyed by it, but at the same time, it was so breathtakingly romantic that it made Pyrrha sigh inside. She almost wished that Jaune were on another team so that he could chase after her. </p><p><em>Foolishness. Pure silly, feather-headed foolishness. </em>If Jaune were on a different team, then he would never have seen Pyrrha Nikos, still less seen her as a partner in love as well as in battle. She would never have had the courage or the chance to let him know, in any way, how she felt. If Jaune were on a different team, then his responsibilities would be to that team, and anything he did to be with her instead would be placing his own prospects at risk for her sake. No, it would have been the most selfish thing in the world to allow him to do that. </p><p>
  <em>Blake is very lucky, but so am I in other ways. In fact, I’m luckier, because I get to have my boyfriend right beside me and never feel guilty about it at all.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>With Good Fortune, indeed.</em>
</p><p>More rationally, she could recognise that what Sunset was advocating was rather unwise. It was quite surprising to hear that Sunset had said this, although she didn’t doubt Jaune was being honest with them. “Of course, if you had behaved-”</p><p>“That’s what I said,” Jaune declared. “She didn’t really have an answer to that. And then she… I don’t want to say she threatened me, but she kind of gave me the shovel talk about how I needed to treat you right, and if I was just messing around, then I needed to come clean about it and how you deserved better than that. And you do!” he added hastily. “I’m not trying to-”</p><p>“Jaune,” Pyrrha said softly, reaching out to place her hand on top of his. “You don’t need to defend yourself in front of me. I’m not afraid of any of that.”</p><p>“Good,” Jaune said, sagging with relief a little bit. “Because, honestly, I’m the…” He grinned, and Pyrrha guessed that he had been about to deprecate himself but had stopped because he could predict her reaction and wished to avoid the distraction. “The point is, I think this has a lot to do with how things ended between her and Flash.”</p><p>“She <em>has</em> said some things about boys,” Ruby agreed. “And there are times when… I mean, something hurt her; I just assumed that it was a lot of things from Combat School. Could it be all about one thing?”</p><p>“I’m afraid I have no idea,” Pyrrha whispered. “He broke up with her because she was a faunus, didn’t she?”</p><p>“Apparently, but if he was always like Cardin, why did he go out with her in the first place?” Jaune asked.</p><p>“Maybe it was all a game to him, hence why Sunset was worried about me,” suggested Pyrrha.</p><p>“Perhaps,” Jaune agreed. “I feel like… like someone should talk to him. He might not understand what he did.”</p><p>“Well, what are you going to say?” Ruby asked.</p><p>Jaune started. “Me?”</p><p>“It was your idea!” Ruby pointed out.</p><p>“That doesn’t mean I should get volunteered!”</p><p>“But you’re the one who gets all this!”</p><p>“I have to agree,” Pyrrha said. “Of the three of us, you are the one who seems to understand this situation best; in fact, I might say that you understand people the best out of the three of us. You see things that we don’t.”</p><p>Jaune stared at her. “Well… thanks, first of all, but second, if I’d know this was going to happen, I might have kept my mouth shut.”</p><p>Pyrrha covered her mouth with one hand as a giggle escaped from between her lips. </p><p>Her laughter was cut off as Arslan Atlan slammed her tray down onto the table before she occupied the seat next to Pyrrha. </p><p>“Morning, P-Money,” Arslan growled. “Oh, right, sorry: is this seat taken, and can I take it?”</p><p>“Um, I suppose you can,” Pyrrha murmured. After all, there was no sign of Team YRBN or Team RSPT at the moment, and it wasn’t the first time they had found those seats taken when they showed up. “Arslan, this is my teammate Ruby Rose and my…” She got butterflies in her stomach just thinking about saying it. “And my boyfriend, Jaune Arc.”</p><p>“It’s nice to meet you,” Ruby said. “Who’s P-Money?”</p><p>“I am,” Pyrrha sighed.</p><p>Jaune frowned. “Why?”</p><p>“I have no idea.”</p><p>“Pleasure, Ruby Rose,” Arslan said casually, before affixing Jaune with a glare. “So… you’re the boy, huh?”</p><p>“Is everyone from Mistral going to hate me for dating you?” asked Jaune, his eyes drawn to Pyrrha like a perplexed and worried magnet.</p><p>“I hope not,” Pyrrha said. “Arslan, please stop it. Where is the rest of your team?”</p><p>Arslan growled. “My team and I are having a little bit of a fight. I’m not just over here because it’s you but because I felt like your team leader- where is your team leader?”</p><p>“Having breakfast at Benni Haven’s,” Pyrrha explained.</p><p>“Without you?” Arslan asked.</p><p>“With someone else,” Ruby explained without really explaining anything.</p><p>“What about Sunset?” Pyrrha inquired.</p><p>“Bolin is going to challenge her to a fight over that fancy sword your mother gave her,” Arslan barked. “Phoebe Kommenos has paid him to do it. Little… I’d challenge her to a duel if I thought she’d accept.”</p><p>“I’m not sure that you have cause,” Pyrrha murmured.</p><p>“I have plenty of cause; she’s slighted me!” Arslan snapped. “Just because I don’t have ancestors stretching back to la de dah and ancient wars does not mean that I do not have honour. I am the Golden Lion of Mistral, and that is worth as much in the arena as noble blood and gilded circlets… no offence, Pyrrha.”</p><p>“None taken,” Pyrrha replied.</p><p>“She offered <em>me</em> money, you know,” Arslan said. “She told me that since I’d already beaten Sunset once that I could do it again, and then she offered me money. Me! She offered me money for a fight as though I was some amateur hour part-timer with a side gig as a leg-breaker. The insult! I am a professional athlete! I have dedicated spoils in the Temple of Victory! And she offered me money. And then she put the lid on it by offering Bolin money.”</p><p>“And he hasn’t got your scruples,” Jaune guessed.</p><p>“Unfortunately not,” Arslan replied.</p><p>“Is he any good?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“Not as good as he thinks he is,” Arslan told them. “He thinks he should be team leader instead of me, which tells me how cocky he is. But he knows what he’s doing.”</p><p>“So does Sunset,” Pyrrha declared. “For the most part,” she was compelled to add by honesty. </p><p>“Well, if she loses, then… well, she’s lost,” Arslan said. “And lost the sword as well. But you won’t be able to say that I didn’t warn you.”</p><p>“I’ll let Sunset know,” Pyrrha said. “Thank you, Arslan.”</p><p>Arslan shrugged. “I’ve never liked Phoebe,” she muttered. “Never liked her, never rated her; the last thing I want to see is her getting the chance to gloat over getting one over on you and yours. That and, well, I kind of like your team leader, even if she did insult me.”</p><p>“Really?” Pyrrha asked. “I mean, there’s a lot to like about Sunset, but I wasn’t aware that you knew her beyond taking offence.”</p><p>“I can recognise someone who’s had to struggle to get where they are,” Arslan said. “I admire that.” She paused. “I warned you that there was going to be trouble over this.”</p><p>“Yes, you did, I admit,” Pyrrha conceded. “You’re not… I wouldn’t want you to suffer for our sake.”</p><p>Arslan snorted. “Only a little rich girl from the heights would think that having the likes of Reese and Bolin act disappointed in me was suffering,” she declared. “No offence.”</p><p>“Um, none taken,” Pyrrha murmured. “Nevertheless, you may have put yourself on the wrong side of opinion with your fellow students, and I am grateful.”</p><p>“Well, if you’re looking for ways to make it up to me...” Arslan said.</p><p>Pyrrha’s eyes narrowed. “Is there something that you want?”</p><p>“Not me, exactly,” Arslan said. “You remember that documentary series we were in about the history of the tournament scene?”</p><p>“Ooh, you’ve made TV programs as well?” Ruby cooed.</p><p>“I didn’t make it,” Pyrrha explained quickly. “Current tournament fighters were asked to contribute talking head segments, about what it was like to fight, how it felt to walk into the coliseum, that sort of thing.”</p><p>“Well, the producer called last night just before Phoebe showed up to ruin my evening,” Arslan went on. “MBS are making a documentary about the Vytal Festival – to explain it for everyone before it all starts, you know-”</p><p>“Who doesn’t know about the Vytal Festival?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“Uh, I wouldn’t mind a primer,” Jaune said.</p><p>“I was going to say ‘kids,’ but okay, it’s for P-Money’s boyfriend.” Arslan said. “Besides, just because people know what it is doesn’t mean that they understand the history and stuff. Anyway, Autumn Blaze is doing the voice over, but they asked me to host it… except what they really want is for the two of us to host it together, only all your calls go through your mother, and you’re not talking to your mother at the moment, so the only way to get in touch with you was to ask me to ask you, so… what do you say?”</p><p>“I say that you should explain what you mean by ‘hosting,’” Pyrrha replied.</p><p>“Just some scripted bits, taking the cameras on a tour of the Amity Arena, reading out the questions for some interviews with, like your headmaster,” Arslan said. “I’ve been practicing my face for when the camera cuts to me when the interviewee is answering the question.” Arslan proceeded to make ducky lips, squinting slightly as she furrowed her brow and nodded repeatedly, in what Pyrrha realised was supposed to make her look sage and understanding.</p><p>“I think you may need to work on that a little more,” Jaune suggested, and Pyrrha was rather glad that he had said it and not her.</p><p>“But it sounds fun, doesn’t it?” Arslan said. “Can I tell him that you’ll do it?”</p><p>Pyrrha sighed. “I’m not sure that it’s such a good idea; we’re only students; doesn’t it seem as though we’re getting rather above ourselves?”</p><p>“We’re not just students though, are we?” Arslan demanded. “Come on, Pyrrha, who has a better chance of winning than one of the two of us? I’ll even flatter your ego – don’t expect that to happen too often – and say that it’s most likely to be you. How cool will that be for a trivia note: the presenter of this show went on to actually win the tournament?”</p><p>“I came to Beacon to get away from that sort of thing,” Pyrrha reminded her.</p><p>“If you wanted to get away from the limelight, then what are you doing running around Vale busting robberies and nailing gangster kingpins?” Arslan asked sourly. “Face it, P-Money; you’ve only gotten more famous since you came to Beacon.”</p><p>“That’s different,” Pyrrha said. “That was duty, and a public service-”</p><p>“And this is public service television; it’s not as though I’m asking you to co-star in an original miniseries,” Arslan said. “Look, I know that you don’t like the fame, but the fact is that you <em>are</em> famous, and you <em>do</em> have fans, and so, that being the case, don’t you think you have a duty to use your fame for the public good? That’s why my fee for this show is going to go to Magic Mealtimes.”</p><p>“Magic what?” Ruby repeated.</p><p>“It’s a charity back home in Mistral,” Arslan explained. “They deliver meals to schools to give to the kids who’d go hungry otherwise. It’s a worthy cause, and it makes a big difference, believe me. Which is why… I didn’t want to have to guilt you into this, but the production company has agreed to match my donation if I can get you on board, so what do you say?”</p><p>“Hmm,” Pyrrha murmured, looking down at the half-empty breakfast tray in front of her. She looked around the dining hall, at all the students tucking in before the start of another day of exertion of the mind and body. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to arrive for classes with an empty stomach, a yawning that might not be appeased until lunch time, if then. She had never had to go hungry like that in her life; the wealth of the Nikos family meant that she had always been guaranteed a nutritious meal. That was why she didn’t get involved in the work of charities like Magic Mealtimes: Arslan <em>had</em> grown up poor and hungry, so when she went on TV to promote the organisation people took notice. The same message from Pyrrha would have seemed like pious virtue signalling by comparison. </p><p>But this was not a direct endorsement. This was just an opportunity to do some good, and she supposed that it was all educational.</p><p>And she <em>did</em> owe Arslan for the warning.</p><p>“Very well,” she said. “You may tell your producer friend that I’ll do it. We’ll do it together.”</p><p>Arslan grinned. “Thank you, Pyrrha,” she said. “This will be very classy, I promise.”</p><p>“I might hold you to that,” Pyrrha said with a slight smile playing across her face. “Although I’m a little surprised to see you excited about scripted segments.”</p><p>“Oh, I’m sure I’ll manage to punch up the lines a little,” Arslan said airily.</p><p>“Excuse me,” Cinder said, walking up behind Pyrrha. “Do you mind if I sit down?”</p><p>As there was still no sign of their usual companions – Pyrrha wondered what was keeping them – Pyrrha felt as though she had no choice but to say, “Please, be our guest.”</p><p>Cinder smiled and chuckled ever so slightly as she sat down next to Arslan. Her brow furrowed slightly. “No Sunset?”</p><p>“She’s having breakfast at Benni Haven’s, with Twilight,” Ruby explained.</p><p>Cinder’s nostrils flared slightly. “I see,” she murmured. “How very… selfish of her.”</p><p>“Not really,” Ruby replied. “She had something she needed to talk to her about.”</p><p>“Indeed?” Cinder asked. “And what were you talking about, may I ask, before I so rudely interrupted?”</p><p>“My mother gave Sunset a gift when we were in Mistral last,” Pyrrha began.</p><p>“Ah, yes, the famous blade Soteria,” Cinder interrupted. “Yes, it is a subject of some talk amongst we Haven students. Lady Nikos does Sunset great honour, wouldn’t you agree, Lady Pyrrha?”</p><p>“Just Pyrrha, please,” Pyrrha whispered. “I believe I’ve mentioned that already.”</p><p>“Oh, yes, you did,” Cinder conceded with a little laugh. “How foolish of me to forget. Please forgive me, Pyrrha.”</p><p>“It’s quite alright, just… try and remember next time,” Pyrrha urged gently. “The talk amongst the Haven students, is it as bad as Arslan says?”</p><p>“You don’t trust me, Pyrrha?” Arslan demanded.</p><p>“Don’t take it so personally, Golden Lion,” Cinder said, her voice soft and soothing. “In matters such as these, it is always wise to get a second opinion.” She smiled, a bright smile that yet had something sharp about it. “Not everyone cares, of course, but there are those who think it is rather unnatural that Lady Nikos should favour an outsider above her own daughter. I only repeat what others say, of course.”</p><p>Jaune scowled. “Cinder, can I have a word with you? Outside?”</p><hr/><p>The scowl remained on Jaune’s face as he led the way out of the dining hall and into the morning sunshine in the courtyard beyond. His face might be thunderous, but his stomach was squirming a little. Cinder had that effect on him. There was something about her, the way she moved, the way she spoke… she was creepy, like he’d said to Sunset, and it was amazing to him that nobody else seemed to feel that way but him. </p><p>He couldn’t help but think back to that night in Mistral, to the hunt for the Karkadann, when Cinder had stayed up all night as the fire died down before her. </p><p><em>"Some might even feel emasculated."</em> That was what she’d said to him, when talking about being on a team with Pyrrha, and then to say that to Pyrrha herself?</p><p><em>'I only repeat what others say,' my ass,</em> Jaune thought to himself. There was not a doubt in his mind that she was stirring the pot, and he thought she’d probably done it with Sunset as well, for all that Sunset denied it. </p><p>He wouldn’t just stand by and let it happen. He didn’t think that it would work, what Cinder was trying to do, breaking up their team, but that didn’t mean that he was going to simply stand by and let it happen. </p><p>…Granted, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do to stop her, but… but he was going to let her know that she wasn’t getting away with it, and maybe that would be enough to get her to back off. </p><p>He kept on walking, looking up at the statue of the noble huntsman rising above him. Valour, like Professor Ozpin had said; he just had to tough it out.</p><p>Jaune turned around, to see Cinder very close by him, practically close enough to touch. </p><p>“So, Jaune,” Cinder purred. “What is that you wanted to say but couldn’t say in front of your girlfriend?”</p><p>Jaune took a step backwards, and then another for good measure. “Stop it,” he said coldly.</p><p>Cinder looked at him blankly for a moment, before she started to giggle uncontrollably. “I was <em>joking</em>,” she declared. “Don’t tell me you’re so uptight that you can’t take a little harmless fooling around.”</p><p>“It isn’t funny,” Jaune declared. “None of this is. And I want it to stop.”</p><p>Cinder stopped laughing. “You want it to stop?” she repeated, her voice cooling rapidly. “And what is it, precisely, that you want to stop?”</p><p>“All of this,” Jaune declared. “What you said, just then; you were trying to turn Pyrrha against Sunset.”</p><p>“I was only telling what I had heard.”</p><p>“I don’t believe that,” Jaune insisted. “Were you only repeating what you heard when you asked me if I felt emasculated? Or were you trying to make me feel it so that I’d pull away from Pyrrha?”</p><p>“Now why would I want to do that?”</p><p>“I don’t know; why did you encourage Sunset to follow her worst instincts?” Jaune demanded.</p><p>Cinder was silent for a moment. “'Her worst instincts'? Since when is defending yourself an immoral instinct?”</p><p>“When-”</p><p>“When those that are being defended against, those who commit acts of aggression, are the ones with the power,” Cinder growled. “When they make victims of those they consider to be powerless, when they take out their fears and frustrations on the ones beneath them, then the last thing they want is to be challenged. The last thing they want is for the underdog to bite back. And so they call it wickedness and villainy and name you foul for even considering it. And if you agree, then maybe I’m not the one that Sunset needs to be careful of.”</p><p>“What Sunset did was wrong,” Jaune repeated firmly. “What you encouraged her to do was wrong. Sunset isn’t some powerless victim, and Bon Bon and Cardin aren’t oppressors. What you did was wrong, and Sunset realises that now.”</p><p>“Does she?” Cinder murmured, sounding almost disappointed to hear it. “And did Sunset tell you that I had put her up to those awful things she now regrets?”</p><p>“No,” Jaune replied. “Sunset told me that it was all her own idea and that you had nothing to do with it.”</p><p>For a moment, Jaune thought he saw relief blossom on Cinder’s face, although he couldn’t quite work out why. It wasn’t as though he could get Cinder in trouble for what she’d done; even if Sunset did point the finger, it would still be Sunset that had done these things. So what did she have to fear? </p><p>
  <em>Unless… could she actually like Sunset? Was she actually worried that Sunset had betrayed her?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But she’s manipulating her!</em>
</p><p>“I… I see,” Cinder whispered. “Sunset didn’t say anything, but you… you saw it anyway. Because you see everything, don’t you? Nobody’s watching you, so you see it all with those blue eyes of yours.”</p><p>Those blue eyes of his narrowed. “If you want to put it that way, I guess.”</p><p>Cinder chuckled. “Let me tell you what <em>I</em> see,” she said. “You may call yourselves Sunset’s friends, but none of you really understand her. What she is. What she could be. I am the friend and ally that Sunset needs. I am the best friend that Sunset Shimmer could ever have.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0056"><h2>56. Ditzy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Pyrrha encounters an unexpectedly tough opponent</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ditzy</p><p> </p><p>Sunset opened up her locker. Her weapons and her field outfit sat there, neatly folded or hung in the case of her clothes, waiting for her.</p><p>But it was Soteria that drew her eye: the black sword with the storied past that was suddenly causing her life a great deal of commotion. She would have been lying if she'd said that the weapon had been worth it in terms of anything that she had achieved with it so far, but that was almost irrelevant because physical achievements with the blade, while they might be nice, were not really the point. The point was that Lady Nikos had honoured her with this, and that honour would not be diminished no matter what Sunset did or did not do with the sword – unless Sunset failed to do something pretty drastic, like not save Pyrrha when she needed her.</p><p>But when was Pyrrha likely to need Sunset to save her?</p><p>Sunset pulled off her school jacket and hung it up inside the locker. As she started to undo the ribbon tie around her neck, she said, "So, after trying and failing to buy Soteria from me, Phoebe has resorted to paying someone else to fight me for it. That… that is pretty pathetic, I must say. Hardly the actions of a noble warrior and aspiring Champion of Mistral."</p><p>"I must agree with you," Pyrrha said as she tied her scarlet sash around her waist. "It is hardly the course of honour."</p><p>"I thought that she might challenge me to a duel herself," Sunset declared. "But I never thought that she would stoop to hiring another to be her champion. Is she afraid to face me?"</p><p>"She is afraid of the loss of face if you defeat her," Pyrrha clarified.</p><p>"Huh," Sunset murmured. "I would rather that she had been so afraid of me that she did not dare step into the ring against me, but I suppose I can take fear of loss. And she's right; if she faces me, she <em>will</em> lose."</p><p>"Do you know how good she is?" Jaune asked. "Or not?"</p><p>"I know that she's not nearly as good as she'd like to be," Sunset replied. That much had been obvious from what Pyrrha had said, and what she had not said. Phoebe, it was clear to her, aspired to the kind of greatness that Pyrrha possessed but did not have the raw skill – or the work ethic, probably – to actually achieve such greatness. And so, she was consumed with envy, a jealousy that twisted round and round inside of her like a parasite until she was made mad by it.</p><p>She reminded Sunset of… Dawn. Not of herself, obviously, for she had possessed the stuff of true greatness in her – as she was showing in this world of Remnant – and her own envy of Cadance had been driven not be inadequacy but by a lack of opportunity to shine as bright as she was able to, as bright as she knew that she could shine if only Princess Celestia would let her rise. Dawn, though, Dawn had never really been in Sunset's league, and she had known it too, and that knowing had eaten her alive.</p><p>Phoebe was lucky that Pyrrha was less proud and vainglorious than Sunset had ever been, else she might have taken glee in Phoebe's failures and served to make the wounds hurt all the more.</p><p>
  <em>If she had, the lesson might have sunk in by now.</em>
</p><p>"What are you going to do?" Ruby asked.</p><p>Sunset took off her blouse and pulled her purple top over her head. "I'll accept this Bolin's challenge, and I'll beat him, obviously."</p><p>"You don't have to accept," Pyrrha counselled her. "Bolin has done nothing to personally injure you, nor you him. There is no cause that cries out for the restitution only a duel can provide."</p><p>"Maybe not, but if I refuse his challenge, then I'll look like a coward," Sunset replied. "People will say I did not fight because I was afraid to lose, the way that Phoebe shows that she is afraid to lose by getting someone else to fight on her behalf." She shook her head. "No, I will not make her mistake. I will meet this challenge and defeat anyone she hires to send against me."</p><p>"But, if you lose, then you'll lose the sword," Jaune reminded her.</p><p>Sunset affixed him with a firm gaze. "Then I will not lose," she said.</p><p>They all finished getting changed, and – dressed for action, if any of their names should be called up today – they headed out of the otherwise empty changing room and into the amphitheatre proper for Professor Goodwitch's sparring class.</p><p>Today, Team SAPR took their seats up in the gallery, looking down upon the stage and upon the benches around it where other students were gathering. Sunset spotted Trixie Lulamoon, the lights reflecting off the stars sewn onto her cape, leading her team to seats near the front. She also saw Arslan Altan and presumed that one of the two huntsmen nearby must be Bolin Hori, Phoebe's catspaw.</p><p>"Hey, guys," Yang said as Team YRBN took the row of seats above Team SAPR, "what's up?"</p><p>"Sunset's about to be challenged to a duel," Ruby explained.</p><p>Yang's eyebrows rose. "Again?"</p><p>"Don't say that like it happens all the time," Sunset complained. "I challenged Pyrrha once, as I was within my rights to do."</p><p>"Compared with the average student's total of zero, one is a big number," Blake murmured.</p><p>"I had cause," Sunset repeated. "Some people around here have no respect for tradition."</p><p>"Perhaps because tradition has little respect for some people," Ren suggested in a tone that Sunset could only think of as deceptively mild; he wouldn't have bothered to say such a thing unless something was bothering him.</p><p>"So, who's calling you out, huh?" Nora demanded eagerly. "And why? Come on, spill it, have you been naughty?"</p><p>It was ironic that she had, in fact, been naughty but that that had nothing to do with why she was about to get a challenge. "Someone wants my sword," she said, deciding not to mention that it had belonged to Phoebe's great-great uncle in case it moved them to take her side.</p><p>"They want to fight you so that they can take your stuff?" Nora demanded. "Rude."</p><p>"I feel like there's more to it than that," Ren said carefully.</p><p>"Not as far as I'm concerned there isn't," Sunset muttered.</p><p>"Alright, quiet everyone, settle down," Professor Goodwitch commanded as she strode into the amphitheatre, her heels clicking upon the floor, and walked up onto the stage. Her riding crop was held behind her back, clasped in both hands as she ran her owlish gaze over the assembled freshmen. "You all know the rules by now, so I see no reason not to dive straight into it. I trust that you are all prepared and ready." Her riding crop dropped to her side, held in only one hand as, with the other, she got out her tablet, balancing it in her left hand. With her right, she deftly kept hold of the crop and manipulated the device, running her fingertip across the screen and pushing buttons until she declared. "The first match will be between Bolin Hori and Trixie Lulamoon; please make your way up onto the stage without-"</p><p>She was too late to stop a flood of dark blue smoke from spreading out across the amphitheatre as Trixie let off one of her smoke bombs. She did not then manage to teleport up onto the stage, but at that point, so many students were coughing or spluttering that probably most of them missed her leap up from her seat, trip over the hem of her cape, get up, and then finish running up onto the stage and out of the cloud.</p><p>Apparently, she had failed to reckon with the students in the gallery, or she just didn't care about them, one way or the other.</p><p>Professor Goodwitch gave her a very frosty glare. "Miss Lulamoon, I believe I've made my views on your little theatrics perfectly clear."</p><p>Trixie laughed nervously. "Sorry, Professor. Some habits are hard to break."</p><p>Sunset’s would-be – or soon-to-be, given that Sunset had already vowed not to refuse his challenge – opponent made his way up onto the stage in a less unorthodox manner. He strode up confidently, purposefully, the slightest trace of a confident smirk upon his face. Where the Great and Powerful Trixie was all show with her outfit, Bolin was dressed half pragmatically, in grey pants and vest, and half with an eye to fashion, with a pair of vivid yellow sashes around his waist and across one shoulder. His muscular arms were covered by dark, opera-length gloves, like Pyrrha’s but with the fingers cut out, and in his hand, he held a wooden staff that seemed to possess no other qualities. Around his neck, he wore a string of grey beads; Sunset remembered that Arslan wore fire dust crystals around <em>her</em> neck and wondered if Bolin used earth dust the same way. </p><p><em>I guess I’ll find out, won’t I?</em> Sunset thought. <em>Lucky for me that he got called like this.</em></p><p>Bolin took up his position, the butt of his staff resting on the floor, golden eyes fixed on Trixie. </p><p>Trixie raised the gleaming white wand in her right hand; the tip glowed pale blue. </p><p>“Are you both ready?” Professor Goodwitch asked.</p><p>Bolin nodded silently. </p><p>“The Grrreat and Powwwerful Trrrixie is rrready!” Trixie proclaimed, flinging out her other arm so that her cape billowed out.</p><p>“Is she for real?” Yang demanded from behind them.</p><p>“Don’t underestimate her,” Blake murmured. “She’s got it when it counts.”</p><p>“Does it count now?” Yang asked.</p><p>Blake hesitated. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I suppose we’ll find out.”</p><p>Sunset leaned forward. <em>Don’t beat him too quickly, Trixie; I want to find out what he’s got.</em></p><p>She was starting to think that it might be quite an ‘if’ whether Trixie could beat him or not; after all, assuming Phoebe wasn’t a complete idiot, she wouldn’t have hired someone who didn’t stand a chance against Sunset; just because Bolin was only her second choice didn’t mean that he was without skill. </p><p>All the more reason this match was a boon for her. </p><p>Professor Goodwitch stepped down off the stage with surprising grace, considering the drop she was navigating. Her head was bent down, and with her finger, she tapped a couple more times upon her tablet to cause the images of Trixie and Bolin and their aura levels – both green – to appear upon the banners that hung down the back wall. She turned to face the two combatants, her back to the rest of the students. “Begin!” she declared.</p><p>Bolin started the battle with a headlong rush, dashing straight towards Trixie, his legs pounding. </p><p>Trixie smirked triumphantly as she gestured flamboyantly with her wand. But she didn’t aim at Bolin; rather, she aimed at the ground in front of her as a freezing blast leapt from the tip of her wand, a great cone of ice that expanded outwards from her weapon and across the floor, burying the black surface of the stage in ice and encasing Bolin’s feet within its frigid embrace. And not just his feet, either, as the ice spread across the floor, so too it spread up Bolin’s legs until it covered his knees. The Haven student was quite literally frozen, unable to move in any direction.</p><p>Sunset leaned back, folding her arms as her eyebrows rose. <em>That’s it?</em> she thought as she watched him struggle against his imprisonment, heaving uselessly first with one leg and then another. <em>That’s the guy who’s going to take my sword from me?</em></p><p>
  <em>He’s not much, is he?</em>
</p><p>Trixie clearly thought so too, because she laughed aloud as she ejected the ice dust vial from the base of her wand and inserted a lightning dust vial instead; the chilly blue glow at the tip of her wand was replaced with a sickly yellow light. </p><p>Trixie looked supremely confident now, and Sunset couldn’t blame her; she had immobilised her enemy, and now, she could finish him off practically at her leisure. Sunset was a little surprised that Professor Goodwitch hadn’t called the match already; it was all over bar the shouting. </p><p>Trixie’s grin was savage as she raised her wand once more, and <em>now,</em> she aimed it square at Bolin. Jets of yellow lightning leapt from her weapon, snapping like wild hounds, cavorting over and around one another on their way to their target. Bolin spun his staff wildly before him, the wood whirling, but though he was able to catch some of the lightning upon his staff – so that it only lashed at his hands instead of his face and body – he could not stop all of it; the power of Trixie’s dust penetrated his defences, whipping his face, his chest, his shoulders, snapping and crackling as it tore at him like dogs on a hunt. </p><p>But his aura barely dropped at all. </p><p>It <em>should</em> have dropped; taking a continuous blast of lightning like that should have been flaying his aura towards the yellow, staff or no. Instead, although his aura dropped, it did so only by a small amount and remained stubbornly in the green, and the high green at that. </p><p>Sunset’s eyes widened, and a quick glance confirmed that her teammates were all similarly astonished. His aura levels must be almost on a par with Jaune’s, and having a lot of aura was basically Jaune’s thing. Whether Bolin was skilled or not remained to be seen, but the boy was an absolute beast when it came to how much he could take. </p><p>He stopped blocking with his staff, and as he raised the wooden weapon above his head, she could see that it was still hurting him to get shocked like that; his face was a rictus of controlled pain as the yellow lightning rippled up and down his form, but he bore it nonetheless as he brought the staff down upon the ice that held him captive. </p><p>Bolin’s aura dropped by a larger amount than the lightning had degraded it as, with an aura-induced shockwave, the ice shattered. Bolin leapt forwards, staff whirling in his hands as he fell upon Trixie like a hawk. </p><p>Trixie took a step backwards, teetering upon the very edge of the stage. With her free hand, she reached for one of the purple pouches that she wore at her belt, pulling out another smoke bomb and flinging it down onto the stage. The fighting platform was engulfed in blue smoke, rising in curling clouds to conceal Trixie from view. Bolin landed amidst the expanding cloud, just about visible due to his height as he brought his staff down in a savage slash where Trixie had been just a moment before. </p><p>Trixie leapt upwards and out of the smoke cloud, her starry cape flying out behind her, her pointed hat wobbling upon her head, her silver hair askew as her jump carried her upwards into the air above the stage. Trixie reached into a different pouch, producing three fire dust crystal clasped between her fingers. They began to burn an instant before she flung them down like missiles to blossom in flame amidst the smoke. Bolin’s aura dropped, but not by enough. </p><p>Trixie descended back onto the stage, and there, she began to slip upon her own ice, her arms flailing wildly as her high boots struggled for purchase. Bolin took his moment. He charged out of the smoke, crunching the ice beneath his feet, his staff whirling in his hand. He swung, a heavy, two-handed blow that struck Trixie across the head and caused the illusory Trixie conjured by her semblance to dissipate into thin air. </p><p>Trixie let out a triumphant shout as she flung more fire dust crystals – a whole handful of them this time – out at Bolin. </p><p>Bolin ripped one of the grey beads from off his neck and flung it down, ducking as he did so. </p><p>Trixie’s fire dust crystals burst around him, flames erupting in a ring all around the Haven student. Trixie flung some more crystals for good measure, and Sunset suspected that she sought to blast Bolin clean off the stage where it wouldn’t matter how much aura he had left. </p><p>But the only damage that Trixie’s fire was doing was to the dome of stone that Bolin had formed around himself. </p><p>Earth dust, just as Sunset had suspected. It cracked and crumbled as the fires raged all around it, but Bolin’s monstrous aura remained intact throughout the barrage. </p><p>The dome cracked, and a single good-sized boulder flew out of it to strike Trixie upon the temple. Her hat was knocked off her head; she staggered backwards as her aura dropped and was unable to react quickly enough as Bolin burst out of the dome and fell upon her. </p><p>At which point, it was all over, bar the actual beating of her aura into the red. Trixie had never had much talent for close combat. </p><p>Bolin, on the other hand, was talented, if not particularly sophisticated; he struck Trixie into the gut to make her double over, then swung his staff upwards to strike her in the face. He swept her legs out from under her to dump her on the floor, then just kept hitting her until the fight was done. </p><p>“That’s enough,” Professor Goodwitch declared. “The match is over, Mister Hori; you are victorious.”</p><p>Bolin nodded. “Thank you, Professor,” he said, and then he looked up, and it seemed to Sunset that he looked directly at her, a glimmer in his golden eyes that seemed to say ‘you’re next.’</p><p>
  <em>Cheeky little-</em>
</p><p>“Are you sure you want to fight that guy?” Jaune asked as Professor Goodwitch gave the two of them her notes.</p><p>“Yes,” Sunset said, sounding even more firm now than she had in the locker rooms. If she had feared to be thought afraid before, she was absolutely not going to back down just because she’d seen him fight. She would allow no one to say that she had run in fear of his prowess. </p><p>Not after the way he’d looked at her.</p><p>“I’m not Trixie,” she added. “I can handle him.”</p><p>“How?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“I… haven’t gotten to that part yet,” Sunset admitted. “But I’ll find a way; you guys trust me, right?”</p><p>“We have every faith in you, of course,” Pyrrha said. “Speaking as someone who has been on the receiving end of your attacks, they hit harder than I imagine Trixie’s dust does.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Sunset murmured. “I’m not sure if that will work.”</p><p>Pyrrha frowned slightly. “Why not?”</p><p>“This is a fight over Soteria, right?” Sunset asked. “That means that I should probably use Soteria.”</p><p>Pyrrha raised one eyebrow. “You mean to fight him sword against staff?” She couldn’t keep the scepticism out of her voice.</p><p>“I thought you had every faith in me?”</p><p>“I do,” Pyrrha insisted. “But the sword is not your strongest weapon.”</p><p>“But it is the object of this battle; that cannot be ignored,” Sunset replied. <em>How can I claim the right to Soteria if I do not wield Soteria?</em> Sometimes, you had to accept a slight disadvantage in order to prove a point. Besides, she’d make it work. </p><p>Hopefully.</p><p>By now, Professor Goodwitch had finished advising the two combatants and putting the stage back into order. Her attention was once more upon her device. “That was a very good match to begin with, so let’s carry on with… Pyrrha Nikos-” A murmur of anticipation ran around the crowd as Pyrrha got to her feet, waiting to see who her opponent would be. Penny, down in the lower level, stuck her hand up in the air and started bouncing up and down in her seat in an effort to attract Professor Goodwitch’s attention. </p><p>Professor Goodwitch didn’t look up to notice. “Against… Ditzy Doo.”</p><hr/><p>Pyrrha entered the lower level of the amphitheatre by the front, passing between the two rows of haphazardly placed benches as she walked with a steady pace towards the stage. </p><p>When the combat began, the lights dimmed, save for those on the stage itself, to encourage the students’ attention that way. In a sense, it was more like being in a movie theatre than any arena that Pyrrha had ever fought in; under the light of the sun, a gladiator was expected to hold the audience’s attention upon their own merits. </p><p>Still, in the current gloom, she could see none of the other students as she passed between them; they were vague shadows to her, dark silhouettes devoid of detail. In the dark, they could almost have reminded her of the grimm, save that they weren’t trying to kill her.</p><p>No, they were just watching her instead. She could feel their gazes upon her, and self-consciousness made the gorget around her neck seem to heat up to an uncomfortable degree. They whispered too, though not loudly enough that Pyrrha could make out the words. </p><p>She had a reputation; that could not be avoided, but it didn’t mean that she enjoyed the fact. She did not enjoy the high esteem that verged on awe in which she was held by some, but as she reflected upon Arslan’s warnings to her, Pyrrha felt as though awe and respect might be preferable to being detested by her fellow Mistralians. </p><p>“Traitor!” someone hissed, as though to prove her point. </p><p>Pyrrha ignored the word and wished she could ignore the feelings that the word had roused in her. There was nothing she could do about it; she had no idea who had spoken or what in particular she had done – attending Beacon, dating Jaune, or something else entirely – to rouse their ire. </p><p>She could do nothing except pretend she had not heard, or that if she had heard, she did not care. </p><p>Pyrrha loved Mistral. She was not blind to its flaws; she saw as clearly as anyone the way that Mistral was too fond of the glories of its past to make any fresh achievements in the future. She loved it for the beauty of the mountainside city, for the gleam of the White Tower as it caught the light of the rising sun, for the gentle courtesy of so many of its people. The elder realm would always have a claim upon her heart and loyalty, but did that mean that she must devote her life to it wholly to the exclusion of all else? Did that mean that she was not allowed to go anywhere else, enjoy anything else, lest she slight Mistral’s fragile pride in so doing? Was she not allowed to attend a school in Vale without insulting Haven? Was she not allowed to date a kind and honest Valish boy without emasculating all the young men of Mistral to a degree that cried out for vengeance? </p><p>She had not asked for Mistral’s love; she had not asked for them to call her princess, to call her their pride, to speak of her as the rebirth of heroes whose stature she would not presume to measure herself against. She had won the title Champion of Mistral in the arena, but she had not thought it meant she was required to champion Mistral in all things and shun all traces of the foreign. </p><p>Others had chosen to place their hopes and dreams upon her shoulders, and now, they blamed her that she was not equal to a weight she had not sought to bear. </p><p>It was unfair. </p><p>And yet, at the same time, she was probably foolish and childish as well as selfish to think so. Her name was Nikos, she excelled in the public eye in a field in which so many Mistralians took pride; how could they not treat her this way?</p><p>She had asked for this; or at least, her mother had. </p><p>
  <em>I would rather fight for you without your praise or eyes on me. And yet, for all this, I will go home once I have graduated and fight for you whether you watch me or not.</em>
</p><p><em>Unless…</em> it occurred to Pyrrha that she hadn’t actually discussed the future with Jaune at all; it had seemed too early, and she didn’t want to scare him off. But what if he didn’t want to go to Mistral? What if he preferred to stay in Vale?</p><p>She would not leave him. She could not leave him, not even for her home; her heart revolted against the notion. </p><p>Perhaps that did make her something of a traitor after all. </p><p>Pyrrha did her best to block out all such thoughts and focus solely on the battle ahead as she leapt up onto the stage, her red sash trailing behind her. </p><p>Ditzy Doo was already there, waiting for her; she was of a height with Sunset, or near enough, with flaxen hair worn long and loose down almost to her waist, and cut in an untidy fringe that covered her forehead. A tail of the same flaxen colour dropped towards the floor from out of her pants. Her eyes were golden and slightly misaligned, one looking up and the other downwards. Her other features were soft and quite small, particularly her button nose which was barely visible upon her face. She was dressed in a blue shirt with the collar undone and a green skirt with white bubbles on one side, which must have been her personal emblem like Pyrrha’s spear symbol. She wore protective pads upon her knees and elbows, and bandages wrapped around her hands and lower arms. </p><p>“Hey there,” she said, her voice soft but her tone cheery at the same time. “Let’s do our best, okay?”</p><p>Pyrrha brought down her arms, and Miló – in spear form – and Akoúo̱ flew into her waiting hands. “Indeed,” she murmured.</p><p>Ditzy didn’t appear to have any weapons, but she bunched her hands into fists and raised them expectantly. </p><p>“Begin!” Professor Goodwitch cried.</p><p>Pyrrha dashed forwards, her armoured legs pounding as her sash flew behind her like a scarlet banner; she drew Miló back for a thrust aimed squarely for Ditzy’s chest. Ditzy, meanwhile, did not move; she stood there, eyes unblinking, letting Pyrrha come on. </p><p>Pyrrha leapt and thrust her spear; the gleaming tip of Miló plunged forth.</p><p>Ditzy twisted like an eel, her body contorting with incredibly swiftness as she twisted out of the way of the oncoming blow. She balanced on one leg, her other limbs spread out as Miló flew past her, Pyrrha’s arm extending outwards with it. Pyrrha began to snap backwards, using Polarity to more quickly reverse the momentum of her thrust, bringing up Akoúo̱ to defend herself-</p><p>Ditzy’s fist snapped out, and Pyrrha found that she was too slow, just too slow, to bring up her shield to prevent a punch square to the face. Her aura absorbed the blow but not the force that threw her backwards. Pyrrha ignored the smarting of her face – and the gasps from some in the watching crowd – as she converted being knocked head over heels into a backflip that set her down upon her feet and facing her opponent. </p><p>
  <em>So strong! And so fast too! I’m sure that Arslan never hit so hard.</em>
</p><p>Her face was still smarting; honestly, that had felt a little worse than getting hit with Sunset’s magic.</p><p>Pyrrha flicked the hair of her ponytail out of her face as she threw her shield at Ditzy, Akoúo̱ spinning through the air at the level of Ditzy’s midriff. Ditzy leapt, her tail wrapping around her waist as she spun in place, a smile that would have been comical in other circumstances plastered onto her face as Akoúo̱ began to pass beneath her.</p><p>She reached out and grabbed it with one hand, plucking it out of the air and barely seeming to feel the momentum at all before, still spinning, she threw the shield right back at Pyrrha. </p><p>Pyrrha stepped forward, leaning away from the oncoming shield even as she stretched out her left arm towards it. She wondered if anyone would notice the black outline surrounding her gloved hand as she activated her semblance, turning her shield aside a tad and guiding it to where she could ‘catch’ it on her gleaming vambrace.</p><p>She slung it swiftly onto her back as, in her other hand, Miló switched from spear to rifle. Pyrrha pressed the gun to her shoulder and let fly with three rapid shots. Ditzy was a blur of motion as she squirmed, her body twisting this way and that, avoiding all three rounds which slammed harmlessly into the forcefield that surrounded the stage. </p><p>Instinct made Pyrrha glance towards the aura levels underneath the portraits displayed upon the wall; her own aura was down, but still in the green. More interestingly, Ditzy’s aura was down too, even though she hadn’t been hit. </p><p><em>So, a semblance. Some kind of quick reflexes, and it burns aura – although she may be using her aura to strengthen her attacks too.</em> </p><p>Some semblances were more aura-efficient than others. Pyrrha’s ability to hide hers from general knowledge relied on the fact that; used carefully, it consumed practically no aura at all and was thus invisible from the perspective of anyone watching her aura level. That was how Sunset was able to conceal the fact that her aura didn’t drop despite her throwing out magic all over the place – although the fact that poor Sunset rarely got through a fight with taking some very aura-depleting hits certainly helped in that regard as well.</p><p>Ditzy, it seemed, was not as fortunate as Pyrrha in that regard; her semblance helped her to escape harm, but it burned her aura – although less than taking the hits would have, admittedly.</p><p>Either way, it provided a path to victory for Pyrrha: so long as she could avoid taking too many punishing blows herself, she could force Ditzy to deplete her own aura into the red through use of her semblance. </p><p>That would make her the winner, but it would also be rather unsatisfying, both for everyone watching and, more importantly, for Pyrrha herself. </p><p>This was a challenge, and she wanted to rise to it, not cheat her way around it.</p><p>Miló shifted to sword form in her hand as Akoúo̱ resumed its place on her arm.</p><p>Ditzy waited, her wall eyes making it impossible to tell what she was looking at, but Pyrrha decided it was best to assume that she was focussed on Pyrrha herself. And yet she made no move to attack. It seemed that her semblance encouraged her to be defensive; unfortunately for her, that meant ceding the initiative in battle. </p><p>Pyrrha hesitated, her mind whirling with potential movements, the counters to those moves that Ditzy could make, and how Pyrrha could counter <em>those</em> moves. </p><p><em>Yes,</em> she thought, <em>that way.</em></p><p>Pyrrha charged once again, her arms pumping as her legs thumped the stage, her ponytail flying. Ditzy prepared to meet her, fists raised. Pyrrha led with Akoúo̱, drawing back her shield arm – the shield was a weapon, just as she had always told Jaune – before throwing it forward like a punch, aiming the edge for Ditzy’s face. Ditzy dodged, as Pyrrha had expected she would, her semblance granting her speed and the agility to bend out of the way, her back arching. </p><p>She was still bending when Pyrrha slashed at her midriff with Miló. </p><p>It might have worked, and if it had worked, then Pyrrha would have been well-pleased, but she was not surprised when Ditzy leapt into the air, twisting yet further, turning and bending so that her Miló passed before her belly.</p><p>And as Miló passed, Pyrrha switched the weapon from sword to spear, her trusty weapon transition smoothly and, more importantly, swiftly, the point extending outwards to catch Ditzy too close for even her semblance to get her out of the way. Miló extended yet further with a bang as Pyrrha fired the weapon, flames leaping from the back as Ditzy was tossed backwards, hitting the stage and bouncing until she landed on her back near the edge.</p><p>Arslan and Sunset both cheered, and both were admonished by Professor Goodwitch.</p><p>Pyrrha leapt, the lights shining down from above glinting off her gilded armour, briefly silhouetting her like a falcon flying against the sun as she fell like thunder down on Ditzy Doo. </p><p>Her spear descended. Ditzy rolled out of the way, leaping up onto her hands and then using them to propel herself upwards, feet first, up towards the descending Pyrrha. Now it was Pyrrha’s turn to twist like an eel, sash furling up around her waist as Ditzy’s feet and legs flew past her.</p><p>Ditzy was still smiling. </p><p>And so was Pyrrha. </p><p>They both landed nimbly on their feet, and now – with her aura in the yellow – Ditzy went on the attack, her fists flying. Pyrrha took the blows on Akoúo̱, feeling the strength of her opponent reverberating through her arm. She swept at Ditzy’s legs with Miló. Ditzy leapt up. Pyrrha drove forwards, lashing out with Akoúo̱. Ditzy took the blow with both hands, but with no feet on the ground, it still threw her backwards, although she rolled with it and landed on her feet. </p><p>Pyrrha charged, Miló switching smoothly from spear to sword in her hand. Ditzy charged to meet her. </p><p>Pyrrha did not have a semblance that granted her the ability to dodge hits with preternatural agility, but she was agile and swift, and she had been taught the importance of striking without being struck. And so, when the two of them came together, it was not as two bulls or stags battling for supremacy in field or meadow; rather, it resembled two dancers, moving in time and harmony with one another, never touching as they each dodged all the blows of the other. Between Ditzy’s semblance and Pyrrha’s talent and experience, there was simply nothing between them.</p><p>The smile faltered on Pyrrha’s face, not because she felt in any danger of losing, but because she felt in grave danger of failing to win the right way. </p><p>She had to do something to break the deadlock before Ditzy’s aura ran out, but what?</p><p>And then she had it.</p><p>Pyrrha threw her shield, casting it aside in a wide arc that – with a little touch of Polarity – curved around the stage like a discus. She slashed with Miló, aiming for Ditzy’s neck and shoulder. Ditzy leaned back almost ninety degrees in another display of semblance-fuelled agility. Akoúo̱ flew back, heading first for the floor of the stage and then rising upwards towards Ditzy, who leapt up even as she remained bent over, her body straightening in the air as Pyrrha’s stroke passed above her, and Akoúo̱, despite its rising angle, seemed poised to pass beneath and pose more danger to its mistress than her foe.</p><p>Until Pyrrha applied a touch of Polarity to drastically increase the angle of Akoúo̱’s ascent. The shield jerked upwards, and once more, it seemed that there was a limit to Ditzy’s ability to get out of the way when something was too close. She started twisting, but too late, and Akoúo̱ struck her in the small of the back. Ditzy winced in pain, and Pyrrha brought Miló and both hands down hard enough to slam Ditzy into the stage and drop her aura into the red. </p><p>“And that’s the match,” Professor Goodwitch declared. “You are victorious again, Miss Nikos; congratulations.”</p><p>“Thank you, Professor,” Pyrrha said, as she slung Akoúo̱ and Miló onto her back. She bent down a little to offer Ditzy a hand up. “You fought well.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Ditzy said, accepting Pyrrha’s hand. “I had a lot of fun.”</p><p>“I’m glad to hear it,” Pyrrha said, “because so did I.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0057"><h2>57. A Matter of Pride</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sunset contemplates her impending duel.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A Matter of Pride</p><p> </p><p>The moon was out, and the stars surrounded her like courtiers around a princess as Beacon lay smothered beneath the shroud of night. </p><p>The lights of the Emerald Tower glowed softly in the sky high above the ground and were answered from an even greater height by the pilot lights of an Atlesian man-of-war holding position not far off the docking pads. </p><p>Fortunately, there were no smaller airships out flying patrol over Beacon at the moment and disturbing the air in consequence. It meant that, as Sunset sat out beneath the statue of the huntsman, the huntress, and the beowolf, she was not constantly disturbed by the whining of engines. Nor by any other sound; it was Thursday evening, dinner was done, and it was a school night – albeit the night before a shorter school day – and so there was no one around to bother her. Everyone was in their dorms, beavering away upon Professor Port’s homework. </p><p>Right now, she had other opponents on her mind than the grimm.</p><p>Bolin Hori had delivered his challenge. Sunset had accepted, of course; she had promised that she would, and she was a mare of her word; at least, she tried to be. It didn’t matter if she had given that word only in the presence of her three teammates; it was still her word nonetheless, and she had given it. She had given it, and she would hold to it. </p><p>Much though she might regret it now. </p><p>Bolin was not a poor choice on the part of Phoebe Kommenos. With his great store of aura alone, he might be able to withstand her long enough to beat her down, all the more so if she insisted on facing him with her sword instead of her magic. </p><p>Pyrrha was right; it wasn’t her strong suit. And yet, at the same time, it felt… <em>wrong</em>, somehow, to fight <em>for</em> the sword and yet not fight <em>with</em> the sword. Why did she deserve Soteria if she disdained to fight with it?</p><p>What was the good of fighting with Soteria only to lose it through incompetence?</p><p>Especially when the sword was hardly hers to lose. </p><p>That was why she was out here in the courtyard, instead of in the dorm room with the rest of them.</p><p>Her friends. Those who lifted her up. Those whom she let down. </p><p>The potential loss of Soteria was only one reason why she was here; the other reason, and the reason why her magical journal was sitting in a satchel bag, weighing heavily upon one shoulder, was revenge.</p><p>Bolin was but a limb of Phoebe; he moved according to her designs, doing what she instructed him to do – what she paid him to do. Sunset supposed bitterly that taking money from just anybody in order to do whatever they wished of him was as good training for the life of a huntsman as anything else that Bolin might learn at Beacon or Haven. </p><p>That <em>was</em> a bitter thought, one that surprised her a little. After all, she was training to become a huntress too, and so were Pyrrha and Jaune and Ruby. Was that all they would become upon graduation? Hirelings for the rich and powerful, enforcers of their will, no matter how wicked?</p><p>No; no, that would not be their fate, not them. Ruby was too pure in heart to subjugate herself thus to the power of money; Sunset wouldn’t be surprised if she never once took an official mission but simply roamed the land wherever her nose for danger took her, righting wrongs and slaying monsters. Pyrrha was fortunate enough to have no need to abase herself to earn a crust – provided that her mother did not tire of her stubbornness and cut her off – and Jaune would be similarly secure so long as he recognise how lucky he was and stuck with her; and besides, Sunset wouldn’t be surprised if Lady Terri-Belle made another attempt to get Pyrrha for the Imperial Guard. </p><p>And as for Sunset herself… to be for sale was no more her destiny than it was Pyrrha’s. Neither would choose it, neither would accept it, both of them understood that they had been fashioned for far greater things, however proud that might sound to outsiders. </p><p>Let Bolin Hori keep his lien. Let him make more of it on mission after mission of dubious morality; Sunset might walk a poorer path, but it would be paved with glory for certain. </p><p>It pleased her, at the least, to think so. Now… what had she been thinking about just now? Ah, yes, Phoebe. Phoebe Kommenos, who feared to face Sunset across the arena and so used a catspaw. </p><p>Sunset had expected a challenge from Phoebe herself, but it seemed that she had overestimated the other girl in every way except her cunning. </p><p>Sunset wished to strike back at her… but she had promised Jaune that she was past that now, that she had learnt her lesson. </p><p>It was one thing to say something to Rainbow Dash and then go back on it: Sunset didn’t like Rainbow all that much; she was self-righteous and full of herself, and she had tried to bully Sunset into doing what she wanted. Jaune… Jaune was different. Jaune was her friend, and he had talked to her as a friend and persuaded her to turn aside from that road. </p><p>She… she didn’t want to let him down. He was such a nice boy.</p><p>
  <em>A nice boy with blue eyes, like Flash. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lucky, lucky Pyrrha.</em>
</p><p>And yet, nevertheless, she felt within her a desire to get back at Phoebe somehow; defeating her pawn would not affect her at all, save for the frustration of not getting her hands on Soteria, and that didn’t feel enough for Sunset. She wanted more. She wanted to make her… she wanted to warn Phoebe off. </p><p>But she doubted that Jaune would see it that way if she did anything. </p><p>Sunset sighed. It was hard work, maintaining the good opinion of good people. </p><p>It might prove to be even harder to maintain the good opinion of proud people. </p><p>Sunset got out her scroll. No, wait; there was a time differential, wasn’t there? Mistral was several hours ahead of Vale, which would make it a very uncivilised hour of the morning in Mistral. She would need to wait until her morning and Lady Nikos’ afternoon, to speak to her regarding… regarding the possible loss of the venerable black sword. </p><p>“Why don’t you speak to me instead of my mother?” Pyrrha asked as she stepped out of the shadows and into the moonlight; it glimmered off her gilded armour. </p><p>Sunset rose to her feet, “Pyrrha,” she said quietly. “What are you doing out here?”</p><p>“I think that the answer to that is a little more obvious than the question of what you’re doing here, don’t you think?”</p><p>Sunset snorted. “I wanted some privacy.”</p><p>“Oh,” Pyrrha said, her face falling. “Well, I can-”</p><p>“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that; I’m sorry,” Sunset said quickly. “Please, stay, and thank you.”</p><p>The slightest trace of a smile pricked at the corners of Pyrrha’s lips. She nodded, a barely perceptible gesture of her head, and took a step forward; her scarlet sash fluttered around her leg. </p><p>“Dressed for war,” Sunset observed, gesturing to her battle outfit. “Do you expect enemies to fall upon us here?”</p><p>“I hope not,” Pyrrha murmured, with more sincerity than Sunset’s remark strictly warranted. “I would hope that if there is a single place in the world that can be called truly safe, then this is it.”</p><p>“I think our world is not so grim that this is the only safe place in it, though, like you, I hope that it is among them,” Sunset replied. She sat down. “I wasn’t really expecting a serious answer.”</p><p>“Oh, I’m sorry.”</p><p>“What for?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“Well, for… I’m not sure,” Pyrrha admitted. “But I’m sure that there must be something. The truth is that I sometimes like wearing this, even when there is no battle to be fought. Is that so wrong?”</p><p>“No,” Sunset replied quickly. “It’s just… less practical than an outfit like Ruby’s for casual wear.”</p><p>Pyrrha chuckled. “That’s true. But I’m not a particularly casual person, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”</p><p>Sunset shrugged. “It has occurred to me, I must admit.” She paused. “I was out here-”</p><p>“Brooding?”</p><p>“Thinking,” Sunset insisted. “Also, as you guessed, I was going to call your mother before I remembered the time difference.”</p><p>“What were you going to tell her?” Pyrrha asked.</p><p>“The truth, that I may lose her sword,” Sunset said. She hesitated. “How do you think she’ll take it?”</p><p>“I… well…”</p><p>“Be honest.”</p><p>“Honestly, I hardly think that she’ll take it well,” Pyrrha said. “But then… you know her better than I do.”</p><p>“Don’t start with that again,” Sunset muttered. “You’ve known her your whole life; I’ve known her for a couple of weeks.”</p><p>“I know,” Pyrrha said with the slight trace of a sigh. “And yet…”</p><p>“Indeed, and yet,” Sunset said. “It’s funny: you envy me for your mother’s favour, and I envy you for the light that shines so bright upon you and casts the rest of us in shadow. If only we could live each other’s lives, we might be well-contented.”</p><p>Pyrrha blinked rapidly. “You… you envy me?” she asked. “Still?”</p><p>“Always, I fear, at least so long as you are Pyrrha Nikos,” Sunset confessed. “Do you not know that you are the girl who captured Roman Torchwick?”</p><p>Pyrrha tutted as she shook her head. “I did very little.”</p><p>“And yet that is not what the stories say.”</p><p>“Just stories-”</p><p>“Our lives are made of stories,” Sunset declared. “They are what remain of us when we are gone. It doesn’t matter whether Olivia was really the gallant knight of Vale or whether she was a fraud or whether she never lived at all, because Olivia exists not in the past but in that book in Ruby’s room, and her deeds are the deeds that are attributed to her. That is her truth, that is <em>the</em> truth. And so, it doesn’t matter who really captured Roman Torchwick, because it will be remembered that Pyrrha Nikos brought him in, and that will be the truth. And so it will be with all our deeds, which shall be your deeds, and we little more than… squires to attend upon you in your idle hours.”</p><p>“We will remember what you did,” Pyrrha argued. “And Ruby, and Jaune; those who were there will remember.”</p><p>“While we live,” Sunset replied. “As I said, stories are what remain of us when we are gone.”</p><p>“When we are gone, does it really matter?”</p><p>“Not to you, maybe, but I’m not risking my life out of altruism,” Sunset declared. “Or… something a little less unworthy.”</p><p>Pyrrha chuckled, covering her mouth with one brown-gloved hand. The laughter died, and she looked suddenly rather nervous. “Sunset, do you… is it very hard for you to pretend to-?”</p><p>“I’m not pretending anything!” Sunset cut her off with a firm exclamation. “I’m concealing a little, but that’s not the same thing. Are you pretending?”</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha replied, sounding almost outraged by the suggestion.</p><p>“Well, then,” Sunset said, “there you go. We both have things that are… best left unsaid, as a rule. It’s not like I dislike you, not like I did. I understand that you didn’t want this, I understand that you’ve earned it through your sweat, I understand…” She smiled. “I understand that there is so much in you that is good and noble, so much that is to be admired… or adored.” She smiled sadly. “And yet, I cannot but detest the shadow and envy you that command the light.” Her smile faltered into nervousness. “That… it’s not unbearable for you to know that, is it? I would hate, I mean I don’t want-”</p><p>“We can still be friends, if that’s what you mean,” Pyrrha said softly. “If that’s what you want.”</p><p>“Of course it’s what I want,” Sunset said. “Is it what you want?”</p><p>Pyrrha said nothing but reached out and took one of Sunset’s hands in her own. “Perhaps, in our mutual envy, we might offer consolation to one another.”</p><p>Sunset snorted. “Yeah, maybe,” she said lightly. She glanced away for a moment, her eyes flickering up to the lights that glowed at the top of the tower. “If… if I lose your family heirloom, I apologise in advance.”</p><p>“Surely, you’re not contemplating defeat?” Pyrrha asked, in a tone more wry than Sunset would have expected from her.</p><p>She turned her attention back to her companion. “Listen to you. I’d be a fool if I didn’t at least contemplate the possibility of defeat.”</p><p>“Who are you, and what have you done with Sunset?”</p><p>“Shut up!” Sunset cried. “I can admit that I’m not invincible. Especially in front of the actual Invincible Girl.”</p><p>Pyrrha groaned. “Please don’t.”</p><p>“I mean it,” Sunset declared. “I mean… it’s easy to admit that I’m less than perfect to you. I don’t intend to lose the sword, but I can’t deny the risk that I will.”</p><p>“It’s just a sword,” Pyrrha assured her. “I won’t think any the less of you if you lose one fight.”</p><p>“But your mother will?”</p><p>Pyrrha did not answer. That was about what Sunset was expecting.</p><p>“The very honour that your mother did to me,” she said, “by bestowing Soteria upon me, that very honour is the reason why I must fight. Lady Nikos’…” She hesitated, faltering, unsure of exactly how to describe herself in relation to Lady Nikos. “If I were too cowardly to accept Bolin’s challenge, I would prove unworthy of her faith. I would prove unworthy to stand as your-”</p><p>“I have no need of a bodyguard.”</p><p>“I was going to say 'companion in battle,'” Sunset declared heavily. “'Bodyguard'?” she chuckled. “I am no more your retainer than your mother’s, Lady Pyrrha.”</p><p>Pyrrha’s face flushed, the red of her cheeks visible in the moonlight. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>Sunset smiled. “Do you remember when you would not fight for me?” she asked. “You wouldn’t obey my orders. You sulked like your namesake in the <em>Mistraliad</em>.”</p><p>“Not quite,” Pyrrha corrected her. “That Pyrrha sulked in her tent. I fought; I simply didn’t fight according to your instructions.”</p><p>“Not that it stopped you winning,” Sunset muttered. “It made me feel rather superfluous. Do you remember what we were fighting about?”</p><p>“You… you had insulted me,” Pyrrha replied.</p><p>“I had dishonoured you, and you could not abide it,” Sunset corrected. “You could not bear the slight, not bear to follow a leader unworthy of your service. Just as I could not bear to simply hand over Soteria to one who is not worthy to possess it. My honour will not allow it.”</p><p>“Is it honour that we speak of now, or pride?” Pyrrha asked.</p><p>“Can one have honour without a little pride?” Sunset replied. “If we have no pride in ourselves, how can we understand what we deserve from the world, what is beneath us, what is a level to which we ought not stoop?”</p><p>“Perhaps we should not concern ourselves with such things,” Pyrrha suggested, “and simply endeavour to be kind.”</p><p>“Even the kind should have some pride in themselves, or they will be trampled underfoot by those who do possess some self-regard,” Sunset said. “In any case, I do not think I have it in me to be so humble. Nor do you, I think, although you come closer.”</p><p>Pyrrha was silent a while. “No,” she allowed. “Or else your slanders would not have bothered me as they did, when the year first began.” She hesitated, turning her face upwards to stare at the moon above them. “Have you finished the <em>Mistraliad</em> yet?”</p><p>“I have,” Sunset confirmed. “A little while ago.”</p><p>“What do you think of Pyrrha?” Pyrrha asked. “The one in the book, I mean; I haven’t started referring to myself in the third person.”</p><p>Sunset considered it for a moment. “She is… not altogether sympathetic,” she declared. “And, in truth, I don’t think she’s meant to be, or else the text would not be so impatient to remind us that, while Pyrrha broods in her tent, men and women are dying before the city walls as battle rages.”</p><p>“Indeed,” Pyrrha said. “In Mistral, we hold our pride, our honour, so sacred that it is acceptable to withdraw even from war if your lord and master does not treat you with the respect and courtesy which you are due, but on the other hand, to stand idly by in the face of battle, to turn away and refuse to fight when the enemy is at hand, that is utterly contemptible. We must fight, though we be outmatched, though it costs us our lives, as Juturna comes to realise before the end. The point is… I understand why you have to accept this challenge.”</p><p>“‘Always be the best, the bravest,’” Sunset recited, “and hold your head up high above all others.”</p><p>“Indeed,” Pyrrha murmured. “You would have made a very good Mistralian.”</p><p>Sunset chuckled. “I did enjoy your home.”</p><p>“You could always come back,” Pyrrha said. “Not just for a holiday, but after graduation. Mistral needs huntresses as much as Vale, or Atlas, or anywhere else. You could make a home there, and Ruby too, if she would; she could fight for humanity as easily in Mistral as anywhere else, and… we could be together a little longer. What we have, what you’ve all given me… I don’t want to lose it.”</p><p>Sunset was silent for a moment. Live in Mistral? Well, why not? It wasn’t something that she’d particularly thought about, but now that she did think about it, she couldn’t think of any pressing objections. Where else was she going to live? Here in Vale? Back in Atlas? She had to settle somewhere, and Mistral was as good a place as any and better than most. </p><p>And Pyrrha was right; it would keep the team together. </p><p>That alone was enough to make it tempting, even beyond the delights of Mistral itself. </p><p>“I don’t want to lose this either,” she agreed. “And after all, Team Stark stuck it out after graduation, why not us? But all the same, maybe best not to mention it to Ruby just yet. A lot can happen in four years; it seems… a little premature to be making plans now.”</p><p>Pyrrha nodded. “You’re probably right,” she agreed. “I’m probably getting ahead of myself again.”</p><p>“You’ve already picked out a wedding dress, haven’t you?”</p><p>“No!” Pyrrha cried, her cheeks reddening yet further.</p><p>“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Sunset assured her. She grinned. “It might be something to be embarrassed about, but not ashamed.”</p><p>“Please, stop,” Pyrrha begged amusedly. “It’s not… I’m not that bad, thank the sea and sky. Or at least… I mean, I feel that… in my heart, I-”</p><p>“You don’t have to explain your feelings to me,” Sunset said. “You love who you love, and that’s all there is to it. I just hope that he’s worthy of you.”</p><p>“I hope that I’m worthy of him,” Pyrrha insisted.</p><p><em>You really mean that, don’t you? The princess of Mistral, and you’re in awe of some Valish boy from the backwoods. </em>Sunset shook her head. “Thank you,” she said. “For coming out here.”</p><p>Now it was Pyrrha’s turn to smile. “Even the great warriors of old were rarely alone on the eve of a great battle.”</p><p>“Although some were,” Sunset pointed out. “Like another namesake of yours, the Empress Pyrrha the Second.”</p><p>“A namesake and an ancestor,” Pyrrha murmured.</p><p>Sunset’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”</p><p>“According to legend, at least,” Pyrrha said. “Our Mistralian ‘history’ begins with the founding of the city by Theseus, from whom I am, apparently, descended, but this is all long before written records, let alone accurate ones, so who can say for sure? But, by tale and by tradition, I am descended from Theseus and all of the Emperors and Empresses who followed in his line, including Polites, the only son of Paris to survive the Sack of Mistral and rebuild the city, and Pyrrha the Second.”</p><p>“But not your other namesake, the Pyrrha of the Mistraliad.”</p><p>“Um, her too,” Pyrrha confessed. “Through her great-great-great-grandaughter, Hermione, who married the Emperor Neoptolemus. But, again, this is all myth… but then, according to you, that doesn’t matter, does it?”</p><p>“Not particularly,” Sunset replied. “And in any event, one only has to watch you fight to see that the blood of heroes runs in your veins.”</p><p>Pyrrha ignored that and said, “I’m a little surprised that you know about Pyrrha the Second.”</p><p>“Twilight gave me a book which recorded the story,” Sunset explained. “It didn’t say what happened to her child; I assumed-”</p><p>“Fearing the worst, her father smuggled Princess Juno out of the city ahead of the Red Queen’s coming,” Pyrrha explained. “She was given over to a kindly shepherd and his wife to raise as their own until she was old enough to choose her own destiny. When she learned of her true parentage, she raised an army from amongst the country-folk and retook Mistral.”</p><p>“Then you know about the Red Queens?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Pyrrha frowned slightly. “There was only one Red Queen.”</p><p>Sunset shook her head. “One bore that name, but there were others like her. I admit, I skimmed through some of it, but are there no more tales of Mistralian Emperors and Empresses being troubled by sorceresses or witches?”</p><p>“There are tales,” Pyrrha agreed. “And tales of wise women counselling them in earlier days, besides, but… you believe them, don’t you? Do you think that these tales… magic, like yours?”</p><p>“Not quite like mine, but magic,” Sunset agreed.</p><p>“Or myth,” Pyrrha countered.</p><p>“If magic is real, why should not tales be told of it?” Sunset countered. “Is it not as sensible to believe that the tales preserve some truth in them?”</p><p>“Perhaps,” Pyrrha conceded. “But… I hope not.”</p><p>Now it was Sunset’s turn to frown. “Why not?”</p><p>“Because… because… do you remember when we spoke on the rooftop, and you told me that amongst your people, it is believed that everyone is born blessed with one gift, a supreme talent amongst all others?”</p><p>Sunset nodded. “Not just our supreme talent, for we may be blessed with many skills, but the skill with which we choose to make the world around us a better place. Our gift to the world.”</p><p>“Our destiny,” Pyrrha replied. She hesitated. “My gift to the world is in these hands. It may be nothing more than the stirring of my blood, but I have been blessed to be made skilled with sword and spear and rifle. I am a warrior, and I hope I do not flatter myself unduly to say that I am a good one.”</p><p>“You’re better than good.”</p><p>“So I’m told,” Pyrrha said. “The pride and glory of Mistral reborn, the Invincible Girl, the evenstar of our people. The second coming of my namesake.” She gave a soft, slightly bitter laugh. “Which namesake would that be, the one who condemned herself to an early grave by her choices or the one who died alone, outmatched against a foe she could not hope to overcome?”</p><p>“You’re not alone,” Sunset reminded her. “You’ve got us.”</p><p>“I know,” Pyrrha said. “And I rejoice in it, but… my point is… I suppose this may sound as though I’m simply vain of my reputation after all, but… I could be as great as Pyrrha the Second, I could be as great as the Pyrrha of the <em>Mistraliad,</em> and all of it would come to nought if… if what you and Twilight assume is true… I barely bested you on stage, and in a real battle… what is my skill worth in a world of magic? If there are Red Queens in the world, then, or people like the Auburn that Ruby’s mother wrote of, would it not be as futile to attempt to match them as it was for my ancestor to ride out for Argolis? I suppose that I would rather live in a world where I have something to contribute.”</p><p>“Understandable,” Sunset whispered. She had not considered that before now, and upon considering it… well, she was inclined to agree with Pyrrha. Not in the sense that she no longer believed that magic was real, but in that it might be better if it were not. The powers that Summer had spoken of, the powers of the prophets and the queens… it was hard to measure powers that she really possessed against powers that she was only reading about, but it was hard for Sunset not to fear that she might find herself overmatched if she found herself facing one of Ozpin’s mages. </p><p>Her own unicorn magic presently put her in the top tier of students, even across all four academies, but if one factored in the powers of these Remnant alicorns, then she, Pyrrha, Rainbow Dash, Blake, Weiss, Yang, all of them who sat in the highest tier of fighting students would all be cast down. Rendered second-rate at best. </p><p>It was a thought that she had not considered before, and it was not a particularly pleasant one. </p><p>It was enough to almost make her dismiss the whole idea, but within her head, she found that she could not. There was too much evidence to be so lightly cast aside. </p><p>Not that she would have to worry about that if she failed to win this duel. Defeat at the hands of Bolin Hori would hurl into the second tier long before any magical powers revealed themselves.</p><p>
  <em>Then I will just have to make sure that I don’t lose, won’t I?</em>
</p><p>“Maybe you’re right,” Sunset conceded falsely, more to put Pyrrha at ease than anything else. “There’s probably no connection between what Twilight saw, what Summer Rose wrote of, and those old tales. And if there are… these powers have not been seen for years; why should they trouble us now?”</p><p>“Not when we have troubles more immediate by far,” Pyrrha agreed.</p><p>“Are you talking about the White Fang or Bolin?”</p><p>“Either?” Pyrrha said. “You should come back to the dorm room, get some rest before your duel tomorrow.”</p><p>“Not quite yet,” Sunset said. “There’s something that I need to do first.”</p><p>“What?” Pyrrha asked.</p><p>Sunset hesitated for a moment. Did she want to tell Pyrrha the truth? Did she want to tell her about the journal? Did she want to tell Pyrrha what she was?</p><p>No, to that last question, but as to the others… how much did she trust her?</p><p>
  <em>I trust her with my life. Just not all of my secrets. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>But... perhaps I can trust her with some of them.</em>
</p><p>“This book,” Sunset said, levitating out of her satchel, “it is a… I suppose you might call it a magic book. Well, it <em>is</em> a magic book; I can use it to talk to… to the person who replaced me back home.”</p><p>Pyrrha stared at Sunset, her green eyes widening a little. “Your… replacement?”</p><p>“The one who fulfilled the destiny that I was unworthy of,” Sunset explained, albeit vaguely. “We get on surprisingly well.”</p><p>“Through a book?”</p><p>“A magic book, yes.”</p><p>“My goodness,” Pyrrha whispered. She glanced down at the journal in Sunset’s hands. “That’s the book that you-”</p><p>“Yes,” Sunset said. “That’s why I didn’t want you to touch it; I was terrified that you would find out… well, the truth.”</p><p>Pyrrha did not say anything for some time. She simply stared, a little at the book and a little at Sunset. “I… I can hardly believe it,” she whispered. “May… may I… see how it works?”</p><p>“I… would rather you didn’t,” Sunset admitted. “It’s all… a little personal.”</p><p>
  <em>I’m not ready for you to find out I’m not human yet.</em>
</p><p>“Oh, well, yes, of course,” Pyrrha murmured. “I wouldn’t want to pry. I will leave you to it.” She stood up. “But you will be up to the dorm room soon?”</p><p>Sunset smiled slightly. “I promise.”</p><p>“Good,” Pyrrha said. “You’ll need it. Goodnight, Sunset Shimmer.”</p><p>Sunset nodded. “Goodnight, Pyrrha Nikos.” </p><p>She watched her go, ponytail and sash alike swaying behind her as she walked, moonlight reflecting off those parts of her armour yet visible from behind. </p><p>She watched her go, and only once she was gone did Sunset turn her attention to the journal itself, opening up a page with blank space on it and beginning to write. </p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Twilight, are you there? Is it a good time?</span></p><p>She waited, but it was not Twilight’s writing that ran across the page in response, but a hoof – or spell – in an old-fashioned and elegant cursive. </p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">Good evening, Sunset. I’m afraid that now may not be the best time for you to speak with Twilight, but hopefully, I can offer you some counsel instead.</span></p><p>Sunset stared down at the page. She hesitated. The pen in her hand trembled just a little. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to speak to Princess Celestia; it was just that… it was just that she wasn’t sure that she wanted to be as honest with Princess Celestia as she could have been with Twilight.</p><p>Twilight’s opinion didn’t matter to her as much as Princess Celestia’s did.</p><p>
  <em>But on the other hoof, it’s not as though Twilight couldn’t have told Princess Celestia some of this stuff anyway.</em>
</p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Of course, Princess, I’m delighted to hear from you. It’s been far too long. But what are you doing with the journal again? Is Twilight in Canterlot?</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">No, we are all in the Crystal Empire for a summit with the Duke and Duchess of Maretonia; we are hoping to persuade them to enter into a trade agreement with us.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">All? You and Twilight and Cadance too?</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">And Luna also.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Of course. Does it require all four princesses to negotiate with the duke and duchess of a little land to the west?</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">Maretonia may be small compared to Equestria, but it is a proud land; we honour them with the presence of all four princesses as a sign of respect. Although to know the fact brings Twilight little comfort.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">She is ill at ease?</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">She feels ill-used, or little used, at least; she has become a princess, and yet, I fear it has not changed her life in the way that she imagined it would.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">From what I understand, she doesn’t have a life in need of changing.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">And Twilight is not dissatisfied with her friends or with Ponyville, but I am afraid that she is beginning to wonder why she was granted wings and crown when she has yet had no opportunity to accomplish aught with them that she could not have done as a unicorn.</span></p><p>Sunset couldn’t help but smile a little. Sunset: <span class="u">Does it frustrate you that all your students are cursed to suffer impatience? Not that I mean to compare my flaw with Twilight’s.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">I take your meaning well, Sunset; I hope you do not take it amiss when I say that I am a little more sympathetic to Twilight’s frustrations than your own.</span></p><p>Sunset chuckled. Sunset: <span class="u">That’s quite alright, Princess. From what you’ve said, Twilight’s frustrations are more sympathetic than mine. She has ascended – and done so very young, at that – accomplished a feat worthy of honour and acclaim, and now she must ask herself ‘now what?’ It is a question that too few stories take up: what do we dream once all our dreams have come true?</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">Indeed. It is all very well to close off with ‘and they all lived happily ever after,’ but 'ever after' must still be lived, and take it from me, that 'ever' can be a long time.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Can Cadance give her no counsel? She ascended, and her destiny had not yet revealed itself by the time that I departed from Equestria; she must understand what it’s like to rise so high and then find that there is nothing to do once you have risen.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">We have all attempted to encourage Twilight, to remind her, as you say, that destiny may take its time slouching towards you, but it will arrive at the appointed time nonetheless. I am not sure how much good it did, but I will broach the subject with Cadance and see what Twilight’s sister-in-law may do.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I’m just not sure that you can understand what it’s like in the same way that Cadance can, or even I can. You fulfilled your destiny so soon, and all your life since has been spent in ruling the realm. You don’t know what it’s like to wait and fret and wonder when the promise of your life will be fulfilled.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">If I made it seem like I was promising you something, I do apologise. It was not my intent to make everything seem so certain, so set in stone.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I’m not saying this to blame you, Princess Celestia; I’m just pointing out that, for me, it felt like everything up until my ascension – or at least up until the great task that I would accomplish to attain my ascension – was but a prologue, that my whole life up until that point would prove to be mere preparation for this trial. A trial that did not come. The prologue dragged on and on, filled with an ever-increasing array of forgettable minor characters whose stories were already moving while mine stood still. I felt trapped in amber, imprisoned in a cocoon from which I could not break free. I do not say that it is exactly the same with Twilight – she has fulfilled one destiny already – but it wouldn’t surprise me if she feels much the same way.</span></p><p>There was a pause, before Celestia responded. Princess Celestia: <span class="u">You have grown very wise in your exile, little Sunbeam.</span></p><p>Sunset could not help but laugh. Sunset: <span class="u">That is very kind of you, Princess, too kind by far. I may be able to appear wise when addressing the concerns of others, but in my own life, I am as headstrong and heedless as I ever was, as any of my friends could tell you.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">I would dearly love to speak to some of these good friends of yours.</span></p><p>Sunset winced. Sunset: <span class="u">And they you, but I fear that I am not quite ready for that yet.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">I will not say I understand, but since I do not understand, I will not question your reasons. Have you any words that I may take to Twilight on your behalf? You may be able to give her as good counsel as Cadance.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">My friend Pyrrha believes that we choose our own destiny; she calls it a goal that she has set herself. I know that Twilight did not choose her first destiny, but perhaps if she were to choose the second instead of waiting for it to find her, it might ease her sense of idleness.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">You say that you are not wise, and yet, you have such excellent notions.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I am not sure that I would call it excellent; Pyrrha’s idea of destiny is very similar to the notion of cutie marks: that our choices are as important as our abilities. Though I fear that the destiny Pyrrha has chosen is so remote that she is likely to die with it unfulfilled, though she lives for a hundred years or more.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">Pyrrha is the one who wishes to save the world, is she not?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">She is. A lofty task, even for so peerless a warrior as she.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">And yet, in trying, she is likely to leave the world a far better place than she found it, and that is no dishonourable legacy.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Now it is you who speaks most wisely, Princess.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">And what of you, Sunset? What did you wish to speak of? Have you chosen your destiny in this world of Remnant?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I fear not yet, for I am consumed with misgivings, pestered by troubles, and fear that I very nearly lost myself.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">Lost yourself? How so?</span></p><p>Sunset hesitated. A part of her very, very much did not wish to disclose this to Princess Celestia. And yet, a part of her felt that she must confess it to someone, and she did not dare speak of it to Ruby or Pyrrha. Sunset: <span class="u">I have been cruel and vengeful.</span></p><p>Sunset found that she could see in her mind’s eye the disappointment on Princess Celestia’s face as she wrote back. Princess Celestia: <span class="u">To whom? Ruby? Pyrrha?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">No. To neither of them, nor Jaune or Blake either. To none of my friends. To some of my fellow classmates, Cardin Winchester and Bon Bon; they hurt my friend Blake, taunted her with the past that she wishes to escape, and so I hurt them in turn.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">I see. Did Blake ask you to do this?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Blake would never do such a thing; in fact she was rather angry with me when she found out. I did this all on my own, for all that it was done on her behalf.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">Why, then?</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Because Blake deserves better than their insults, and I wanted them to stop.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">I would tell you the ways in which you are wrong, Sunset, but I think you would not be telling me this unless you knew already.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">You’re right, I do know. At least I do now. Jaune made me see. He wasn’t right about everything – he blames Cinder, another of my friends, although she had nothing to do with this – but he was right that I was more my old self than either of us would like. It worries me, Princess; I thought that my friends had made me a better person, but how can that be when I can so easily slide back into who I was before?</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">Who you were before, I’m sorry to say, would not have so quickly realised that she was doing wrong, Sunbeam, and that is a thought to take comfort in, if nothing else.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I hope you’re right, Princess Celestia. I very much hope that you’re right.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">To care for your friends is right and good, but they are not yours that you must punish the things that are done to them.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">I know, or at least I will try and remember it.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">Do not despair from a single setback. You have already come such a long way; that you have faltered on the road only shows that you are as flawed as anypony is, even myself, or even Twilight Sparkle. So long as you understand why you faltered, then it will help you to avoid failing again.</span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">My fault is my pride, and the difficulty is that I do not entirely wish to be rid of it, for all the trouble that it causes me.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">Sunset, from what you have said, the trouble you have caused yourself is as very little compared to the trouble you have caused for others.</span></p><p>It was a gentle rebuke, but it was a rebuke nevertheless, and it stopped Sunset in her tracks. She… she had not considered that before, and that lack of consideration compounded the selfishness in her initial action. It was all very well to feel guilty about what she had done, but she had not done anything about it. She hadn’t done anything to make amends; she hadn’t even apologised.</p><p>Apologising would be difficult, not just because of her pride but because it would involve an admission of guilt, but she could make it up to Cardin somehow. She could help him get back together with Skystar, maybe. She could make right what she had broken. </p><p>She no longer wanted to tell Princess Celestia about her duel or her suspicions about Professor Ozpin; it would seem like more selfishness on her part, more distractions from the wrong that she had done. </p><p>That was not how she wished to be seen.</p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">You chide me well, Princess; I will do better. I will fix what I have damaged, if I can.</span></p><p>
  <em>I’m not sure how just yet, but I can give it a try.</em>
</p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">I’m glad to hear it.</span></p><p>Sunset smiled with one corner of her mouth. Sunset: <span class="u">It was good that I spoke to you, in the end, Princess Celestia. Twilight can’t make me feel ashamed of myself the same way that you can.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">I am also glad to hear that my words are still useful to you, Sunset. </span></p><p>Sunset: <span class="u">Your words will always be invaluable to me. But now I have to go. It is getting late, and I need to think about how I can make it up to Cardin. Goodnight, Princess, and tell Twilight I wish her good fortune and great glory.</span></p><p>Princess Celestia: <span class="u">Goodnight and good luck, Sunset Shimmer.</span></p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0058"><h2>58. A Matter of Pride, Part Two</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sunset fights for her honour.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A Matter of Pride, Part Two</p><p> </p><p>Sunset sat on her bed, with everyone else having departed for breakfast. </p><p>Today was the day. Today she battled for her honour and the honour of the House of Nikos. </p><p>A part of her didn’t really know why she was so worried about this; she had fought the White Fang, she had helped capture Roman Torchwick, she had come face to face with Adam Taurus, the Sword of the Faunus, and survived having his blade through her gut. Why should some Haven punk hold any terrors for her? </p><p>He didn’t. He held <em>fears</em> for her; there was an important distinction. </p><p>He held fears for her because there would be consequences if she lost this fight. Yes, nobody was going to die, but all the same, there would be consequences. There would be consequences because Soteria, her sword, the sword that had been given to her, would fall into the hands of one of Pyrrha’s rivals, and the most unworthy rival at that. </p><p>Speaking of unworthiness, Sunset would prove herself unworthy of Lady Nikos’ trust. That was her fear. That was why she feared Bolin Hori: because he would make a fool of a great lady, and the foolishness would be that she had believed in Sunset Shimmer. </p><p>There had been too much of that already. She had made a fool of Princess Celestia’s faith in her through her malice; she would not do the same to Lady Nikos through her incompetence. </p><p>She hoped not, anyway. </p><p>Sunset had not gone down to breakfast with the others because it was now morning, which meant that it was noon or early afternoon in Mistral, and it was time for her to call Lady Nikos. </p><p>The scroll trembled in her hands a little bit. Not only because she would have to admit the possibility that she might lose Soteria, but also because… because, as much as she hated to admit it, the words of Phoebe Kommenos had struck home with her a little bit. </p><p>What had Lady Nikos said about her? How was she representing their arrangement? What was it that was allowing Phoebe to think of Sunset as Lady Nikos’ hireling, her paid creature? </p><p>She was not Pyrrha’s bodyguard. She was not a retainer of the House of Nikos; Sunset had made that fact perfectly clear. So where was it coming from?</p><p>What was Lady Nikos saying?</p><p>Sunset would have to ask her. </p><p>The answers weren’t going to find themselves, after all. </p><p>Sunset got up off her bed. She was calling upon a lady, after all; the least that she could do was stand up straight. </p><p>She held the scroll up, before her face, so that she didn’t have to look down; she would maintain proper posture for this. </p><p>The name of Lady Nikos was white; a green button glowed slightly underneath. </p><p>Sunset hit the button. </p><p>A line of dots ran briefly across the transparent screen of the scroll; the dial tone sounded as her device sought for a connection, and then the face of Lady Nikos appeared before her, sitting – judging by the background – in her study, where she had interviewed Sunset shortly after her arrival. </p><p>“Miss Shimmer,” she said. “Good morning to you.”</p><p>“Good afternoon, my lady,” Sunset replied. “I hope I am not disturbing you.”</p><p>“You are giving me an excuse to take a break from the accounts; that is not a thing to be sneered at,” Lady Nikos replied calmly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”</p><p>“I fear that you will find little pleasure in what I have to say once I have said it, my lady.”</p><p>Lady Nikos’ eyes narrowed. “Is something amiss, Miss Shimmer? Is Pyrrha-?”</p><p>“Safe and sound and happy, my lady,” Sunset assured her. “I regret that I am yet unable to persuade her to tell you so herself, but rest assured that my news does not touch upon her life or health, her happiness or her honour. All are intact and, in the case of happiness, blossoming here… with Mister Arc.”</p><p>Lady Nikos harrumphed. “Mister Arc,” she muttered. She looked away. “What is his parentage?”</p><p>“I fear, my lady, that I know not, save that he comes from a huntsman.”</p><p>“That is not enough,” Lady Nikos declared, “I must know more before I can,” – her lips twisted in distemper – “before I can bear to accommodate myself to their relationship.”</p><p>“My lady, I think that if you do not accommodate yourself to it, then you will lose your daughter,” Sunset informed her bluntly. “Pyrrha… Pyrrha is resolved to pursue her own happiness, without reference to you or any other person wholly unconnected with her. She will have Jaune though all of Mistral frown upon it.”</p><p>“Nevertheless, I charge you to find out more about him, where he comes and from what stock,” Lady Nikos commanded.</p><p>Sunset felt her brow furrow just a little. “You charge me, my lady?”</p><p>“Does my choice of words offend you, Miss Shimmer?”</p><p>Sunset pursed her lips together. Now they were come to it, or close enough. “My lady,” she said, “I think that we come to the true subject on which I called you. Today, I fight a duel, for possession of the sword Soteria which you bestowed on me in-”</p><p>“I am aware of Soteria and when I gave it to you,” Lady Nikos said sharply. Her words grew claws as she said, “I very much hope, Miss Shimmer, that you have not wagered an heirloom of my line upon the outcome of a fight.”</p><p>“The challenge was offered to me, my lady,” Sunset replied, her own words a little sharp, if not so much as those that were offered to her. “And offered specifically for the sword.”</p><p>“Who gave you this challenge?”</p><p>“Bolin Hori.”</p><p>“Who?”</p><p>“Indeed, my lady,” Sunset murmured. “A student of Haven Academy, here for the Vytal Festival; he is a member of Team Auburn, under Arslan Altan.”</p><p>“Arslan Altan!” Lady Nikos exclaimed. “I fear you must explain further, Miss Shimmer; I have never heard of this Bolin Hori nor know of any reason he should have claim upon Soteria, and if Miss Altan wished it, I hope she would have the courage to challenge you herself.”</p><p>“Miss Altan gave me warning of the challenge before it reached me,” Sunset replied. “In this matter, Bolin Hori serves another of Pyrrha’s rivals: Phoebe Kommenos.”</p><p>Lady Nikos sighed. “Of course,” she growled. “Phoebe Kommenos, who else would do such a thing? She lacks the courage to challenge you herself, so she suborns this Mister Hori into her service.”</p><p>“I have heard she is paying him, my lady.”</p><p>“Disgraceful,” Lady Nikos muttered. “Is she a Kommenos or a Schnee?”</p><p>“I think that you do at least one Schnee a wrong to ask such a question, my lady.”</p><p>“I do not much care if I malign twenty Schnees,” Lady Nikos declared. “I would say that Atlas has been the ruin of Phoebe Kommenos, but she was never… it matters not. I did not think that she would be so bold.”</p><p>“It was not her first choice, my lady,” Sunset said. “Earlier this week, she sought to buy the sword from me.” She hesitated, because now they were come to the crux, or one of the cruces, at any rate. “My Lady, I am afraid that I must ask you… what have you said of me?”</p><p>“What has Phoebe Kommenos told you that I have said of you?”</p><p>Sunset hesitated.</p><p>“Out with it, Miss Shimmer,” Lady Nikos demanded. “If I am to be accused, let me at least know what I am said to have done.”</p><p>“I am told that I am an accusing anecdote at parties, my lady,” Sunset said softly.</p><p>Lady Nikos was silent for a moment. “The fact that Phoebe has gone to these lengths to obtain Soteria shows that it is reasonably widely known that you have it,” she said. “Have any other Mistralian students given you trouble because of it?”</p><p>“No, my lady, but I am told that it is the cause of some resentment towards me… and towards Pyrrha.”</p><p>“Pyrrha?” Lady Nikos asked. “How so?”</p><p>Sunset scowled. “They call her… between going to Beacon and dating Jaune, there are some who feel that she has forsaken Mistral. They call her traitor.”</p><p>“And yet she still holds fast to Mister Arc?” Lady Nikos asked, sounding a little surprised to hear it.</p><p>“As I told my lady, it will take more than disapproval to make her break with her heart in this,” Sunset said.</p><p>“Indeed you did,” Lady Nikos agreed. “And yet…” It seemed to Sunset that, in spite of everything, Lady Nikos almost smiled. “I am impressed. I did not think she had such courage.”</p><p>“Pyrrha is the bravest person I know,” Sunset said; Ruby, who might have contested for the position, was in Sunset’s view too heedless to be brave. You couldn’t be brave if you didn’t seem to care one way or another if you lived or died, and Ruby’s protestations to the contrary were not entirely convincing – or Sunset did not find them so.</p><p>“I am glad to hear it, but that is courage on the battlefield,” Lady Nikos explained. “Since coming to Beacon, she has shown more and more other kinds of courage. Courage I had not suspected in her. Forgive me, Miss Shimmer, say on.”</p><p>“There is not much more to say, my lady,” Sunset said, her voice taking on a hurt quality. “Save that I am a fool who has mistaken… who has mistaken a mere business transaction for acceptance.”</p><p>Lady Nikos’ green eyes softened, and in the softening, they reminded Sunset much more of her daughter than they had before. She took a little time to, Sunset supposed, gather her thoughts before she spoke in reply, “It is true that I described my gifts of lien and of Soteria to you as an investment,” she allowed, “but it is also true that I have not been invited to one of Lady Ming’s soirees since I rebuked her for mocking you in my presence.”</p><p>Sunset’s eyes widened. Her mouth opened just a little more than was warranted, and for a moment more. <em>One of her own? A lady of her own class? She has been cut - or snubbed, at the very least - and for my sake? </em>She did not know this Lady Ming, but Canterlot – old Canterlot – had taught her well enough to know what it meant to be pointedly removed from the invitation list, an unperson amongst the beau monde of the elite and the influential. If what Lady Nikos said was true, then she had suffered much more than her words might suggest. <em>And all for my sake?</em> “You… you defended me, my lady?”</p><p>“What the young Lady Kommenos says is, regrettably, the common opinion,” Lady Nikos informed her, her tone brisk as if she wished to move rapidly on before Sunset’s gratitude could prove embarrassing. Certainly, there was neither sorrow nor melancholy in her expression, as if she valued not what she had lost – or wished to cultivate the impression in Sunset. “Perhaps I should have told you of this; certainly, I should have foreseen it; in Mistral, the business of one great family is the business of all great families, entangled as we are in webs of shared history and – oftentimes – shared genealogy also. Has Pyrrha explained to you the Kommenos claim upon Soteria?”</p><p>“She has, my lady,” Sunset declared. “It seems to me that a claim of blood opposes a claim of honour.”</p><p>“Very elegantly put, Miss Shimmer,” Lady Nikos said. “Clearly, the sword was recognised at Beacon, and from there, word returned to Mistral. I hope it does not offend you that I have been honest about our arrangement.”</p><p>“It is not my place to forbid my lady to speak.”</p><p>“Good, for I have spoken of it,” Lady Nikos continued. “There are some who have seen it in a most mercenary way; there are some who have made sport of you, as they believe that I have made sport of you; but if there was any doubt in your mind, Miss Shimmer, let me be quite clear: I have chosen to sponsor you because I believe that you are a young huntress of the greatest promise, worthy to stand as battle companion alongside Pyrrha Nikos, the pride of Mistral. And I gave you Soteria because…” She trailed off, glancing down at her desk, seeming lost for words.</p><p>And yet, Sunset felt as though she understood her. “Because the road that Pyrrha has chosen is a long and dangerous one,” she said, “and you fear that she may have need of an Achates along the way.”</p><p>“An Achates?” Lady Nikos repeated. “No, Miss Shimmer, you are more than a bodyguard. A Camilla, perhaps.”</p><p>Sunset made a noise that was almost a chuckle. “I would say that my lady did me great honour, save that Camilla died.”</p><p>“Camilla did not have Soteria,” Lady Nikos pointed out. “I give you the sword so that you may live… and so may Pyrrha.”</p><p>Now, Sunset did chuckle. “Pyrrha… I must confess to you, my lady, that Pyrrha fears you care more for me than for your child. I wager she would not think so if she heard us speaking now.”</p><p>“Pyrrha is my heir,” Lady Nikos said. “My blood, and that of my late husband. The latest flowering of the line of Nikos and its greatest bloom in many a generation. However many of her choices I may disagree with, and however vehemently I disagree with some of them, she will always command first place in my affections, though the rest of Mistral should forsake her.”</p><p>“If it helps, my lady, I think she is still loved by all save a few foolish malcontents,” Sunset assured her. She paused. “My lady… my lady, if… it was never my intent… I do not wish to cause undue trouble for you; if it will help you, I will return Soteria to Mistral-”</p><p>“No, Miss Shimmer, you will not,” Lady Nikos said. “I chose to bestow that sword upon you, and I will not be bullied into changing my mind by the disapproval of Lady Ming and those like her. The sword is yours, and so it shall remain… I hope.”</p><p>“I hope so too, my lady,” Sunset said, her voice suddenly a little hoarse at the declaration of faith that she had just received, a declaration that made her fears, sprung as they were out of nought by Phoebe’s words, seem childishly groundless. “I think that I owe my lady more than two apologies, once for misjudging your intent and once for putting Soteria at risk.”</p><p>“You apologise for that?” Lady Nikos asked. “What else could you have done?”</p><p>“Pyrrha suggested that I might refuse the challenge, there being no grounds for quarrel between me and Bolin.”</p><p>“But you and I both know that was not an option, don’t we, Miss Shimmer?”</p><p>Sunset smiled briefly. “I think that Pyrrha knows it too, my lady; she told me herself that she would not turn away from a fight, that no hero born of Mistral could. I am not born of Mistral, I know, but-”</p><p>“But I would not have bothered with you if I did not see something Mistralian in your soul,” Lady Nikos informed her. “You have a sense of honour, a pride in yourself, that is reminiscent of the elder kingdom. I do not seek to flatter you when I tell you that you belong here in the east.”</p><p>“And yet I am flattered nonetheless, my lady,” Sunset told her. </p><p>“Why be flattered by the truth?” Lady Nikos asked. “You were challenged, and you knew, in spite of having every incentive to refuse it, that your only true choice was to accept and face the consequences.”</p><p>“You seem remarkably sanguine about those consequences, my lady.”</p><p>“That is because I expect you to win, Miss Shimmer,” Lady Nikos declared. “Is this Mister Hori so skilled that you fear him?”</p><p>“He… has a great deal of aura, my lady, and I am not yet a master of the blade.”</p><p>“Yet you have an exceedingly powerful semblance; counts that for nothing?”</p><p>“It would count for a great deal, my lady, but I feel I ought to battle with the sword.”</p><p>“Pride is admirable, Miss Shimmer, but do not let it destroy you as it has so many heroes of our Mistralian past,” Lady Nikos urged. “In battle, one ought to use every weapon at your disposal.”</p><p>“If I do not trust the sword, do I not prove myself unworthy of it?”</p><p>“And yet you will have the sword still,” Lady Nikos said.</p><p>“Mmm,” Sunset murmured. “I am not sure, my lady.” She paused. “My lady, if… if I should-”</p><p>“You will not lose, Miss Shimmer,” Lady Nikos said peremptorily, as though that was the end of it. “I have faith in you.”</p><p>Sunset felt her chin rise a little higher. “Then I shall not let you down, my lady.”</p><p>Lady Nikos nodded. “Good day, Miss Shimmer,” she said. “And good luck.”</p><p>“Thank you, my lady, and good day to you.” Sunset replied.</p><p>“And uncover Mister Arc’s degree!” Lady Nikos reminded her.</p><p>“I shall, my lady, with all convenient haste,” Sunset vowed, before she hung up the call. </p><p>Well, she could not lose now, that was certain. She could hardly have lost before, but now, she definitely could not lose. </p><p>And yet… and yet she didn’t yet know how. Pyrrha, Lady Nikos, everyone told her that using the sword was a bad idea, and it was undeniable that she was better with her magic than with the…</p><p>
  <em>Now hang on.</em>
</p><p>A smile began to spread across Sunset’s face as she started to have an idea.</p><hr/><p>Professor Goodwitch had not been so kind as to volunteer to give up her free time to referee another of Sunset’s duels; instead, it was Doctor Oobleck who had been kind enough to take the duty on. He stood in front of the stage, sipping out of a mug which he held in one hand – a vacuum flask was in the other, presumably for when the mug was drained – watching from out of his opaque spectacles. </p><p>He said nothing as Sunset strode out of the locker room and onto the stage. </p><p>She had her weapons with her this time, not only Soteria but Sol Invictus as well; the sword was in her hand and the rifle was slung across her shoulder. </p><p>She glanced past Doctor Oobleck to the students watching on the bleachers; it was a smaller crowd than last time. Apparently, Sunset Shimmer versus Bolin Hori just didn’t command the same levels of interest as Sunset Shimmer versus Pyrrha Nikos; Sunset chose to interpret that as saying more about Bolin than it did about her. </p><p>Still, the amphitheatre was not completely empty: her teammates were there, sitting on one of the benches closest to the stage, close enough that Sunset could make them out even though the lights were dim and would soon get dimmer still; Blake was sitting next to Pyrrha, although she was the only member of Team YRBN to have shown up; Twilight and Rainbow Dash represented Team RSPT, while Cardin flew the flag for Team WWSR. </p><p>Flash wasn’t there. That… hurt, just a little bit, even though there was no rational reason why he should be here. But it still hurt that Cardin had shown up while Flash had not. </p><p>Of course, Cardin was probably there just in the hope of seeing her get her butt kicked. </p><p>
  <em>Like I’d give him the satisfaction.</em>
</p><p>Sunset frowned at that thought; she was supposed to be making amends with Cardin, not continuing to hold a grudge against him; maybe he’d feel differently about her once she helped him get his girlfriend. </p><p>
  <em>I’ll need to come up with a plan for that once this fight is over.</em>
</p><p>Cinder was there, sitting near the back, a slight smirk upon her face, her eyes smouldering. They hadn’t spoken since Jaune had accused Cinder of being behind Sunset’s recent moral tremble; Sunset would apologise on his behalf if he’d said anything to her. </p><p>Bolin hadn’t yet walked onto the stage, but his teammates were there, although Arslan looked less than enthusiastic about it and sat with a distance between herself and the other two. Sun was there too, sat behind Blake, and there were various other Haven and Atlas students that Sunset didn’t recognise.</p><p>And there was Phoebe Kommenos, also sat near the back at the other side of the room from Cinder, a scowl upon her face as she waited for the dance to start. </p><p>There was even more blonde visible at the roots of her hair now; she must have decided to stop dyeing and go back to her natural colour. </p><p>A mistake, in Sunset’s opinion; going back to blonde just made her look like even more of a spoiled little princess. </p><p>Sunset caught her eye and smirked at her. Phoebe’s scowl deepened.</p><p>A cheer from some of the Haven students – led by the non-Arslan members of Team ARBN – drew Sunset’s attention back to the stage as Bolin Hori emerged, twirling his staff in one hand. He leapt nimbly up onto the stage but didn’t acknowledge his supporters down below. Despite the confidence of his posture, Sunset thought that she detected wariness in his face. </p><p>Or perhaps she simply hoped to see it there, to show her that she was respected as an opponent. </p><p>“Go Sunset!” Ruby cried out, to counteract some of the cheering from the Haven side.</p><p>Sunset turned and offered her a bow by way of thanks. </p><p>Doctor Oobleck took a sip of his coffee. “Miss Shimmer, Mister Hori, are you both ready?”</p><p>Bolin slammed the butt of his staff upon the floor of the stage. “I’m ready, Professor.”</p><p>“Doctor, if you please, Mister Hori,” Doctor Oobleck reproached him. “Miss Shimmer?”</p><p>“One moment, Doctor, if you please,” Sunset said, as she knelt down and placed Sol Invictus and Soteria upon the floor of the stage. With her arms thus free, she shrugged off her leather jacket and dropped it down by her feet so that she stood in her T-shirt and cuirass, with her arms bare save for the lightning-dust infused vambraces upon her forearms. </p><p>It was at a time like this that she wished that she had a little more meat on her bones; if she had arms like Pyrrha, then it would have looked impressive; as it was, she just looked a little scrawny, especially by comparison with the absolute beefcake standing in front of her. Nevertheless, she slung Sol Invictus across her shoulder once again and picked up Soteria. She settled into a high guard, the black sword raised above her head. </p><p>Her tail twitched behind her. Bolin’s eyes narrowed.</p><p>“I’m ready now, Doctor.”</p><p>“Thank you, Miss Shimmer,” Doctor Oobleck said. He took another sip. “Begin!”</p><p>Bolin hesitated for a moment, waiting, watching; watching to see what Sunset meant to do, she thought. He evidently suspected that she hadn’t taken her jacket off because she was too warm.</p><p>“You don’t deserve that sword,” he spat at her. “That sword belongs to Mistral!”</p><p>Whether he actually believed it or he was just trying to rile her up, Sunset didn’t know and didn’t particularly care. She just smiled at him and, with a pulse of her aura, ignited the fire dust she had infused into the blade; the flames of crimson and yellow, like her hair, rippled up the metal, consuming the black until it could no longer be seen. </p><p>“Then come and get it,” she purred.</p><p>Again, Bolin hesitated for a moment; yet by now, there were those in the stands who were calling for him to get on with it, to kick Sunset’s ass, to show her who was boss. He had challenged Sunset, not the other way around; he had sought out this fight, he had taken money to fight this fight; having done so, he couldn’t just stand around and do nothing because he was uncertain about what Sunset was up to. </p><p>And so he charged, his staff gripped tightly in both hands and held before him. </p><p>Sunset didn’t move, except to let go of Soteria with her hands.</p><p>And seize it with her telekinesis. </p><p>The ebon hilt was surrounded by the green glow of her magic as the blade shot forwards, moved by Sunset’s mind, directed her will, flying like an arrow straight as Bolin. </p><p>He faltered in his rush, his eyes widening in surprise. As the sword thrust straight and true towards him, he lashed out with his staff, knocking the weapon aside. Sunset redirected it, the point of the burning weapon swinging in the air as she lunged the sword towards him again. Bolin turned, and once more, he deflected Soteria away with his staff, only for it to come again, driven by Sunset’s telekinesis as she lashed out with the sword at him from every angle, pinning him in place, forcing him to stand and turn, always turning, shuffling left to right and behind him as Sunset drove Soteria at him from every angle, and though he was always able to guard against it – Sunset’s telekinesis wasn’t fast enough to catch him out, unfortunately – she was able to hold him steady while being in absolutely no danger whatsoever. </p><p>And this was only the first part of her plan. </p><p>While Bolin was preoccupied by fending off Soteria, Sunset – still hammering him with the sword from every angle, still making sure he had no room to focus on anything but the sword that was aiming for him as though it had a mind of its own – knelt down and placed one hand – that hand was not wreathed in the glow of magic – upon her jacket where it lay on the ground. </p><p>A slight pulse of aura, a pulse a little larger than she strictly needed to hide the fact that her aura hadn’t been dropping at all otherwise, and the fire dust infused within the fabric began to burn like an inferno. Sunset rose to her feet, and now, her other hand began to glow as well as she magically picked the jacket up off the floor and made it hover in the air beside her. </p><p>Using telekinesis on multiple objects at one was a little trickier, but there was room in Sunset’s head for more than one thought at a time, and so it was not too hard to keep Bolin distracted by the antics of Soteria while, at the same time, moving her burning jacket towards him. </p><p>All she had to do was keep the sword attacking him from other angles so that he had his back to her and did not see his doom approaching. </p><p>Almost there… almost there…</p><p>“Bolin!” cried out one of his teammates, Sunset thought her name was Reese, “look out!”</p><p>Bolin turned, too late, his staff out of position to defend him as Sunset shoved the burning jacket forward and into his face. Bolin cried out in alarm as the flames began to consume his aura, devouring it like famished wild beasts; yes, he had a lot of aura, but that didn’t mean that it was a pleasant experience to lose it to the flames that were pressed against his skin, against his face, his eyes, his mouth. </p><p>Sunset didn’t want to suffocate him, so she pulled the jacket up above his mouth and nostrils, even as she wrapped it tight, like an oversized bandana, around his head, burning sleeves dropping down his neck and back. Bolin flailed wildly, pawing and clawing at the jacket as the flames burned him. </p><p>And, more importantly, as it blinded him. </p><p>And while he was blinded, while he was flailing around trying to pull the burning blindfold off his head, while he was helpless, Sunset struck with Soteria. </p><p>And this time, there was no staff to knock the flaming sword aside. </p><p>She slashed at him. She thrust at him. She sliced at his aura like a chef slicing up the pie for dinner, and while he was helpless, she whittled his aura down.</p><p>But slowly. So slowly. </p><p>Which was why it was a good thing that she didn’t plan on taking him down into the red. </p><p>Bolin should have asked himself why Sunset hadn’t cut his legs out from under him. It would have been so simple to do, after all: just sweep his legs; it wasn’t as though there was anything that he could have done to prevent it. She could have cut his legs out from under him and dumped him on the ground, blind, and there cut his aura apart at her leisure.</p><p>But he had too much aura for that. Too much aura for Sunset to be certain that she would be able to get him into the red before he pulled the blindfold off, as he was close to doing now. Instead, she attacked him only from certain directions, prodding him, making him shy away from her blows. Blind and disoriented as he was, he never wondered just where she was leading him. </p><p>Some of them saw it; some of the other students watching the fight saw what Sunset was doing and tried to warn him about it, but their shouts were confused, and Bolin would have had to be a master of blind mare’s buff to understand what they were trying to get across to him with their cries.</p><p>Bolin’s aura was still in the yellow when he tore Sunset’s jacket off – the fire had gone out; it was barely smouldering now – with a triumphant cry that died in his throat as he realised that he was perched upon the very edge of the stage. </p><p>With one last thrust of Soteria, Sunset pushed him off. He toppled and fell to the floor beneath with a thump. </p><p>Doctor Oobleck drained his cup of coffee. “Mister Hori, you have left the ring,” he observed. “That means that you forfeit the match, and Miss Shimmer is the winner! Congratulations, Miss Shimmer!”</p><p>“Yeah!” Ruby cried as Pyrrha began to applaud. Jaune smiled appreciatively.</p><p>Sunset allowed herself a smirk of self-satisfaction as she walked across the stage and picked up her jacket. She didn’t offer Bolin her hand or bow to him; he had taken money to try and steal something that had been given to her; as far as she was concerned, he wasn’t worth her courtesies.</p><p>She caught sight of Cinder at the back of the auditorium, shaking her head as a fond smile played upon her face. </p><p>Pyrrha got up, and leapt up onto the stage to join her. “What happened to fighting with the sword?” she asked, amusement in her voice.</p><p>“I did,” Sunset replied. “In a manner of speaking.”</p><p>“You played to your strengths,” Pyrrha said. “Well done.”</p><p>“Honour is all very well,” Sunset said, “but I couldn’t disappoint your mother.” She hesitated. “I think she’s coming around to Jaune.”</p><p>Pyrrha’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”</p><p>“She wants me to find out his degree,” Sunset explained.</p><p>Pyrrha rolled her eyes.</p><p>Their attention was both drawn by the slamming of the door as Phoebe Kommenos stalked from the hall. </p><hr/><p>Phoebe stormed out of the amphitheatre. Pathetic! Absolutely useless! What a waste of lien!</p><p>If only Arslan had agreed to help her instead of standing upon her ridiculous morals! Little jumped-up gutter plebe had presumed to look down on Phoebe, just because she was wise enough to know better than to confront that faunus personally. </p><p>Damn that Sunset. She and Pyrrha, so close and chummy, it was sickening to her. Pyrrha had no respect for an elder of her own class, but she could smile and jest – at Phoebe’s expense, most like – with a faunus!</p><p>Why was it always faunus? What did everyone see in these freaks, these hideous animals? General Ironwood looked with favour upon that ridiculous rainbow-haired braggart, and now upon that White Fang girl too. Rumour said that she was going to transfer to Atlas next year, her crimes forgiven because everyone was so in awe of her dazzling skill. </p><p>Turnus had his pet fox, whom he loved so well, whom he called a part of his family as though that was something to be proud of instead of cause for shame. When she had suggested – as a dear friend and a fellow admirer of Atlesian culture – that he ought to send her away for the good of his reputation… he had frightened her in that moment; she had honestly thought he might kill her. </p><p>She only wanted what was best for him. He was so strong, so masterful, and so commanding, so what did so excellent a man see in a faunus and in that insipid Pyrrha? </p><p>Why couldn’t he see how she felt? Why did he prefer them over her?</p><p>Phoebe suspected that Camilla had some part in that; she was urging his suit towards Nikos instead of her, although Phoebe would have given him her hand gladly, while Pyrrha… well, she preferred to tart herself out to some Valish nobody. </p><p>That was what you got when you lay down with faunus, and especially faunus who dressed like <em>that</em>. Honestly, could those pants get any tighter? What was Lady Nikos thinking, bestowing Soteria upon someone of that race and that character?</p><p>Why had she found Sunset Shimmer more worthy to bear the Kommenos blade than the last of the Kommeni? </p><p>But she would have her revenge. On Sunset and Pyrrha and Arslan and the whole pack of them! She would have her revenge, and she would have her sword too.</p><p>And, thanks to the arrangements for the next grimm studies practical for the freshman year, she already knew how. </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0059"><h2>59. The Lost Heir</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sunset proposed mild deception as she, Pyrrha and Jaune go to the spa.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Lost Heir</p><p> </p><p>"I guarantee," Pyrrha said, "once it's done, you'll be glad you came."</p><p>"Okay, I'll take your word for it," Jaune murmured. "It's just that I've never been to a spa before."</p><p>"You're not going to get all macho on us, are you?" Sunset asked.</p><p>"No," Jaune replied quickly. "It's just not something that I ever thought about doing or going to."</p><p>"Well, Pyrrha's right," Sunset said. "Once all your treatments are complete, you will feel like a new person. And look like one too."</p><p>With the battle done, the three of them had headed down into Vale for the remainder of the afternoon, with Pyrrha having invited Jaune to join herself and Sunset at the spa. Ruby had been invited too but had begged off, claiming that she had stuff to take care of.</p><p>Sunset wasn't sure what that stuff was, but if Ruby didn't want to come, then no one was going to force her to. As much as the benefits of a spa day – or spa afternoon – were incredibly therapeutic in her opinion, it wasn't to everyone's taste.</p><p>If Ruby had other plans that suited her better, then fair enough.</p><p>A few people took pictures of them as they passed by; actually, no, that was not correct: people took pictures of <em>Pyrrha</em>, which may or may not have caught Jaune or Sunset in the frame.</p><p>Thinking about it some more, Sunset considered that some of them might be trying to get pictures of Jaune too, if only because – what with the fact that they were holding hands as they walked – it was pretty clear that he was Pyrrha's boyfriend. There was probably a market for that kind of thing in… in the kind of places that Sunset had used to break up Cardin's relationship with Skystar.</p><p>The thought made her feel a little bit ill, a cramping feeling in her stomach that she wished she could be rid of.</p><p>Unfortunately, she thought it likely that only making amends could permanently erase these feelings.</p><p>"Sunset?" Pyrrha asked. "Is everything alright?"</p><p>"Yes," Sunset said quickly. "Shouldn't I be asking you that, what with, well-" – a flash went off in Sunset's face, causing her to blink rapidly – "-that?"</p><p>"It's just that you looked a little upset for a moment," Pyrrha murmured. "As for the other, I'm sorry; I'm afraid it's an occupational hazard of being seen with me."</p><p>"Would you like me to take care of it?" Sunset asked. "Like I did in Mistral," she added, lest Jaune get the wrong idea about what she intended as she held up her hand, the green glow of magic covering her skin as she gathered power in her palm.</p><p>Pyrrha hesitated. "That would be lovely," she conceded, "but if nobody noticed me, I'm not sure how we'd get into the spa."</p><p>Sunset laughed as the magic dissipated in her hand. "True enough," she agreed. "I'm afraid you have to suffer for our sakes."</p><p>Pyrrha smiled. "Having someone whom I can suffer for makes it worthwhile," she murmured.</p><p>Nevertheless, Sunset and Jaune attempted to block lines of sight to her with their bodies as they made their way down the street.</p><p>"Don't you think it's weird," Sunset said, "how sometimes you get these people lying in wait for you, and other times it's like you're anonymous? It's as if someone is tipping them off about your whereabouts, but only some of the time."</p><p>"Perhaps someone is," Pyrrha suggested. "Or people are, at least; some journals will pay for that kind of information. It's easy money, I suppose."</p><p>"Fine, but who knew who'd say anything?" Sunset asked. Ruby, she discounted instantly; she would never do something like this, but then, who else? Could someone have bugged their room? But who? They didn't play host to the sort of students who would do something like that, so then could it be a cleaner? They might be looking for some extra lien, and it would explain why only Pyrrha's movements that were discussed in the dorm room were known.</p><p>
  <em>I'll have a look when we get back. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Really, like I didn't have enough to worry about with-</em>
</p><p>It occurred to Sunset that if there was a listening device in the dorm room, then it would have picked up her conversation with Jaune in which she had tacitly admitted to being Anon-a-Miss and having screwed over Cardin.</p><p>
  <em>Well, that could be… bad.</em>
</p><p>Unfortunately, there was little to be done about it now; the recording would already be in the hands of… whoever's hands it was meant to land with, and no amount of searching the room would stop it at this point.</p><p>And besides, rushing back to the dorm room would only tell Pyrrha that she had something to hide.</p><p>
  <em>Relax, even if they did hear that, nobody cares about you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yeah, that makes me feel a lot better.</em>
</p><p>Sunset glanced at Pyrrha, squeezing Jaune's hand tightly as she adopted a composed, nigh-expressionless look for the cameras; her face was so fixed that she almost seemed more doll than human.</p><p>
  <em>Is that really what I want?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yes, yes it is.</em>
</p><p>Jaune also noticed Pyrrha's discomfiture; he could hardly have failed to do so, considering that it was his hand that she was clamped onto, and there was a definite air of hoping to change the subject in his voice as he said, "So, Sunset, all that worrying about the fight for nothing, huh?"</p><p>Sunset chuckled. "I wouldn't say for nothing," she relied. "If I hadn't worried about it at all, then I wouldn't have put enough thought into it to come up with that plan."</p><p>"It was an innovative approach to take," Pyrrha said softly. "I don't think that anyone was expecting it. You've never used your, uh, semblance, quite like that before."</p><p>Sunset shrugged. "And a good thing too, or he might have seen it coming."</p><p>"But why not?" Jaune asked. "In a real fight-"</p><p>"In a real fight, I can't win by ring out," Sunset reminded him. "I would have needed more than that to get his aura in the red, and I'd need more than that in a real fight too."</p><p>"Okay, but it has to be better than letting Adam Taurus stab you to get a hit on him," Jaune replied.</p><p>"Well… okay, you might have a point there," Sunset conceded.</p><p>"It does seem strange to utilise a technique that keeps you out of harm's way in a sparring match and not in a battle," Pyrrha agreed. "Our enemies outside the school are far more dangerous than those within. For the most part," she added quietly.</p><p>Sunset's eyebrows rose. "'For the most part'?"</p><p>"Oh, it's probably nothing," Pyrrha said, "but Phoebe can be very tenacious."</p><p>Sunset snorted. "That only matters if she's any good. I've seen no sign of that so far."</p><p>Pyrrha did not reply; perhaps she didn't want to insult a competitor, no matter how much they might deserve it. All she said was, "I'm just not sure this is over, as much as I would like it to be."</p><p>"What's she going to do, find someone else to take me on?" Sunset demanded. "At some point, that starts to look a bit ridiculous, don't you think? And even if she does, I'll take them on and beat them, just like I did today."</p><p>"I'm glad to see that it hasn't puffed your ego up at all," Jaune remarked.</p><p>"You like me because I'm full of myself," Sunset replied. "It's an inseparable part of my charm."</p><p>"'Inseparable' is one word for it," Jaune muttered.</p><p>By this point, they had arrived at the antique-styled spa and passed between the Mistralian columns and under the shadowed colonnade before they reached the glass doors which swung open automatically to admit them. Sunset hung back a little to let Jaune and Pyrrha go in first, and she was the last one to pass the doors and walk into the lobby. Soft ambient music was playing in the lobby, and the air conditioning meant that it was pleasantly cooler in here than in the street outside.</p><p>And Rainbow Dash was there, sitting on one of the comfy chairs, dressed in a dark purple bathrobe with a fluffy white collar and cuffs, with tortoise slippers on her feet, a soft smile upon her face as she leafed through a magazine.</p><p>Sunset stared at her. Her eyes widened. Her eyebrows rose. Rainbow Dash? <em>Rainbow Dash?</em> "Rainbow Dash?!" </p><p>"Gah!" Rainbow cried, almost leaping out of her seat as the magazine fell from her hands. "Sunset! Jaune, Pyrrha, aha, what, uh, what are you guys doing here?"</p><p>"The same thing as you, I guess," Jaune suggested. "I can't imagine there's much choice of stuff to do in a spa."</p><p>"Are you kidding, there's tons of stuff that you can do here," Rainbow exclaimed. "I mean, uh, not that I'd know much about that, because, you know, all of that frou-frou stuff isn't my kind of thing at all, aha, no sir. I'm just here to get a deep tissue sports massage."</p><p>At that moment, Twilight came out of the bathroom, wearing a light blue dressing gown with her cutie mark – okay, so it wasn't her cutie mark, but Sunset caught herself thinking of them that way sometimes – of the six-pointed star embroidered on the breast. "Oh, hey, you guys; are you here to get pampered pedicures, too?"</p><p>Sunset folded her arms. "'Pampered pedicures'?" she repeated, eyes fixed squarely upon Rainbow Dash. Perhaps she ought to have been more circumspect, considering that Rainbow Dash had been avoiding her for a little bit, and the last time they had spoken, they had not left things upon the very best terms, but come on, when was she ever going to get a chance like this again to needle the proud hero of the north? It was just too good to resist.</p><p>Rainbow's face fell. A sigh fell from her lips. "Well… just because a girl is an awesome daredevil doesn't mean that she can't take care of herself. And besides, one of the things that Atlas is fighting for is so people can enjoy the finer things in life."</p><p>"Really?" Sunset said. "That's what Atlas is fighting for? Spa days?"</p><p>"It's part of a long list of things that Atlas is fighting for, yes," Rainbow said, with a straight face and an utterly sincere tone.</p><p>Pyrrha covered her mouth with one hand as she chuckled. "You don't need to convince us, Rainbow Dash."</p><p>"I need to convince her," Rainbow said, pointing at Sunset.</p><p>"No, you don't," Sunset replied. "I'm just not going to let you live it down."</p><p>Rainbow huffed.</p><p>Twilight giggled. "You don't mind if we join you, do you?"</p><p>"Not at all," Pyrrha declared. "We'd be delighted."</p><p>And so, after changing into their robes – and in the process, reminding Sunset why Ruby probably wouldn’t have enjoyed a trip here – they passed through the sweltering of the steam room, then to the mud baths, then on to the <em>actual</em> baths, before having their faces covered in green paste with cucumbers over their eyes, at which point, someone Sunset couldn’t see played the xylophone upon her back while she lay on her front. </p><p>And then, when all of that was done, Sunset was able to lie on her back while the cream they had smeared all over her face worked its magic upon her pores and wrinkles. </p><p>Jaune sighed. “You guys were right; this really is relaxing.”</p><p>“Sometimes, it’s good to just be able to forget your troubles for a little while,” Pyrrha whispered contentedly.</p><p>“You got a lot of troubles to forget?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>Pyrrha was silent for a moment. “No, thank goodness.”</p><p>They sat together in companionable silence for a little while, or at least it probably seemed companionable to other people, but, with her teasing out of the way, Sunset began to find herself waiting for the other shoe to drop. Rainbow Dash, after all, knew the same thing that Jaune knew, and unlike Jaune, she had no reason to keep it to herself any longer. </p><p>She sighed. Well, she had no desire to spend all day – all <em>spa</em> day, no less; this was supposed to be relaxing! – waiting for Rainbow to do the dirty on her. Waiting for Rainbow to reveal her sins. Waiting for Rainbow to do something that was in between betrayal and justice, or perhaps both at the same time. Waiting for Rainbow to say <em>something</em>; let’s put it like that. </p><p>She didn’t want to spend all day waiting, and so she said, “So, Rainbow Dash, what do you think about that leak, huh?”</p><p>Twilight made a sound as though she was about to choke on one of her cucumber slices, but didn’t actually say anything.</p><p>“Sunset, do we have to talk about that?” Pyrrha asked wearily. “We’re supposed to be forgetting our troubles. I hardly think that is the sort of thing that Rainbow wants to be reminded of.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Jaune agreed. “It doesn’t really seem like the sort of thing you’d want to talk about either.”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Rainbow said. “I mean, sorry if you guys don’t want to talk about it, but I won’t be long. What do I think about the leak and all that other stuff…?” Rainbow exhaled loudly. “They had it coming.”</p><p>Sunset would have blinked if she didn’t have cucumbers over her eyes. “That’s it?”</p><p>“What do you want me to say?” Rainbow demanded. “Were there better ways of handling it? Probably. But so what? Like Applejack always says ‘Once the cider’s been made, ain’t no use sayin’ you want apple pie.’”</p><p>“When has Applejack ever said that?” Twilight asked.</p><p>“Applejack says stuff like that all the time!”</p><p>“I’m going to tell her you said that,” Twilight informed her.</p><p>“The point is, there are a few things where I draw the line and saying you want to wipe out the faunus is one of them,” Rainbow declared. “Sure, it’s not great that Flash and those guys are involved, but… when I think about what she said, I want to break every bone in Bon Bon’s body. Because it’s not just me; it’s Scootaloo, and it’s why Gilda joined the White Fang, and why Adam… sorry, guys, you don’t want to hear this.”</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha murmured. “Please, don’t stop on our account.”</p><p>Rainbow was quiet for a moment. “None of you guys will get this, because most of you are human, and Sunset doesn’t give a damn… but there are times when I wonder… how can I be on the right side when people like Bon Bon are on the same side as me?”</p><p>“Because people like Twilight and Applejack are also on the same side as you,” Sunset declared. </p><p>Rainbow was silent for a moment. “Well when you put it like that, it sounds obvious,” she muttered. She laughed, even if it did sound just a little forced. “Sorry. I didn’t meanmind to bring down the mood.”</p><p>“No, I’m sorry,” Sunset said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”</p><p>“No,” Rainbow said curtly. “You shouldn’t have.”</p><p>Silence descended upon the group once again, broken by a nervous-sounding Twilight asking, “So, aha, didn’t Ruby want to come with you?”</p><p>“No,” Sunset replied. “She had other plans. Didn’t Ciel want to come with you? This seems like her thing.”</p><p>“I get what you mean,” Rainbow answered, “but someone has to keep an eye on Penny.”</p><p>“And rank has its privileges,” Sunset murmured.</p><p>“Don’t say it like that!” Rainbow snapped. “Ciel volunteered; she’s teaching Penny how to dance.”</p><p>“Oh, how lovely,” Pyrrha declared. “Is she excited?”</p><p>“You bet,” Rainbow said. “I hope she can calm down long enough to actually learn something.”</p><p>“She’ll be fine,” Twilight insisted. “Ciel is a very patient teacher. Where Penny’s concerned, anyway. It comes with being a big sister, I guess.”</p><p>“I don’t know; not every big sister ever is patient and understanding of their little… siblings,” Jaune said. “Penny’s lucky to have someone like Ciel.”</p><p>“We’re lucky to have Penny,” Twilight said. “She… she’s going to be something one of these days. Oh, which reminds me, Pyrrha, Penny was hoping that she could sit in on your training with Jaune tomorrow.”</p><p>“'Sit in'?” Pyrrha repeated.</p><p>“She just wants to watch,” Twilight explained. “She doesn’t expect you to actually teach her anything; she just wants to see how you do it.”</p><p>“Although she wouldn’t say no to tuition either,” Rainbow added. “It’s driving her nuts that Professor Goodwitch won’t call her up to fight you in combat class.”</p><p>“Yes,” Pyrrha murmured. “I can’t say that I hadn’t noticed that.”</p><p>Rainbow laughed. “Mind you,” she said, “considering who you are, it’s not surprising that there’s a line all the way around the block who wants to have a crack at you, and the professor has to be fair about this stuff, I guess.”</p><p>“There’s a line?” Pyrrha asked, her voice surprised. “To fight me?”</p><p>“Well, yeah,” Rainbow said, as though that should have been obvious. “What, did you think everyone was running scared because you’re the Invincible Girl of Mistral?”</p><p>Pyrrha was silent for a moment. “Some do find my reputation intimidating,” she pointed out.</p><p>“Come on, Pyrrha, give us some credit,” Rainbow cried. “For some people, sure, the fact that you’ve never lost is going to be a downer, but for some of us, it just makes us even more stoked to take you on. Who wouldn’t want to be the first one to win against the great Pyrrha Nikos, right, Sunset?”</p><p>Sunset snorted. “I wouldn’t have said no to the honour,” she said, understating just how badly she had wanted it at the time. “That being said, Dash, you’re a fool if you think that you can succeed where I failed.”</p><p>Rainbow scoffed. “Oh, you think you’re so much better than I am just because you’re flashing your magic all over the place all of a sudden?”</p><p>Sunset thought about it for a second. “Yep.”</p><p>“Hmph. Enjoy it while it lasts, because you’re on my list as well.”</p><p>“Your list?”</p><p>“My list of awesome fights I want before the year ends,” Rainbow explained. “You and me, head to head. I gotta say, I wish that you’d been this honest about how strong you are when you were at Canterlot.”</p><p>“Why, would you have respected me more?”</p><p>“Yep,” Rainbow replied. </p><p>“That <em>was</em> a pretty great fight today,” Twilight added, “but neither of us were really able to work out what it was you were fighting about. Why did Bolin challenge you to duel?”</p><p>“Because someone was paying him,” Jaune explained.</p><p>“Someone paid him?” Twilight repeated. “Someone paid him to challenge Sunset to a duel?”</p><p>“Indeed,” Pyrrha murmured.</p><p>“That doesn’t sound very honourable.”</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha conceded sadly. “It was not.”</p><p>“But why?” Twilight asked. “Why would anyone want to pay someone else to fight a duel?”</p><p>“Because they were afraid to face Sunset themselves, I bet,” Rainbow answered.</p><p>“I think so too,” Sunset said. “What do you know about a third-year student named Phoebe Kommenos?”</p><p>Rainbow groaned.</p><p>“That bad, huh?” Jaune asked.</p><p>“Let me see,” Rainbow growled. “She’s rich, so she walks around like she owns the place, and she can be generous to her ‘friends’ as well, so she walks around like she owns the place surrounded by a crew of lackeys who laugh at her bad jokes and sneer at the people she doesn’t like, and that seems to be pretty much everybody. She treats her partner like a servant, she looks at me like I smell bad, and she isn’t even that good! She’s a rotten team leader and a pretty bad huntress, too.”</p><p>“Then how did she make team leader?” Jaune asked. “General Ironwood must have chosen her.”</p><p>“Maybe the great General Ironwood gets it wrong sometimes,” Sunset suggested.</p><p>“Her teammates… they let her walk on them,” Rainbow said. “So it seems like she’s a natural leader because she can make other people do as she says. That, and… well… she puts on a good face for the faculty: good grades, always well turned out, always polite, helpful. The professors think she’s great because they never see the same side of her that she shows to us students. </p><p>“We’ve never been in the same year, so I don’t have too much to do with her, thank the gods. Are you mixed up with her somehow?”</p><p>“The short version,” Sunset said, “is that my sword used to belong to her great-great-uncle, who died in the Great War fighting for the Emperor of Mistral, Pyrrha’s ancestor. Pyrrha’s family took the sword as a memento of a valiant retainer of their house, but Phoebe says the sword should belong to her as the descendant of the dead man.”</p><p>“I… can see where she’s coming from,” Twilight said softly, “but it seems like a very trivial thing to get upset about at this distance from the event itself.”</p><p>“So she set Bolin up to fight you for it?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“You’re not going to want to hear this,” Rainbow went on, “but maybe you should just give her the sword.”</p><p>“What?” Sunset said, her body shooting bolt upright as she ripped a cucumber slice off one eye so that she could glare at Rainbow, for all that Dash couldn’t see her because she hadn’t taken her cucumbers off. “Seriously?”</p><p>“It would get her off your back,” Rainbow said.</p><p>“At what cost?” Sunset demanded. “My pride? My dignity? My sacred honour? That sword was given to me by Pyrrha’s mother, by Lady Nikos, the rightful Empress of Mistral. I should be shamed if I broke faith with her and cast aside the token of her trust in me.”</p><p>“You’ve read too many old books, if you can talk like that so easily,” Twilight murmured.</p><p>Sunset ignored that. “The point is that I would insult someone whom I respect and who respects me, what is more, if I surrender that sword, and even if that weren’t the case, I’m not going to be bullied by some gender swapped Cardin.”</p><p>“I can respect that,” Rainbow admitted. “But… I’m still not sure it’s worth the effort and the trouble over a sword. Give it to her already, and you look generous.”</p><p>“And I am sure that that kind of attitude would carry you all the way to the top in Atlas,” Sunset said sarcastically, “but I could care less about getting on in the world, certainly not at the cost of my self-respect. I'm not going to humble myself in front of her to make my life a little easier any more than because Phoebe’s ancestors fought in the Great War. And if she wants to start something, I'll take her on." She replaced the cucumber slices on her eyes as she leaned back on the recliner. "On a lighter note, and hopefully to bring the mood back," she said, "Pyrrha, I think your mother is starting to come around to the idea of you and Jaune."</p><p>Pyrrha's tone was less enthusiastic than Sunset would have liked. "Is that so?"</p><p>"What's wrong?"</p><p>"What's wrong is that that isn't the point," Pyrrha declared. "I don't need my mother to approve of my boyfriend; I don't need her permission to date Jaune, and I don't want her permission; I want and need her to accept <em>my</em> choices in my own life! Is that so very much to ask?"</p><p>"What if it is?" Sunset demanded. "Are you going to freeze her out until she comes to you on bended knee? I know that's not going to happen, and you know that isn't going to happen; your mother has too much pride for that. But for what it's worth, I really think she's trying to meet you halfway on this." She hesitated. "I've never liked the fact that you've fallen out with your mother, but I could understand why you were upset. But now… she's making a concession to you; don't you think the time has come when you might deign to be magnanimous?"</p><p>Pyrrha did not reply; instead, it was Jaune who said, "Pyrrha, maybe you should think about it."</p><p>"Jaune?" Pyrrha asked, surprised.</p><p>"Pyrrha," Jaune said, his voice as soft as the spring breeze, "the fact that you were willing to turn your back upon your mom for my sake… it humbles me, it really does. Choosing me over your family… it makes me feel so, so lucky and so, so small at the same time. But I don't want to be the reason why you don't have a relationship with your mom, and I don't want to be the reason you can't go home again, especially since I know what your home and your name and all the rest of it means to you. I don't want to force you to make that choice-"</p><p>"You're not."</p><p>"And I don't want you to start regretting the choice you made in ten years and start to blame me for it," Jaune continued.</p><p>Pyrrha was silent a moment. "Ten years," she murmured. "You… you think we'll still be together in ten years?"</p><p>"Well, maybe," Jaune said. "If we're both still alive."</p><p>Pyrrha let out a sort of giddy giggling chuckle. Sunset would have rolled her eyes if they hadn't been closed against the cucumber juice.</p><p>"You don't have to do what I say," Jaune said, "but if you want to hear Sunset out… it can't hurt, right?"</p><p>Once more, a silence fell upon the group, broken by Pyrrha asking, "What did my mother say?"</p><p>Sunset chuckled. "She wants me to find out about Jaune's pedigree and report back to her."</p><p>"My pedigree?" Jaune asked. "You mean like a Labrador or something?"</p><p>"Well, you have got that soft, floppy blond hair," Sunset said. "But no, she means your ancestors. Lady Nikos is hoping-"</p><p>"That you turn out to have a noble descent," Pyrrha interrupted. "Isn't it enough that you are brave and kind? Isn't it enough that I care about you, and that… that you care about me?"</p><p>"I kind of hope so, since I don't think I've got any noble ancestors," Jaune admitted. "My dad was a huntsman, but he retired to raise a family. My mom's side of the family are all farmers, just like… well, just like most people from where I come from. Alba Longa isn't a place where you find fancy people."</p><p>"Are you sure about that?" Sunset asked. "Because backwater farming communities seem like just the sort of place where you might find, oh, I don't know, the lost heir to the throne of Vale."</p><p>"What?!" Jaune exclaimed. "Uh, Sunset, what are you talking about?"</p><p>"I'm talking about faking it so that you can appease Lady Nikos and get her to give her blessing to your being with Pyrrha obviously," Sunset replied.</p><p>"Giving away her sword is something that you would never even contemplate because you respect Pyrrha's mother so much," Twilight said, "but lying to her, oh, that's fine."</p><p>"It's not lying-" Sunset began.</p><p>"You're suggesting telling her things that aren't true; that is exactly lying," Twilight declared.</p><p>"Also known as storytelling," Sunset pointed out.</p><p>"Or fraud," Twilight said dryly.</p><p>"It would only be fraud if Jaune were trying to get something out of it," Sunset said. "But he's not; he doesn't want land or money, still less to actually take the throne; we just want to persuade one proud woman that this young man is worthy of her daughter."</p><p>"It should not require deception to persuade her of that," Pyrrha muttered.</p><p>"Yes, well, I'm sorry that your mother does not respect your romantic autonomy, but I am trying to do the best I can as both your friend and Lady Nikos' trusted woman," Sunset declared. "I know that you're upset, and I will even go so far as to say you've a right to be angry, but I don't like having to tell your mother that you still aren't ready to speak to her yet; it upsets her, and it makes me look bad. This is an opportunity for reconciliation, so will you please just consider it instead of standing upon your pride just because you're not getting everything that you want?"</p><p>Pyrrha sighed. "Twilight's right; it is lying to her; how can I reconcile with my mother through deception?"</p><p>"And how are you going to convince anybody that I'm the rightful heir to the throne of Vale?" Jaune demanded.</p><p>"Simple," Sunset said, "I'm going to use your sword."</p><p>"My sword?" Jaune repeated.</p><p>"Crocea Mors," Sunset explained, "is not only the name of your sword, but also the name of the sword wielded by Jaune of Gaunt, Duke of Westmorland, who was the fourth son of King Edward Farstrider, the first king of a united Vale."</p><p>"Hey, that's the guy from Ruby's story, right?" Rainbow said. "<em>The Song of Olivia</em>? She was in love with him, but he had to marry someone else because she wasn't good enough for him."</p><p>"Correct," Sunset said, "and it is precisely to avoid such a situation that we are going to fake Jaune's degree. Now, as I was saying, this Jaune of Gaunt helped expand his father's kingdom by leading the second expedition over the mountains and into the eastern lands beyond-"</p><p>"What happened to the first expedition?" Twilight asked.</p><p>"Between the grimm and the barbarians, they found it too hard going and had to turn back," Rainbow said. "They were almost home when the rearguard was attacked making its way up to the mountain pass; that's when Olivia died. Ruby's right; it is a really cool story."</p><p>"But Gaunt did what his father could not and claimed all the lands from the mountains to the sea," Sunset said. "He held it for a while, but the lands were lost when, after his death, his son marched west to take the throne of Vale for himself. His line held the throne, then lost it, then took it back and held it while the line lasted, but as far as I can make out-"</p><p>"How do you know so much about the Valish royal family?" Jaune asked.</p><p>"Because Cinder and I are going to see a couple of the Richard plays in the park tomorrow, and I wanted to know the history in case I couldn't keep up with the language," Sunset explained. "The point is that, as far as I can tell, the kings of Vale made a habit of bestowing Crocea Mors upon younger children of their family, but those cadet branches always failed, and the sword ended up back with the main royal line. Until it didn't. The last person known to bear the sword was Harry, Duke of Alexandria, who renounced his titles, lands, and claims in order to marry someone unsuitable."</p><p>"She wasn't good enough for his family?" Pyrrha asked.</p><p>"She was a Mantleite, a divorcee, an actress, and a faunus, so no, not really," Sunset replied. "They disappeared into obscurity to escape from the press, which is where the sword vanishes as well."</p><p>"It's a pity that they had to flee and hide, but on the other hand, I can't help but feel that they were very fortunate to be able to do so," Pyrrha murmured. "They had one another, after all. I hope they were able to make a happy life together."</p><p>"The point is, who is to say that those ten generations do not lead to Alba Longa and Jaune Arc?" Sunset asked. "Who is to say that we can't suggest they did?"</p><p>"You do realise that if the Duke of Alexandria renounced his titles, lands, <em>and claims,</em> then Jaune would not, in fact, be the heir to the throne, even if he really was a descendant," Twilight pointed out.</p><p>"That would matter if he were claiming the throne," Sunset allowed, "but the important point for Lady Nikos' benefit is that Jaune is of royal blood and a gentleman of the most august and venerable ancestry. With the throne defunct, the fact that Jaune cannot claim it is irrelevant; in terms of blood and descent and noble pedigree, he is nearly on a level with Pyrrha herself."</p><p>"You're starting to talk about this like you've already forgotten it's fake," Jaune said.</p><p>"I prefer to think of it as a story rather than a falsehood," Sunset replied. "It's not like you're lying to get Pyrrha to like you; she already does. It isn't even as though you're lying to get Lady Nikos to like you, because I honestly don't think she ever will. This is a matter of allowing Lady Nikos to save face both with Pyrrha and with high society. Now, is a little white lie really so high a price to pay for that?"</p><p>"I…" Pyrrha hesitated. "I will think about it," she said, in a tone that strongly suggested to Sunset that the answer would be 'no.' "Anyway," she went on, "Rainbow Dash, you were asking about Penny coming to watch our training tomorrow night? I'm afraid we got a little sidetracked. Personally, I wouldn't have any objections-"</p><p>"Me neither," Jaune added.</p><p>"But I'm afraid that Jaune and I don't train on a Saturday night because-"</p><p>"Oh, right, yeah, you have special lessons with Professor Goodwitch, don't you?" Rainbow asked.</p><p>"Yang and I, yes," Pyrrha confirmed. "But how did you know?"</p><p>"Atlesian intelligence is second to none," Rainbow declared.</p><p>"Ruby told you, didn't she?" Sunset guessed.</p><p>"Ruby told Penny," Twilight corrected. "And Penny became very jealous of Yang."</p><p>"Well, Professor Goodwitch let me and Blake watch the first session; maybe she'd let Penny come along on Saturday night?" Jaune suggested.</p><p>"You and Blake are Beacon students," Twilight pointed out. "For now, at least, in Blake's case."</p><p>"Yeah, but Jaune's right; there's no harm in showing up to see what she says," Rainbow said. "And besides, if it was about training up a Beacon winner for the Vytal Festival or something, then she'd be teaching Weiss too, so that they had more options. If she's focussing on Pyrrha and Yang, it's because they're the best. Well, Penny could be the best even if she isn't yet, so… why not?"</p><p>"Okay, but maybe you should actually ask Professor Goodwitch first before you just show up at the amphitheatre door," said Twilight.</p><p>"You're probably right," Rainbow conceded. "As usual."</p><p>Sunset lay back, and pondered exactly why Professor Goodwitch was giving private tuition to the two most talented students in the year, instead of those who might actually need it more.</p><p>Perhaps Professor Ozpin was involved. He could have put her up to it to hide his secrets, after all. Perhaps… perhaps Sunset had been wrong, and his interest was not in Ruby – that would explain why he had made no moves to enlighten her upon the subject of her Silver Eyes, as he had her mother – perhaps it was Pyrrha and Yang who interested him.</p><p>Could he mean for either Pyrrha or Yang to be his prophet? Surely, Merida could not be so old.</p><p>
  <em>And if that is his intention, what can I do about it?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Do I have the right to do anything about it?</em>
</p><p>Possibly not. Probably not, in fact. While Sunset was certain that Ruby would hate the confined lifestyle which she believed Ozpin's magical girls were inured in, she was less certain about Pyrrha. It would mean giving up her destiny, to be sure, turning her back on saving the world… but Pyrrha's sense of duty was not as monofocussed as Ruby's own: many kings and princes had done their duty without venturing out onto the front lines of battle, and Pyrrha was sufficiently steeped in history and lore to know that. To keep great power out of the hands of evil might be thought an honourable charge, and if it meant toiling in obscurity, well… as Pyrrha herself had so recently said, she might think herself fortunate to be able to disappear with Jaune into hiding, free to live and love with no one to trouble them.</p><p>How exactly you would hide the Princess Without a Crown was something else, for surely Mistral would search for her. You could fake her death, but then…</p><p>Sunset was forcefully struck by the thought of Lady Nikos, receiving the sword and circlet of her 'late daughter,' hanging her death mask on the wall for however long the mother might outlive the child. Whatever the state of relations between Pyrrha and her mother now, Sunset was in no doubt that grief would fill up the house of the absent girl if Pyrrha were to perish or be thought to have perished. Philosophy would offer no consolation; the brave words of heroes long past would seem hollow in the extreme. Lady Nikos would be broken by these calamities: the extinction, as she would think, of her ancient line; the fall of her house; the death of her sweet child.</p><p>She loved her daughter and would remember it before the end.</p><p>
  <em>Too cruel; too, too cruel.</em>
</p><p>Sunset forced her mind away from such things; this was no proper place for them. She was here to relax – they were all here to relax – and there had been too much serious talk already.</p><p>She twisted her body in place, searching as she lay for greater comfort, and tried to take her mind off of it all.</p><p>In this, she was less than wholly successful.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0060"><h2>60. Fabric Shopping</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ruby and Blake go shopping for fabrics</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Fabric Shopping</p><p> </p><p>“Thanks for coming with me,” Ruby said, looking up at Blake as they walked side by side down the street. “You didn’t have to.”</p><p>“No, but I wanted to,” Blake replied. “I know that we haven’t spent much time together, but I’d like the chance to rectify that a little bit, if you don’t mind.”</p><p>Ruby smiled. “I’d like that too,” she said brightly. “Though that doesn’t mean that you have to come fabric shopping with me. It might not be the most interesting thing you’ve ever done.”</p><p>“Who do you think made this outfit?” Blake asked, a wry look upon her face as she gestured to her clothes.</p><p>“Uh…” Ruby began, and then trailed off because she realised that she’d never really thought about it before. “I kind of thought that you bought it.”</p><p>“There aren’t a lot of stores out in the wilderness,” Blake pointed out.</p><p>“Fabrics don’t grow on trees either,” Ruby pointed out in turn.</p><p>“No,” Blake allowed. “I admit that I got the fabrics in Mistral, but I put it together myself. I wanted something that allowed me flexibility for the way that I fight, but I also…” Her face fell, and her head fell with it, bowing towards the ground. “I wanted to look…”</p><p><em>She wanted to look good for that guy,</em> Ruby thought, as the memory of that mask flashed before her eyes. Adam Taurus. He didn’t scare her the way that he scared Sunset – which was maybe a little strange, but at the same time, it had all happened so fast for her that she hadn’t had time to really think about it before she was… not really thinking anything at all – but all the same, the thought of him still made her shiver. And to think that Blake had been his... his prisoner. Was that right? Ruby wasn’t sure if that was quite the right way to think about it, but at the same time, it felt like the right way to think about it, if that made any sense. She’d been his prisoner, and then she’d gotten out, and now… now she was getting better. </p><p>When she didn’t have to think about him.</p><p>Ruby reached out and took Blake by the hand. “Hey,” she said gently. “It’s okay.”</p><p>Blake’s golden eyes widened as she looked down at Ruby’s hand, clasping her own. “Ruby.”</p><p>“It’s okay,” Ruby repeated. “I’m right here, and he’s not.”</p><p>Blake was silent for a moment, her chest rising and falling as she breathed in and out, before she smiled. “Thank you,” she said.</p><p>“Don’t mention it,” Ruby said. “Do you want to sit down, go get a coffee or something?”</p><p>“No, I’m fine,” Blake replied rapidly. “It’s just… I can’t deny that he was a part of my reasoning, just like I can’t deny that he was a big part of my life for a long time.”</p><p>“You’re not that person anymore.”</p><p>“That’s kind of you to say, but that doesn’t change the fact of who I used to be,” Blake said. She brushed a few rogue strands of hair back over her shoulder. “Do you remember how, in the fairytale book, Professor Ozpin writes that faunus stories don’t have endings in the same way that a lot of human stories do?”</p><p>Ruby nodded. “Because faunus believe that their story hasn’t ended yet; it’s still going on.”</p><p>“We reject the idea of endings in that way,” Blake agreed. “But the inverse is true as well: there are no such things as beginnings, and certainly not easy beginnings. I could say that my life, my real life, started when I came to Beacon, or when you all fought for me at the docks and I was able to be myself without hiding, or even when I ran away from the White Fang. I could say all of that to make myself feel better, but none of it would be true. My story didn’t begin after I left Adam and the White Fang; he’s a part of my story, whether I like it or not, because my story has been going on since… before I was born.”</p><p>Ruby frowned. “How can <em>your</em> story have been going on since before you were born?”</p><p>“Because we’re all shaped by our world,” Blake explained. “Our world and the people in it: the people around us who raise us, teach us, help us, hinder us… and the people more distant who set the rules that govern the land we live in. And they in turn are shaped by others and by their world, all going further back beyond even the Great War. I could write a memoir of my own life and easily end the book before I was even born.”</p><p>“But then you wouldn’t be in it?”</p><p>“Yes, but all the things that made me who I am would be in place,” Blake explained.</p><p>Ruby thought about that for a moment, before she shook her head. “I don’t buy that,” she said.</p><p>Blake raised one eyebrow. “Why not?”</p><p>“Because like you said yourself, your story isn’t finished yet,” Ruby said. “So how do you know who the people are who will shape you the most?”</p><p>Blake blinked. “That is a very good point,” she admitted. “When I came to Beacon, I couldn’t imagine what kind of influence some of the people I’d meet here would have on me.”</p><p>“Me neither,” Ruby agreed as they resumed their journey down the street. “When I was on the airship over here, the only thing that I wanted was to get through these four years without being noticed by anyone. If everyone wanted to see right through me, that would have been fine by me. I could never have imagined how many wonderful friends I’d make here.”</p><p>“Same here,” Blake said. “Well, you know that I was hiding myself under a bow, and you remember how I acted when you came over to talk to Sunset. I didn’t want anything to do with anyone; I was… I was afraid of letting anyone get close enough to find out who I really was… afraid of letting anyone get close enough to hurt me.” For a moment, Ruby was afraid that she would slip into melancholy once again, but she seemed to shake it off this time, visibly shaking her head and shoulders as if there was something physically there that she could dislodge. “Who would have thought that someone like me would be able to make so many friends who accept me for who I am, even though they know… everything about me, and who I used to be? I guess… we both got very lucky.”</p><p>Ruby nodded. “Blake,” she asked, “do you like it here, at Beacon?”</p><p>Blake’s answer was delayed by a little bit. “Are you asking me if I like it here, or are you asking me if I’m going to stick around?”</p><p>Ruby shrugged. “Both?”</p><p>"Those are two different questions," Blake pointed out. "Yes, I like it here at Beacon. I like the school; I like all of you. The way that I've been accepted for who I am instead of what I am, and after everything I've done, it… it's more than I could have hoped for."</p><p>"Then stay," Ruby said. "It doesn't sound like you've got any reason not to."</p><p>Blake smiled slightly. "It's not that simple," she said.</p><p>"Isn't it?" Ruby asked. "It sounds simple to me. You can learn to be a huntress in any of four schools, so you might as well stick with the school you already know you like, right?"</p><p>The smile remained on Blake's face, a fond smile if not a particularly wide one, and Ruby thought that Blake would answer her in some way before they were both interrupted by the stirring to life of one of the big public screens, set high up above the level of the street, on the corner where three roads intersected. The screen flashed green for a moment before the bright green light was replaced by the image of Lisa Lavender, sat in a comfy red chair in a studio somewhere, with large windows overlooking the city of Vale.</p><p>"Good afternoon; this is the Lavender Report with me, Lisa Lavender," she said. "Our first guest today is Councillor of the Interior Aspen Emerald. Thank you for joining us, Councillor."</p><p>Ruby was surprised to see that Councillor Aspen was a deer faunus, with pale skin and a regal set of antlers, broader than his shoulders, sprouting from his head; he was dressed in a dark suit, contrasting with the fair tone of his skin, and even sat upon a red settee opposite Lisa Lavender, he towered over the newscaster. His green eyes stood out even at this distance and over camera.</p><p>He smiled. "It's my pleasure to be here, Miss Lavender."</p><p>"Crime rates in the city have been dropping since Atlesian forces apprehended Roman Torchwick," Lisa said. "Is it time for the citizens of Vale to breathe easy once again?"</p><p>Aspen chuckled as, with one hand, he made a slight adjustment to his green tie, the only splash of colour in his outfit. "Let me begin with an important clarification: Roman Torchwick was not captured by Atlesian forces; he was taken in a joint operation by students from Beacon and Atlas academies; we of the Valish council are very proud of our students, and it is only right and proper that they get the credit that they are due."</p><p>"But those Beacon students were not all from Vale, were they?"</p><p>"No, but that in itself is something to be proud of, that we have in Beacon this centre of excellence, this shining pillar if you will, that draws the best and brightest from across Remnant to study here in our kingdom and immerse themselves in our culture. I think that's something that we have worked very hard to accomplish and something that we can take pride in."</p><p>Lisa Lavender smiled like a shark. "But didn't you say, during the last election campaign, that you thought there were too many non-Valish students at Beacon Academy?"</p><p>"I don't recognise that statement," Aspen said smoothly.</p><p>Lisa Lavender leaned forwards and picked up a scroll that must have been lying just off-camera. "At a town hall meeting you said, and this is a direct quote, 'There are many problems with the current system under which huntsmen and huntresses operate. If you're asking me if I think it's fair that Valish taxpayers should pay for the education of foreign children who will then go back to their own kingdoms with the benefits of their education, no, I do not.' Your words, Councillor."</p><p>"You're misinterpreting my words," Aspen said.</p><p>"You said that you didn't think it was fair that Valish taxpayers should pay for non-Valish children to study at Beacon."</p><p>"No, I said that it wasn't fair that they should pay for the education of huntsmen and huntresses who will not stay and operate in Vale," Aspen insisted. "It has nothing to do with nationality except in so far as those students not from Vale will often return to their own homes once they graduate, and <em>that</em>, Miss Lavender, is where the unfairness comes in, because their education at Beacon has been funded by the Kingdom of Vale, and yet, the Kingdom of Vale sees no return on its investment."</p><p>"But you remain very proud of, for example, Pyrrha Nikos, who will almost certainly return to Mistral after her graduation."</p><p>"Ah, but you see, Miss Nikos has already provided a signal service to Vale through her assistance in the capture of Roman Torchwick," Aspen replied. "If she and her teammates do nothing else for the next four years, they will have made good on the kingdom's investment in them."</p><p>"Do you think we could use that to get out of homework?" Ruby asked.</p><p>"I doubt it," Blake replied.</p><p>"That brings us back to my original question, Councillor: can the people of Vale sleep soundly once more?"</p><p>"Let's not sensationalise, Miss Lavender; I don't believe that the people of Vale were ever not sleeping soundly-"</p><p>"He's got a point," Ruby said. "I mean, think of all the times that we've been in Vale; has anyone ever seemed frightened because of the dust robberies?"</p><p>"No," Blake admitted. "Although I'm not sure how admirable that is."</p><p>"Why not?" Ruby asked.</p><p>"Because there are a lot of things that the White Fang could do with so much dust, and none of them are good," Blake murmured. "And the fact that nobody – well, very few people – seem to be thinking about that is… I'm not sure what it is, except perhaps a little concerning."</p><p>"I don't know," Ruby said. "I think it's a good thing."</p><p>Blake glanced at her. "Really?"</p><p>Ruby nodded. "If you think about it, we're all going to die," she said. "And not just us huntresses, but everybody. We might die on missions, but other people might perish because we screwed up, or the grimm might get through the walls; there are so many terrible things that could happen that the White Fang is just one more, even with a load of stolen dust. But we can't let ourselves think like that, none of us, and not just because if we let ourselves get scared, then it will bring the grimm, but because… because how can we live if we're afraid all the time? Maybe it seems stupid, but we have to smile and laugh and pretend that things aren't as bad as they are, because it's the only way we can stop moping around and work to make things better."</p><p>Blake hesitated for a moment before she nodded. "I guess you're right," she said. "Worrying really won't solve anything."</p><p>"Nope," Ruby agreed. "And besides, I'm sure that people like Professor Ozpin are right on top of everything."</p><p>"So you don't share any of Sunset's suspicions?" Blake asked as they resumed their journey.</p><p>"Nah," Ruby replied. "Sunset is one of those people who really needs to learn to worry less."</p><p>"I thought worrying less was for when there were things to worry about?"</p><p>"Worrying about things that aren't real is even worse, don't you think?" Ruby suggested.</p><p>"Yes," Blake granted. "But it seems that the headmaster does know more than he's telling you."</p><p>"And I know more than I've told people," Ruby replied. "I haven't told Ren or Nora about my Silver Eyes, so if Professor Ozpin doesn't want to tell me about it, I'm sure he's got a good reason for keeping it to himself, just like I do."</p><p>"Would you prefer it if he did tell you?"</p><p>Ruby had to think about that one for a little bit. "Yes," she admitted. "Not just because I'd be able to fight grimm with my laser eyes," – she chuckled, drawing a laugh from Blake as well – "but because maybe he could tell me about my Mom. I know I have her diary, but there are times when it seems like she doesn't have much confidence in herself. I'd kind of like to find out what other people saw, you know? Only Dad and Uncle Qrow don't talk about her much; it hurts them to remember. Yang remembers more than I do, but not that much. I'd just like to hear some stories, you know?"</p><p>Blake put a hand on Ruby's shoulder. "I won't pretend to understand exactly what it's been like for you," she murmured, "but there's nothing strange about wanting to know more about your mother." She paused. "Have you considered going and asking Professor Ozpin, or Professor Goodwitch if that's easier?"</p><p>Ruby frowned. "I'm not sure that Sunset would like that."</p><p>"It's not Sunset's mother, or Sunset's decision," Blake informed her, a touch of sternness entering into her voice. "Sunset needs to learn to let other people make their own choices, and I'll tell her that myself if she gives you any trouble about this."</p><p>"But I don't want to get <em>her</em> into trouble," Ruby replied. "And how do I ask about my eyes without telling them about the diary?"</p><p>"Maybe you don't have to ask about the eyes?" Blake suggested. "Maybe you can just ask to hear some stories about your mother, about what they remember of her."</p><p>Ruby hadn't considered that before and felt like an idiot for not thinking of it herself. Now that Blake had suggested it, it seemed like the most wonderful idea in the world. "Do you… do you think they would?"</p><p>"The worst thing they can say is 'no.'" Blake pointed out.</p><p>"Right," Ruby murmured. "Okay then, I'll do it!" she cried. "Thank you, Blake."</p><p>"For what?"</p><p>"For… for being smarter than me," Ruby said.</p><p>The street down which they walked was not one of the nicest in Vale. The Kingdom was prosperous, so they said, but that prosperity didn't look as though it had reached down here; half the shops fronting onto the road were betting shops, where hopeless-looking men with unkempt beards and the eyes of those who hadn't slept for longer than was smart sat in front of fixed-odds betting terminals, mechanically pressing buttons and inserting lien so that they looked more like robots than people.</p><p>Except that the robots might not smell so bad.</p><p>The men in there reminded Ruby of her father after Mom died: the same blank stare, the listless obliviousness to the world around them. But Dad had lost the love of his life; what was these guys' excuse?</p><p>Amongst the betting shops, charity shops were the next big thing along this particular street, but more important for Ruby's purpose, there was also at least one prints and fabrics place: a narrow-fronted but deep-looking place by the name of Dunoaks, the name painted in red letters upon a white background over the door. It wasn't somewhere Ruby had been before, but it got some good reviews on-line, and it wasn't as though she could go back to Patch for this.</p><p>Ruby pushed open the door – it made no sound except the squeaking of the hinges – and walked inside. Blake followed shortly after.</p><p>Behind the simple wooden counter was a faunus, a fox faunus with a pair of tufty ears sticking out from the top of her red hair. She started a little as they came in and seemed to stare at Blake for a moment with her hazel eyes. </p><p>Blake’s eyes narrowed. “Is something wrong?” she asked softly.</p><p>“Ahem!” the woman behind the counter exclaimed. “No, nothing, nothing at all! Ahem, so, what can I help you with today?”</p><p>“We’re just browsing for now,” Ruby said.</p><p>“Is there anything in particular that you’re looking for?”</p><p>“I’m making some outfits for some friends of mine, for the school dance,” Ruby explained. “But, I don’t really… I’m still thinking about... everything, really.”</p><p>“Hmm,” the faunus woman murmured. She smiled. “Well, feel free to take a look around and let me know if there’s anything you need.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Ruby said brightly, turning away from the counter and the woman behind it as she walked deeper into the shop. Bolts of fabric were stacked in rolls in wooden alcoves piled high on top of one another, extending downwards into the interior of the store. Samples, demonstrating colour and pattern, were attached to the front or side of the alcoves for reference. </p><p>As Ruby walked down the shadowy corridors formed by the shelves, she was struck by a thought that made her turn around to face Blake. “You never answered my questions,” she declared accusingly.</p><p>Blake blinked. “Excuse me?”</p><p>“I asked if you were going to stick around, and then-”</p><p>“Then we got sidetracked, right,” Blake agreed. She then fell silent for a little bit. “If it was just a question of ‘am I happy here?’ or ‘do I like Beacon?’ then I’d stay,” she said. “I wouldn’t trade the certainty of happiness at Beacon for the chance of happiness at Atlas. That… that’s not what makes this a hard choice.”</p><p>“I… I don’t understand,” Ruby said softly. “What else is there?”</p><p>Blake reached out and ran her fingertips over a bolt of dark grey fabric. “Do you remember our first night on the train back from Cold Harbour, when we all talked about what we were doing here? Why we wanted to be huntresses?”</p><p>Ruby nodded. Her voice was quiet. “I remember.”</p><p>“Of course you do,” Blake replied. “You were so solemn then, so… so intense and full of righteousness. If you don’t mind me saying so, I think that you’re chasing a ghost.”</p><p>Ruby’s brow furrowed a little, her pale forehead wrinkling. “What if I am?”</p><p>“What are you going to do when you catch her?” Blake asked.</p><p>Ruby opened her mouth, but no words came out, not at first. Chasing a ghost. She hadn’t thought of it that way before, but, now that Blake had said, Ruby couldn’t deny it. It was… well, it was what she was doing, wasn’t it? And she didn’t see that it was a bad thing either, even if Blake had kind of implied she was. There were worse things to chase than ghosts – glory, ambition, power – and worse examples to follow than a true huntress. </p><p>Much worse. </p><p>“I don’t know if I ever will,” she murmured. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be strong enough, fast enough-”</p><p>“You will,” Blake assured her.</p><p>“You think so?”</p><p>“I know so.”</p><p>“I’ve seen more of real combat than anyone in our year, and more than most in the four academies, I’ll bet,” Blake said, without any pride in the fact. “I’ve seen warriors. I’ve fought alongside them. Adam… Adam haunts my dreams, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is a fighter to his fingertips, and he isn’t the only one in the White Fang who knows how to fight for the cause. I know when I’m looking at someone with the heart of a warrior and when I’m not, and you… you have so much heart in so many ways. It’s true that you’re not as strong as Pyrrha, that you don’t have Sunset’s versatility, but you have something they don’t have and will never have: the heart of a hero, the will to put everything on the line, to give everything for the sake of what you believe in. And if that’s not enough, then gods help us because nothing else will suffice.”</p><p>Ruby stared up at her. No one had… it had been some time since she had been praised like that without qualifiers. “Sunset and Pyrrha… they don’t like that about me.”</p><p>“Sunset and Pyrrha care about you,” Blake corrected her, “and that care blinds them to the fact that, sometimes, all we can do is close the wall up with our valiant dead. If closing the wall is what you hope to achieve.”</p><p>“What do you mean?”</p><p>“When you become a huntress, when you catch your ghost,” Blake said, “what will you do then?”</p><p>“I’ll fight, of course,” Ruby declared. “I’ll protect Vale, I’ll protect mankind… I’ll protect the whole world, if I can.”</p><p>“You want to hold the line,” Blake said, a statement, not a question.</p><p>“Against the grimm and the darkness? Sure,” Ruby replied. “Isn’t that what huntsmen and huntresses exist for?”</p><p>“And that’s the reason why Beacon is perfect for you,” Blake declared. “Because you want to be a hero to humanity, and Beacon trains the greatest heroes in Remnant. But for me… I’m not sure that holding the line is enough, because for me… for me and mine, the line that you hold is also a ceiling, holding us back. I don’t say this to disparage your aims and ambitions, but I want more than to just hold the line for a world that denies my people the equality that they deserve.”</p><p>“There’s a faunus on the Council,” Ruby pointed out.</p><p>“And how many faunus who aren’t on the Council are stopped by the police for no reason but that they’re faunus?” Blake asked. “The White Fang is dangerous, and it needs to be stopped before innocent people are harmed by their methods, but the only way to permanent defeat the White Fang is to eradicate the system of injustice that created it.”</p><p>“Like <em>you</em> said on the train,” Ruby reminded her.</p><p>“Yes,” Blake agreed. “Like I said on the train. I… I aim to fight more than just the grimm. I’d like to defeat more than just the grimm. And I’m just not sure that I can do that as just another huntress.”</p><p>“But you can as an Atlesian Specialist?”</p><p>Blake hesitated. “Maybe,” she murmured. “I don’t know – I’d need to be able to see the future for that – but I think… I think that it might be my best chance.” She sighed. “That’s what makes it such a hard choice.”</p><p>“No,” Ruby said. “No, it isn’t.”</p><p>Blake frowned. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“I mean you’ve already made up your mind,” Ruby said. “You’re just… not sure that you’re happy about it yet, but you’ve already chosen.”</p><p>Blake’s eyebrows rose. “What makes you say that?”</p><p>“The fact that I’m right,” Ruby said. “The fact that it’s obvious.” She grinned. “Am I wrong?”</p><p>“Yes,” Blake declared. “I’m not even close to making up my mind yet. I have no idea what Atlas is like, or about the general character of the other students-”</p><p>“And none of that will matter,” Ruby said, “because all that matters to you is doing the right thing, and you’ve already decided what that is.”</p><p>Blake’s eyes narrowed. “You think you know me so well, don’t you?”</p><p>“Only because we’re kind of a lot alike,” Ruby said.</p><p>“Well, maybe you don’t know me as well as you think,” Blake said.</p><p>“I kind of doubt that,” Ruby said. “After hearing what you just said, I know there’s no way you’ll do anything else… I’ll miss you, Blake.”</p><p>“I might not be going anywhere!”</p><p>“Yeah, I doubt that, too.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0061"><h2>61. Detention in the Emerald Forest</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Weiss recieves some advice from Professor Port</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Detention in the Emerald Forest</p><p> </p><p>“So, Professor,” Weiss said, “what will I be assisting you with this afternoon… and evening?” She kept her voice calm, composed, and devoid of any emotion but a little mild curiosity. Certainly, she would not admit to being anything so vulgar or plebeian as concerned. This was only the Emerald Forest, after all. She had braved it three times already without incident – alright, one of those times might have gone very badly for them if it hadn’t been for Professor Goodwitch, but the other two times had been very easy – so what was one time more? Certainly, she was not concerned about venturing here with only Professor Port for company. </p><p>Weiss was sure that Professor Port had come by his position at Beacon honestly. Professor Ozpin seemed to think very highly of him, both in the general sense that he allowed him to teach here and in the more specific sense that he had told Weiss, in particular, to listen to the advice of the Grimm Studies professor. That was all very well; it was just… it was Professor Port. The man had so many stories that it was impossible to believe that none of them were in the least bit embellished; he could make even the most daring adventures and most desperate battles soporifically tedious, and he had fake taxidermy on his walls. It was one thing for Benni Haven’s to have a fake stuffed beowolf at the door – that was all in good fun – and even the ursa’s head added to the hunting lodge atmosphere of the restaurant, but a teacher? Weiss was sure she couldn’t be the only student who found it just a little… desperate. As if Professor Port was trying very hard to convince his students that he was a great huntsman and a slayer of grimm. </p><p>To be perfectly honest, it reminded Weiss just a little of her father and the way that his house was filled with towering suits of armour and sculptures of grimm in spite of the fact that Jacques had never seen combat and would have wet himself at the sight of a real creature of grimm. </p><p>To say that she wished that one of her Beacon teachers did not remind her in some small manner of her father was an understatement. </p><p>And yet, here she was, under his supervision for the rest of the day and with only Professor Port to rely on if things became difficult. </p><p>She would have rather had just about anyone else. </p><p>None of that she showed upon her face. In expression, poise, and bearing she was the perfect student.</p><p>If only she could have actually been the perfect student and the perfect team leader… then she would not have been in this position. </p><p>Fortunately, if any of Weiss’ misgivings slipped through a crack in the armour of the perfect Schnee heiress, Professor Port did not notice. He leapt down out of the Bullhead with a jovial laugh, landing heavily upon the ground. </p><p>The two of them stood in the Emerald Forest, within a clearing some distance into the wood, so that the Beacon cliffs seemed some way off as Weiss glanced at them. </p><p>“Well, Miss Schnee,” Professor Port declared, “I hope you haven’t forgotten that your year has another practical test coming up on Sunday.”</p><p>Weiss clasped her hands behind her back, “No, Professor, I hadn’t forgotten,” she replied, although mentally, she cursed herself for not making the connection earlier. “Although,” she added, adding a slightly false chuckle to her voice, “I would have thought that the Emerald Forest would have been a little hunted out at this point.”</p><p>Professor Port joined her in laughter. “Very droll, Miss Schnee, but the creatures of grimm are like ants; every time you think you are rid of them, more creep into the house. Why, I’m reminded of a time when I was employed to protect a great estate to the east of Mistral; the grimm, you see, were continually harassing the farm labourers, and though they never ventured close to the house, it was proving very difficult to…”</p><p>Weiss fought to keep her eye from twitching. Now? He was going to launch into one of his stories <em>now</em>?</p><p>“But perhaps now is not the time,” Professor Port said, clearing his throat with what almost sounded like embarrassment. “After all, such a thrilling tale requires a much larger audience! I’m sorry, Miss Schnee, but you’ll have to wait to hear it with your classmates.”</p><p>“I’m sure that I can bear that, Professor,” Weiss said calmly. “Ahem, you were saying? About the practical test?”</p><p>“Ah, yes,” Professor Port declared. “I was, wasn’t I? Yes, on Sunday, you and your classmates will be returning to the forest to test your skills once more against the creatures of grimm, but this time, it won’t be so easy!”</p><p>Weiss’ eyebrows rose. “Are you sure, Professor? The last two times I’ve been in this forest, I fought a grimm horde, both at its full strength and the remnants of it. What could be more difficult than that?”</p><p>“Oho! Confidence is a fine trait, Miss Schnee, but don’t forget that pride goes before a fall,” Professor Port admonished. “And if you think that the horde your team encountered here was the worst that the grimm could get, well, I’m afraid that you will be very mistaken once you graduate! I could tell you stories-”</p><p><em>Please don’t,</em> Weiss thought.</p><p>“But for now, I shall simply say that, while nothing to sneeze at for having dealt with at your age, a level one horde like that is, well, simply child’s play to an experienced huntsman like myself. In any event, while you may rest assured that there will be something about this particular exercise to keep your children on your toes, I’m afraid it wouldn’t be fair on your classmates to give you information ahead of them. Especially when you’re here as a punishment.”</p><p>Weiss winced. “Of course, Professor,” she murmured. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“Suffice it to say,” Professor Port went on, “that although the concentrations of grimm in the forest are not as unnaturally high as they were the last time you were here, they will be attracted towards you.”</p><p>“'Attracted'?” Weiss repeated. She could not help but frown. “I take it you’re talking about more than natural negative emotions, Professor; I mean, you couldn’t rely on them to draw the kind of grimm numbers you seem to be talking about.”</p><p>“Quite right, Miss Schnee,” Professor Port said. “It’s true that grimm are only attracted to humans, and moreso to the negative emotions that they give off, but for many years, huntsmen and huntresses have wrestled with the problem of how to lure grimm into specific areas – to draw them away from populated areas, for instance, or into traps or specifically-prepared killing grounds – and a number of answers, both technological and traditional, have been proposed.”</p><p>“'Been proposed'?” Weiss said. “Do they work, Professor?”</p><p>Professor Port was silent for a moment. When he spoke, his tone was a little more serious than usual. “I’m afraid, child, that they have never saved a populated area,” he declared mournfully. “Are you familiar with the tragedy of Mountain Glenn?”</p><p>As much as Weiss wanted to say yes, she had to admit, “No, Professor, I’m not.”</p><p>“A terrible story,” Professor Port said. “One a little too melancholy to retell in too much detail. Suffice to say that Mountain Glenn was an attempt to found a new colony on a scale not seen since many years before the Great War; unfortunately, it soon came under relentless grimm attack. Huntsmen and huntresses made many efforts not only to destroy the grimm, but also to lead them away from the city and back out into the wilds, but it was no good. It seems that our tricks and tools are no match against the draw exerted by an entire conurbation full of frightened people.”</p><p>“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Weiss murmured. “The city, what-?”</p><p>“A tragic tale, Miss Schnee, as I said,” Professor Port replied.</p><p>That told Weiss all that she needed to know. “I see,” she said softly. “But these lures, they work in other circumstances?”</p><p>“Oh, yes,” Professor Port agreed. “I’ve used them myself more than once. I favour a traditional Mistralian lure; that uses a grease-proof bag filled with rags soaked in human sweat; the grimm mistake the sweat smell for anxious humans and head towards it.”</p><p>Weiss opened her mouth, about to ask how Professor Port got enough sweat to make even a single lure… but then thought better of it. Instead, she asked, “So, we’ll be spreading these lures out across the forest?”</p><p>“Goodness no, Miss Schnee!” Professor Port cried. “Carrying around grimm bait would be much too hazardous for a single first-year student. No, some third-years will be planting the lures early on Sunday morning, so that they’re still fresh for your test. What we will be doing is laying out the route that you students will be following and along which the third-years will plant the lures. Here, Miss Schnee, take this.” He handed her a bucket filled with little red flags on plastic poles. “Each flag contains a micro-transmitter so that it can be picked up from a distance, while the flag itself is for students passing by. We’re going to plant them along the ground in rough lines.”</p><p>“I see,” Weiss said, noting that Professor Port was, as it happened, telling her a great deal about the forthcoming test. She guessed that the nature of the test would involve following the route marked by the flags, killing any grimm – drawn by the lures – that got in the way. That didn’t sound so difficult; in fact, it seemed so straightforward that Weiss knew there had to be a catch somewhere in order to justify the Professor’s insistence that this would be a difficult test. “You can rely on me, Professor.”</p><p>Professor Port’s eyebrows rose. “Can I, Miss Schnee?”</p><p>“Yes!” Weiss cried. “What do you mean, Professor?”</p><p>“Why do you think you’re here, Miss Schnee?”</p><p>“I’m serving detention,” Weiss replied stiffly. “But that doesn’t mean that I can’t be trusted to handle this! I’ve made mistakes, but that doesn’t make me a bad huntress!” She hesitated. “It only… it only makes me a bad leader, that’s all.”</p><p>“A huntress who doesn’t care about her comrades may not be a bad huntress, but she will never be a great one,” Professor Port admonished.</p><p>“You think that I don’t care?” Weiss demanded.</p><p>“Do you?”</p><p>“Yes!” Weiss snapped. “I do care… about some of my teammates.”</p><p>“And the rest?”</p><p>“It’s not my fault they were obnoxious; was I supposed to just ignore that?” Weiss asked. “To bear up with it because I’d been chosen to be team leader? Or am I just supposed to devote my life to fixing them?”</p><p>“No one is asking you to do that, Miss Schnee.”</p><p>“Then what?” Weiss shouted. “What was I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? Cardin might be getting better, but it’s too early to tell, and Rusell… what was I supposed to do, Professor Port? If I wasn’t supposed to change them, if I wasn’t supposed to endure, if I wasn’t supposed to turn my back, then what? What… what was I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do?”</p><p>She was answered, not by Professor Port, but by the growling of one of the beowolves creeping up behind her. </p><p>Weiss’ eye twitched. “Professor, would you allow me?”</p><p>It was hard to tell due to his walrus moustache, but she thought that Professor Port smiled. “By all means, child.”</p><p>Weiss inclined her head. “Thank you.” She placed one hand upon the hilt of Myrtenaster and turned, whipping the blade free from the sash at her waist to point its gleaming tip at the first beowolf to emerge from the bushes and leapt at her. </p><p>A black glyph, conjured by a thought, stopped the beast’s lunge in its tracks, hurling it backwards and into a tree hard enough to crack the trunk. The beowolf yelped, but its mewl of pain was ridden over by the growls of the half-dozen other grimm, led by an alpha, who began to follow it into view, their red eyes gleaming. </p><p>The corner of Weiss' lip twitched upwards as the rotary chamber of Myrtenaster slid a cartridge of lightning dust into position. She gestured towards the beowolves, sweeping her sword back as she conjured a trio of light blue glowing glyphs from which beams of pure white leapt like lasers to plunge amidst the grimm. Two beowolves died instantly, and the rest scattered to avoid Weiss’ fire. She switched to ice dust, flourishing her blade before her as a wave of ice erupted across the clearing to encase the alpha beowolf by the legs and trap it fast. Weiss conjured white glyphs for movement, sliding above the ice with the nimble grace of which a figure skater would have been envious even as the remaining grimm slipped and skidded and scrabbled for purchase on the slick surface. </p><p>Another black glyph, conjured directly beneath a struggling beowolf’s flailing feet, catapulted it up into the air. Weiss pursued, leaping from glyph to glyph upwards into the air. Myrtenaster lanced up, piercing the beowolf’s back from below and turning it to ash before her eyes. Weiss descended, flying downwards like a fearsome thunderbolt to drive her rapier straight through the mouth of a grimm that was trying to leap up and get at her where she had been so high. </p><p>Two beowolves and the alpha remained, and the alpha was still trapped. One of the two other beowolves was the one that she had hurled into a tree already, and that one hung back, seeming nervous after what she had done to it and to its pack mates. </p><p>Weiss sniffed. Let it be afraid. She might not be a good leader, but she was very good at this. </p><p>The other beowolf, less wise than its fellow, charged at her, claws biting into the ice for purchase. Weiss chambered fire dust. She pirouetted in place, her side ponytail flying around her as she spun with arms wide around her, and a wave of fire billowed out of Myrtenaster in a wide arc that struck the grimm. The beowolf howled as the flames began to consume it; it lost all interest in Weiss but flailed manically as it sought in vain to put the fires out. Weiss let it burn and turned her attention to the last non-alpha beowolf, the one who had already tasted a little of what she could do.</p><p>The beowolf whimpered.</p><p>Weiss charged, a line of glyphs carrying her forwards, Myrtenaster held before her like a lance, her ponytail streaming behind her like a banner. She came in low, crouched down, passing beneath the beowolf’s clumsy lunge, and then the glyph beneath her feet propelled her upwards with a swing to impale the beowolf’s head up through its lower jaw. </p><p>She landed gracefully back on the ground and dusted the ashes of the beowolf off her skirt with one idle hand. </p><p>There was a crack in the ice as the alpha freed itself. </p><p>All of its pack was dead – the burning beowolf had succumbed now to the flames – but the alpha remained, larger and stronger than all the rest of them, and its body more covered with armoured plates and large protruding spurs of bone-like substance. </p><p>He was more heavily protected than the rest, but he was not invulnerable. </p><p>
  <em>I’d been looking for a chance to practice my time dilation.</em>
</p><p>As the alpha stomped towards her, ignoring Professor Port, Weiss swept up her blade in a gesture which might, against a human opponent, have looked like a salute. </p><p>Suffice to say that she was not saluting the grimm. </p><p>No, she was conjuring what was – until she learned how to summon – the most powerful glyph in her arsenal. </p><p>It was pale, more ethereal than the rest of her glyphs, harder to see; it was a pale, smoky silver, almost translucent, with a mercurial quality as though it were unstable and might vanish at any moment. </p><p>And within the quicksilver band spun the gears of a clock. </p><p>The world slowed around her. Professor Port, barely moving at any rate, was frozen solid; the alpha beowolf was trapped in treacle to her eyes, its motions stiff and drawn out. Every movement of its foot, every swing of its arms, it all took so long as the air seemed to stick about it and constrain its progress. </p><p>It would not constrain Weiss. </p><p>She swept her sword down as she sped forwards over a line of glyphs, sweeping past the nearly immobile alpha and dealing out a slashing stroke that was aimed perfectly at a weak spot in its armour. She stopped and turned, and the creature seemed to have barely begun to react. </p><p>Weiss conjured glyphs, so many glyphs, a dome of white glyphs sprouting out of the air all around the alpha beowolf who, bound by time as he was, could not react at all. </p><p>Weiss leapt. She jumped from glyph to glyph, each white snowflake holding her up in the air, suspending her no matter the angle, and from those platforms, she leapt down upon her prey. Again and again, she fell on him, struck at him, and then leapt away to land with ease upon another glyph. </p><p>The beowolf was a nearly stationary target, Weiss had all the time in the world to find the weakspots in its armour, and it died the death of a thousand cuts. </p><p>The time dilation glyph, all of her glyphs, flickered out existence as the alpha died, and the dispersal of its ashes sped up noticeably as it did so. </p><p>There was silence in the forest clearing, a silence that was broken only by the sound of Professor Port slamming his meaty hands together in applause. “Bravo, Miss Schnee, bravo! You are truly a talented huntress in training.”</p><p>Weiss bowed slightly at the waist as she sheathed Myrtenaster once more. “Thank you, Professor.”</p><p>“But not yet a great one,” Professor Port cautioned.</p><p>Weiss pouted. “The beowolves didn’t give you the chance to answer my question, Professor.”</p><p>“No,” he conceded. “I didn’t. But don’t Professor Goodwitch’s lessons provide an answer for you?”</p><p>Weiss looked away, glancing down at the soil beneath her feet. “A good leader should know those whom she leads,” she murmured. “But I didn’t want to know them. What I saw… was quite enough for me.”</p><p>“And what do you think people see when they look at you, Miss <em>Schnee</em>?” Professor Port asked.</p><p>Weiss stiffened at the emphasis he placed upon her name. “I am more than my name would say I am,” she replied; she could have argued to defend that name and the achievements of her grandfather, but to what end? It was not relevant to the discussion at hand. The fact of the matter was, as much as she hated it, that in the eyes of the general populace, her name meant only and exactly what her father had made of it. </p><p>“And how will people discover that, if what they see at first is quite enough?” Professor Port asked.</p><p>Weiss frowned. “That tells me what I should have done,” she said. “But it doesn’t tell me what I should do now. I mean, I should probably get to know my teammates better, and I’ve made a start with Cardin already, but… what if there is little more to them than what I didn’t care for in the first place? And even that isn’t so… is there any way to make up for all the time that’s been lost?”</p><p>Professor Port was silent for a moment. “Do you know what you want, Miss Schnee?”</p><p>“Of course.”</p><p>“And do you know what your teammates want?”</p><p>Weiss glanced down at the ground once more. She had some idea of what Cardin wanted, but only a vague notion of what Flash wanted – she realised with a pang of guilt that she had never really asked. Of Russell, she had not a clue. She had treated her teammates almost as carelessly as her father treated his employees. “Not really, Professor.”</p><p>“A team must walk forwards as one,” Professor Port declared. “Which means that all of its members must all walk towards all of your goals, together.”</p><p>“You’re saying that I have to help their dreams in order to reach my own?”</p><p>“In order that they will help you to reach your own, Miss Schnee.”</p><p>Wiess nodded. In the general sense, Professor Port made, well, a great deal of sense. It was the specific case of Cardin Winchester that was troubling her. “Professor… what if one of my teammates’ current desire is… to get back together with his girlfriend?”</p><p>Once more, it seemed that Professor Port smiled, and if Weiss had been able to see his eyes, she would have wagered on spotting a glint of mischief there. “Then you had best work out how to play matchmaker, Miss Schnee.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0062"><h2>62. The Soul of the Weapon</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ruby helps Twilight search for ways to optimise Penny's design</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Soul of the Weapon</p><p> </p><p>The Skyray sat on the docking pad was a little different than the others; in place of grey metal, it was painted in a bright cyan, and it had Rainbow Dash’s symbol – the rainbow coloured lightning bolt emerging from a cloud – daubed upon the nose, alongside the words ‘The Bus’ painted in magenta. In addition to the heavy, eight-barrelled rotary cannon mounted under the nose and the missile pods concealed on either side of the nose that were standard to all the Skyrays Ruby had yet come across, this particular Skyray had a pair of triple-barrelled guns mounted on the wing-tips just beside the engines, while miniature missile pods also hung suspended on either side of the craft. </p><p>Rainbow Dash beamed with pride as she and Ruby walked down to the path towards the waiting airship. “Check it out,” she declared. “Isn’t she awesome?”</p><p>“Nice,” Ruby cooed appreciatively. “Did you do all the upgrades yourself?”</p><p>“Twilight planned them out, and all of my friends chipped in to help,” Rainbow replied. “She’s got extra cannons on the wings, Firefly missiles that can take out anything smaller than an ursa major, and the engines have been given a boost too.”</p><p>“So you can carry the extra weight?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“Well, there’s that, but also just so that she can go faster,” replied Rainbow. </p><p>Ruby grinned. “A custom airship, a jetpack; you must really like to fly, huh?”</p><p>Rainbow tucked her hands behind her head. “There’s nothing quite like being up in the air,” she declared. “I mean, I could come up with good reasons why it’s good to have a jetpack, like I can get to the fight quicker, or in the airship, I can take out some of the enemy before I get on the ground, but the truth is… the truth is that there’s nothing as thrilling as flying. When you get up into the sky, anything is possible, you know?”</p><p>“Not really,” Ruby admitted. “But I guess that I don’t need to understand that, so long as I know how you feel. And it <em>is</em> a sweet airship. And that jetpack is pretty cool too.”</p><p>“I usually call it a wingpack, but yeah, it is cool,” Rainbow said. “I can’t take credit for that one at all, though; Twilight worked on the Wings of Harmony all by herself.”</p><p>“Really?” Ruby asked, unable to keep a touch of disappointment out of her voice.</p><p>Rainbow glanced at her out of the side of her magenta eyes. “Let me guess,” she said. “You’re one of those who thinks that huntsmen and huntresses ought to make their own weapons.”</p><p>“Well, yeah,” Ruby said. “I mean, how else are you going to get a piece of your soul into it?”</p><p>“What if it doesn’t have to be your soul?” Rainbow asked in response.</p><p>“How do you mean?”</p><p>Their footsteps crunched along the path as Rainbow took a moment to reply. “My friend Applejack uses a lever rifle called One in a Thousand,” she said. “It belonged to her pa, before… well, you can guess. She didn’t make it, and her dad didn’t even make it either; it was a special model made by the manufacturer, and her grandpa won it in a shooting contest. It doesn’t have Applejack’s soul in it, from when she was putting all of the pieces together, but it’s got her pa’s sweat on it, and her grandpa’s too, so I kinda think that it’s got the soul of her family in there somewhere, and… maybe that’s enough. And it’s the same with Wings of Harmony; I didn’t make it, but my best friend did, and if it doesn’t have my soul in it, then it has hers: my guardian angel, keeping me company.”</p><p>Now it was Ruby’s turn to be silent for a moment. “That’s… sweet,” she allowed, “but not very practical, don’t you think?”</p><p>“'Practical'?” Rainbow repeated. “What’s practical about the idea that we need to put our souls in our weapons?”</p><p>“Because if we don’t, then how can they channel our aura properly?” Ruby demanded. “That’s why we do it, isn’t it?”</p><p>“I don’t know; I didn’t make any of my weapons. I thought it was a… a poetic thing.”</p><p>“Well, it is that too, I guess, at least a little,” Ruby conceded. “But it’s a practical thing, too.” She paused. “So why is it that you use regular guns instead of having, you know, a personal weapon? I know that it’s not an Atlas thing, because Sunset put her own weapon together.”</p><p>“And she also has an old sword that Pyrrha’s mother gave her; she hasn’t got her soul in that,” Rainbow pointed out.</p><p>“That’s also the weapon she’s worst with,” Ruby replied. “Just saying.”</p><p>Rainbow snorted. “Okay, sure, you’ve got a point there. As for me… all my weapons were gifts.”</p><p>“Really?”</p><p>“Uh-huh,” Rainbow said, reaching into the holster on her right hip and pulling out Plain Awesome. “Look at this.”</p><p>Ruby took the weapon from Rainbow’s unprotesting hands. It didn’t look particularly special at first; it was clearly a well-made gun, and the fact that it was shiny and metallic rather than looking a little plasticy like so many Atlesian weapons was a little unusual, but nothing too out of the ordinary, nothing like Crescent Rose or Miló or any of the other bizarre and complex weapons that she saw every day at Beacon Academy. It was only when she looked closer that Ruby realised that the black grip of the pistol was made of ebony. And as she looked closer still, she could see that on the metal of the side of the frame was engraved the words ‘With Gratitude, C, 21 April 2118’.</p><p>“'C'?” Ruby asked, looking back up at Rainbow Dash.</p><p>"Cadance," Rainbow said. "Councillor Cadenza, that is."</p><p>Ruby had heard the name before; Sunset had mentioned it, a while back, when explaining why Rainbow hated Blake; gods, that all seemed like such a long time ago, didn't it? "She's the one… the White Fang, they tried to-"</p><p>"Kidnap her, yeah," Rainbow said shortly, an edge in her voice that suggested that she didn't really want to talk about it. She held out her hand, and Ruby mutely pressed the gun into her palm. Rainbow holstered it. "I don't know really know what I did that day to deserve it – Cadance said it was so I could protect Atlas like I'd protected her, but the truth is, I… never mind – the point is Cadance gave me these MPs; top of the line models, but they're still for sale to anyone who can afford them."</p><p>Ruby nodded. "And the shotgun?"</p><p>"That was a graduation from combat school present from General Ironwood," Rainbow said, a grin springing to her face and banishing her earlier melancholy. "Which is funny because he hates shotguns and thinks I'm an idiot for using one." She paused. "I mean, I am an idiot, but not because of that, I don't think."</p><p>"I dunno; I'm not too sold on shotguns either," Ruby remarked.</p><p>"Doesn't your sister have one strapped to each hand?"</p><p>"Yeah, and I wish she'd put something with a little more range in Ember Celica," Ruby declared. "She can't hit a thing except up close, and I get that's how she fights; it's just… I'd kind of like her to be able to start thinning out the herd from a little further away, you know?"</p><p>"Oh, I know," Rainbow replied. "You have no idea how many times the General tried to persuade me to take a rifle instead. A shotgun doesn't exactly fit in the wall of guns."</p><p>"But you like it anyway," Ruby said.</p><p>"I'm not always going to be in the wall of guns," Rainbow declared. "Yes, Atlesian huntsmen more often operate with combined arms support than other huntsmen, but there are still times when we have to go into some pretty tight-quarter places by ourselves, and I like to have something handy for close encounters."</p><p>"Yang probably feels the same way," Ruby admitted. "Or she's just decided that she'd rather let everyone get close so that she can punch them and shoot them at the same time."</p><p>Rainbow chuckled. "Hey, Ruby," she said, "thanks for doing this."</p><p>"No problem," Ruby said. "Although I don't know if I'll actually be able to help at all. I know my way around weapons, but it's not like I'm an engineer or anything."</p><p>"Maybe knowing your way around weapons is what we need," Rainbow said lightly, "and don't worry about getting results; just the fact that you're giving it a shot means a lot."</p><p>They were very close to the waiting Skyray now, and the side door facing the school and the path – facing the direction from which Ruby and Rainbow Dash had just come – slid open.</p><p>"Ruby!" Penny cried enthusiastically as she stood in the doorway, and she looked as though she would have leapt out of the Skyray, beyond the bounds of the extending ramp, and towards Ruby if Ciel had not had a restraining hand upon her shoulder.</p><p>"Penny," she admonished. "Remember: self control."</p><p>Penny pouted momentarily, before she curtsied and spoke again in an affectedly polished voice. "It is very good to see you again, Ruby; how are you?"</p><p>Ruby sniggered as she climbed the ramp that had just finished extending from out of the airship. She mockingly returned Penny's curtsy with one of her own. "I am in tip top condition, Penny; how are you today?"</p><p>"Fantastic!" Penny cried, grabbing Ruby by the shoulders and pulling her into a bear hug. "Thank you so much for agreeing to help Twilight work on my weapons! I know that I'm in great hands with you two working together."</p><p>"Glad I could help," Ruby croaked.</p><p>"Penny," Ciel warned.</p><p>Penny gasped and dropped Ruby who hit the metal of the ramp with a soft thud. "Sorry!" she cried; to Ruby or Ciel or both, it was not entirely clear.</p><p>Rainbow grinned as she took Ruby by the arm and helped her up. "Let us in, Penny, and we can get going."</p><p>Penny shuffled back apologetically out of the doorway, allowing space for Rainbow and Ruby to get up into the airship. Inside, the Skyray looked no different than the airship that they had flown back to Beacon on after Adam had stolen their railway engine: grey and functional and with kind of narrow seating just between the doors and the cockpit.</p><p>Twilight was sat on one of those benches, and she smiled as Ruby climbed aboard. "Hey, Ruby," she said. "Thanks for agreeing to come and do this."</p><p>Ruby smiled nervously. "I don't know if I'll actually be able to do anything, but I'm happy to try and help."</p><p>"That is all that is required to earn our thanks," Ciel declared, walking across the cabin as the door slid shut and taking the seat next to Twilight.</p><p>Ruby sat down on the bench opposite, while Rainbow walked past them all and into the cockpit, disappearing from Ruby's view. Her voice, however, still carried into the main compartment. "Control, this is Rorari Three-Two requesting permission to take off."</p><p>"Rorari Three-Two, this is Beacon control; you are cleared to ascend."</p><p>"Copy that," Rainbow replied, and at once, the Skyray began to rise; the view from out of the small windows in the side doors didn't change – it was sky before, and it was still sky – but Ruby could feel the airship going up nonetheless, just as she could feel it turning in place before it began to fly in the direction of the <em>Valiant</em>; as it had been explained to her, there was nowhere at Beacon were they could work on Penny and be sure that her secret wouldn't be exposed in the process, so they were heading to the Atlesian flagship for the day where access could be more tightly regulated.</p><p>That was probably why Ciel and Rainbow were both wearing their Atlas uniforms.</p><p>Penny took the free seat next to Ruby. "When we're done, Rainbow's going to speak to Professor Goodwitch to see if I can join Pyrrha and Yang in their special sparring sessions!" she declared excitedly. "I can hardly wait!"</p><p>"Really?" Ruby asked. "That sounds like a great idea, Penny."</p><p>"I'm a little surprised that you're not invited," Penny added.</p><p>"I'm not the best at sparring," Ruby admitted, a tad shamefacedly. She had built Crescent Rose in order to fight grimm, and her baby was good at it too, but it was a little too big for fighting people, and they had a habit of getting in her guard and taking her out. As a result, she was near the top of the class in the practical sections of Grimm Studies but only average in Combat. "Certainly not in the same league as Pyrrha or Yang."</p><p>"I don't know if I'm in their league either, since Professor Goodwitch won't let me fight against Pyrrha," Penny said, with ill-concealed disappointment.</p><p>"Sulkiness is very unbecoming, Penny," Ciel murmured. "Your time will come."</p><p>"When?" Penny demanded. "And how long do I have to wait for <em>other people</em> to decide that I'm ready?"</p><p>"Look at it like this, Penny," Twilight said. "If you and Pyrrha fought now, where all the rest of the year could see you, then there'd be nothing left to wow people with at the Vytal Festival."</p><p>Penny gasped. "You really think that I've got what it takes to wow people?"</p><p>"I helped build you, Penny; I know you've got what it takes," Twilight said.</p><p>Ruby's eyes widened. "You helped make Penny?"</p><p>"Yep," Twilight said, without undue modesty. "Doctor Polendina only took on two lab assistants to help him with Penny, and I was one of them."</p><p>"Wow," Ruby murmured. "Then what do you need my help for?"</p><p>"I'm told you're an expert with weapons."</p><p>"And you made a person!" Ruby cried, gesturing at Penny. "What can I possibly know that you don't?"</p><p>"That remains to be seen," Ciel said, without malice.</p><p>"I'm not going to pretend to know everything," Twilight said. "And as strange as it may seem, coming from an Atlas scientist, weapons aren't my specialty. And don't sell yourself short either; I've never seen anything that quite compares to Crescent Rose in the way you're able to compact it. Which is why I'm hopeful that you'll see something I can't."</p><p>"We're all counting on you, Ruby!" Penny declared.</p><p>Ruby laughed nervously. "Aha, well-"</p><p>"Penny, I don't think that actually reinforced her confidence," Ciel observed. The corners of her lips twitched upwards.</p><p>Rainbow Dash guided the Skyray through the air from Beacon to the <em>Valiant</em>, the majestic ship that hung over Vale, a stationary point at the centre of the otherwise fluid and always-moving Atlesian formation. Smaller airships darted about it like flies, but the <em>Valiant</em> was still and permanent-seeming, a fixed addition to the Valish sky. As she climbed into the cockpit beside Rainbow, Ruby wondered if there would come a point at which it would look as strange to not see the Atlesian airships in the sky as it had done to see them there when they first arrived.</p><p>She hoped not; not because she had any great objection to the Atlesian presence, but because if that happened, it meant that their friends from the north had stayed much too long.</p><p>It meant that things in Vale had stayed dangerous for much too long.</p><p>"Torchwick's aboard that ship, isn't he?" Ruby asked as Rainbow flew them in towards the <em>Valiant</em>'s open docking bay, the open hatch gaping like the mouth of a great beast to swallow them up.</p><p>"Yep," Rainbow muttered. "Snug, secure, and silent."</p><p>"Silent," Ruby growled. "So he hasn't talked yet? About anything?"</p><p>"I don't know for sure, but I haven't heard anything," Rainbow replied. "Blake hasn't told me that she's heard anything; has she said anything to you?"</p><p>"No," Ruby said. "There must be some way to make him talk!"</p><p>Rainbow frowned. "There are rules against that kind of thing, even if we can't understand why."</p><p>The airship flew into the docking bay and set down there amidst the other airships – Skygraspers and Skyrays for the most part – parked and waiting on the pristinely polished steel floor. The hangar door slammed shut behind them, but the deck was so well-lit that it didn't appear to get even a little darker from blotting out the sun. As the side door opened to let them out, Ruby could see that everything – every airship and piece of equipment – had been cleaned to within an inch of its life, and the uniforms of the deck crew looked as though they had been laundered this morning. Personnel moved this way and that under the supervision of a muscular deck chief, gesturing with both hands as he bellowed out commands. Guards in face-concealing helmets stood erect around the edges of the hangar, their rifles held across their chests.</p><p>No one was slovenly, not a man was ill-turned out. A sense of pride radiated from every piece of decking, every ceiling tile, every man and woman here; this was the flagship, and they all knew it, and they all wanted visitors like Ruby to know it too.</p><p>Twilight took the lead, and they followed her through the pristine corridors of the <em>Valiant</em>, showing her scroll to the guards stationed at intervals – it must have had her clearance on it – until she had brought them to a white, windowless room with a large table set in the centre of it and various smaller tables around the walls. Tools of all descriptions lay on most of the tables, but others amongst them were bare, gleaming expectantly as they waited for something to occupy them. </p><p>There were no chairs. Rainbow Dash made her way to the back of the room and lounged there, leaning against metallic panels; Ciel stood near the door, her back ramrod straight and her hands clasped behind her back.</p><p>Penny hopped up onto the large empty table in the centre of the table in the centre of the room. </p><p>“Shall we start now?” she asked, looking at Twilight more than Penny. </p><p>“Uh, sure,” Ruby replied. “Um… how are we going to do this?”</p><p>Twilight ignored her, speaking to Penny in a gentle voice. “Penny, we’re going to put you on standby mode for a little while, okay?”</p><p>“Okay,” Penny said quietly. “Will I dream?”</p><p>Twilight smiled. “You tell me when you wake up,” she said. She crossed the room, taking off her spectacles in a fluid motion as she leaned forwards to look into Penny’s eyes, their heads so close that their foreheads almost touched. “Do you consent for me to access your command pathways?”</p><p>Penny’s voice was unwavering. “My name is Penny Polendina, and I consent.”</p><p>Twilight was silent for a moment. “Authentication key alpha-one-seven-tango-eight-sierra-two-six. Access root command pathways. Directory: status. Command: stand by.”</p><p>Penny sat still, frozen in place where she sat upon the table; her eyelids swept down half-closed, and in the parts of her eyes that were yet visible, the light dimmed to almost nothing. </p><p>Ruby stared. “Did you… did you just turn her off?”</p><p>“No, I just put her into standby, so that we can open her up without her feeling it,” Twilight replied.</p><p>“Is there a difference?”</p><p>“She’s not deactivated,” Twilight explained. She started to manhandle Penny, or trying to. “Rainbow, do you mind-?”</p><p>“Sure thing,” Rainbow said, getting up from off the wall and briskly crossing the space separating her and Penny. With Rainbow’s help, Twilight succeeded in laying Penny, who did not move to help or hinder them in any way, flat on her chest, face down upon the table.</p><p>Ruby frowned. Seeing Penny like this… it felt wrong. It felt absolutely and completely wrong. It made Penny out to be just the machine that she was afraid she was, like she’d confessed to being on the train. </p><p>
  <em>“If you ever doubt that you’re different from the other robots again, just remember that: you can make your own choices; you don’t have to do just what you’re told.”</em>
</p><p>But that wasn’t true, was it?</p><p>“What if she said no?” Ruby demanded.</p><p>Twilight looked at her. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“I mean just then, before, when you asked if she consented,” Ruby said. “Did she need to say yes to that, or is it just to make her feel better?”</p><p>“I would never initiate command functions without Penny’s consent.”</p><p>“That’s not what I asked,” Ruby said coldly.</p><p>Twilight hesitated. “Yes,” she said softly. “Penny needs to consent in order for me to access her command pathways.”</p><p>That… that made it a little better. And Ruby supposed that Penny hadn’t seemed too upset about what was… what was being done to her. All the same, it made her shiver a little bit. “It’s not right,” she murmured. “Penny’s a person; you shouldn’t be able to just turn her off.”</p><p>“Put her on standby,” Twilight corrected.</p><p>“You say that like it’s a huge difference.”</p><p>“It is a huge difference,” Twilight insisted. “If Penny… if Penny were ever deactivated-”</p><p>“Twilight,” Ciel reproached.</p><p>“Ruby’s been cleared, or she wouldn’t be here,” Twilight replied. She put her glasses back on. “If Penny is ever deactivated, then she cannot be reactivated, not without a new… stimulus of aura.”</p><p>Ruby frowned. “'Stimulus'? What do you mean? Penny generates her own aura.”</p><p>“Not exactly,” Twilight murmured. “Although we in Atlas have been studying aura from a scientific standpoint in recent years, seeking to decouple the truth from the crudescence of mysticism that has grown up around it, we still don’t know how to create aura sui generis, or even if it’s possible to do such a thing. What we have been able to do, what we have learned is possible… is to split the aura of a living soul, to… cut off, for want of a better word, a part of someone’s existing aura and… transfer it to another subject. Or a host.”</p><p>Ruby’s eyes widened. “So… Penny’s aura was-”</p><p>“Her father,” Twilight said. “He… brought her to life, like any parent does.”</p><p>Ruby’s head was spinning. Penny’s aura was really a part of her father’s aura? What did that even mean? “So… can he still-”</p><p>“No,” Twilight said. “The aura that he sacrificed belongs to Penny now; it’s bound to her, it belongs to her, it’s even changed colour; to all intents and purposes, it is her aura. It’s even expanded, becoming stronger than the amount that was initially bestowed upon her. So long as Penny is active in some form, then she can sustain that aura… but, if she were ever to be completely deactivated, the light of her aura would go out, and we wouldn’t be able to get it back.” She smiled. “So, as you can see, it’s a pretty big difference between turning Penny off and putting her on standby. She’s still on; she’s just… not here right now. Which means that we can work on her without her feeling it.”</p><p>Ruby hesitated. Giving up a piece of your aura? Splitting your aura? She’d never heard of anything like that before. She’d never imagined anything like that before; it was… it was kind of a terrible prospect. Aura was a part of yourself, the mirror of your soul; it was bound up with who you were and what you were; it was tied to your semblance, which also reflected what you were. To sever all of that? To take some kind of science-knife and cut a piece of it off? It was… it made her shiver a little just to think about it.</p><p>But, at the same time, to do something like that voluntarily? To give up a piece of your soul to bring someone else to life, that was… that was all kinds of sweet too.</p><p>“He must love her very much,” Ruby murmured.</p><p>“Hmm?” Ciel said.</p><p>“Penny’s father,” Ruby explained.</p><p>Ciel nodded. “Indeed.” She paused. “It is a great miracle that Doctor Polendina has wrought, an achievement on par with that of the gods. He is to be commended for it and praised for his…”</p><p>“His what?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“It does not matter,” Ciel said. “I misspoke.”</p><p>Ruby doubted that Ciel had ever misspoke in her life, but she was prevented from saying anything more when Rainbow said, “On par with the gods? Isn’t that blasphemy or something?”</p><p>Her tone was playful, teasing, but Ciel’s tone was utterly sincere as she replied, “'As the gods gave life to the dust, so too does the mother give life to the child, so do I say unto thee, men of the north, that the gods walk amongst thee in the forms of thy mothers! O, worship them, revere them, serve them, for they are thy creators, and are owed so much at least.'”</p><p>“Who said that?” Ruby asked.</p><p>“The Lady of the North,” Ciel replied. “In her second epistle to the Mantleites. She goes on, of course, to say that women have a duty to become the gods of the future by bearing children, but that is less relevant to the subject at hand. The point being that there is nothing blasphemous about comparing the act of creation to godhood; it is an image employed by the Lady herself.”</p><p>“Ruby,” Twilight said softly. “I understand that this isn’t what you were intending to see or find out when you came here, so if it makes you uncomfortable, then you don’t have to stay. Rainbow can fly you back to Beacon.”</p><p>Ruby hesitated for a moment, looking at Penny lying there on the table, like… but she was going to be lying there no matter what Ruby did.</p><p>At least, if she stayed, she might be able to help.</p><p>“It’s okay,” Ruby said, at length. “I’ll stay, if that’s okay with you.”</p><p>Twilight smiled. “Glad to have you aboard, Ruby.”</p><p>Twilight proceeded to dismantle Penny’s Floating Array before Ruby’s eyes, removing the swords from Penny’s back before proceeding to open up the quillon block to reveal the gravity dust engines that kept the blades afloat, the thrusters that gave them direction, and the power pack for the built-in laser.</p><p>“And want to make all of this stuff even smaller?” Ruby asked as she regarded the component parts. The anti-gravity system was small enough to fit into the palm of her hand, small enough in fact that she could close her palm around it and feel the heat against her skin. The power pack for the laser had been flexibly designed, curling around the edge of the round quillon block like a serpent coiled around a rock, and a green glow arose from the space between the individual coils of black plastic. The thrusters were about the size of Ruby’s pinky fingers, and she had already noticed that you didn’t see them in action when you watched Penny direct her swords like puppets. </p><p>“It’s a tall order, I know,” Twilight sighed. “But we just don’t have enough space for everything that we would like to cram in here.”</p><p>“A wireless receiver?”</p><p>“Yes, and a more powerful battery,” Twilight explained. “At the moment, Penny’s own core supplies power to activate the gravity dust and the thrusters, only the lasers - which have a much greater consumption - have their own internal power system. If Penny’s swords were wireless-”</p><p>“Then you’d need room for a power system,” Ruby acknowledged. “But you’d save space internally because Penny wouldn’t need such a powerful core, right?”</p><p>“Theoretically, perhaps,” Twilight agreed. “But I’m not sure that anyone would agree to intentionally powering down Penny in any way; she was always designed with her current power levels in mind, so the fact that she’s having to provide power to Floating Array actually makes her a little weaker than she should be.”</p><p>Ruby thought back to Penny’s bone-crushing hugs. “She’s supposed to be stronger?” She folded her arms. “What does she need to be stronger for? She fights from a distance!”</p><p>“You would say that, wouldn’t you?” Rainbow said.</p><p>“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ruby demanded.</p><p>“It means that we’ve all watched you swinging that oversized scythe around, it’s clear that you don’t have a clue what to do when the enemy gets up close,” Rainbow replied. “It’s the biggest thing holding you back from being a first rate huntress.”</p><p>Ruby’s mouth twisted in distaste. “You sound like Yang,” she muttered.</p><p>“You should listen to her, then, she knows what she’s talking about,” Rainbow said. “The point is, Penny could stand to learn how to throw a punch just in case.”</p><p>“Then why don’t you teach her?” Ruby asked.</p><p>Rainbow was silent for a moment. “Penny, uh… Penny’s father… he doesn’t like me very much.”</p><p>Ruby blinked. “Really?”</p><p>“Really,” Rainbow confirmed. “He thinks I’m a knucklehead. Which, okay, he’s right, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m talking about. The point is, he didn’t want me to be Penny’s team leader, he wasn’t afraid to let me know that he didn’t want me as Penny’s team leader, I only have the job because the General pays the bills and I’m not allowed to train Penny. The doc is afraid I’ll… I don’t know what he’s afraid of, what does he think I’m going to her, Twilight?”</p><p>“He… Doctor Polendina is afraid you’ll get too rough with her,” Twilight murmured.</p><p>Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Ciel is the one the doc approves of, isn’t that right?”</p><p>“It appears that the good doctor finds my manner reassuring,” Ciel murmured.</p><p>“Anyway,” Twilight said, “leaving all of that aside for a moment, even if we were to install a smaller, less powerful power core inside Penny, with the position of the core relative to Floating Array I’m not sure how much difference it would make.”</p><p>Ruby nodded. That made sense. “Then the answer is obvious,” she said. “Penny needs smaller swords.”</p><p>“They already fold in half,” Twilight pointed out.</p><p>“And unfolded they’re nearly as tall as Penny is,” Ruby replied. “Why do they need to be so large, and so thick? Penny isn’t using them like normal swords so she doesn’t need greater reach, and they fold up for the laser so it can’t be that. If the blade was cut down to about the length that they are when they’re firing as lasers, then-”</p><p>“Then no space would be saved because that is the length that they fold down to,” Ciel pointed out.</p><p>“Not if they folded in half when cut down to half-size,” Ruby insisted. “You’d have all that space to play with to put all of the other stuff in there.”</p><p>“And a really short sword,” Rainbow said.</p><p>“Penny doesn’t really fight with swords,” Ruby declared. “You shouldn’t be thinking of them that way; with how Penny uses them they’re more like… throwing knives. Nobody throws a full size sword-”</p><p>“But apparently somebody does wave them around in the air to whack people from the other end of the stage,” Rainbow reminded her.</p><p>“Okay, yes, Sunset,” Ruby admitted. “But that’s different-”</p><p>“How?” Ciel asked. “It seems to be, not that I expect her to ever admit it, but Sunset Shimmer’s recent performance may have been inspired in part by watching Penny in action.”</p><p>“But Sunset could have done that with a knife,” Ruby insisted.</p><p>“I’m not so sure,” Rainbow said. “I get what you’re saying, but I still think you need the reach of a sword sometimes; you can’t cut someone’s legs out from under them with a knife.”</p><p>“Anything that we come up with here will need to be approved by Doctor Polendina and General Ironwood,” Twilight reminded Rainbow and informed Ruby. “So there’s no harm in putting the idea down and submitting it. Incidentally, Ruby, I hope you wouldn’t mind coming to help me present your suggestions if it comes to that?”</p><p>“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>“If the idea comes from Ruby then there’s no reason she shouldn’t get the credit,” Twilight said. “And she’ll be best placed to make the case since she came up with the concept.”</p><p>“Okay, but how likely is Doctor Polendina to agree that a fifteen year old had a better idea than he did?” Rainbow demanded.</p><p>“Doctor Polendina will recognise Ruby’s intelligence, and respond to it,” Twilight insisted. “You don’t mind, do you, Ruby?”</p><p>“I, uh,” Ruby murmured, unsure if she really wanted to go up in front of General Ironwood and Penny’s rather stern-seeming father and talk to them about anything, even a subject she was passionate about. She’d never really met General Ironwood, but the one time that she’d been in his presence he seemed very strict and straight to business. And Penny’s father… “I don’t know.”</p><p>Twilight smiled encouragingly at her. “It’s okay, you’ve got time to think about it. So: a knife with a long handle, do you think?”</p><p>“That’s one idea,” Ruby said. “If Penny really needs to have a sword then could you not build some more of the components into the blade itself? There’s enough space with how thick the blades are.”</p><p>Twilight was silent for a moment. “You are incredible, Ruby Rose.”</p><p>Ruby laughed nervously, looking away as she scratched the back of her head. “Uh, thanks?”</p><p>“Come here, sit down,” Twilight said, striding over to one of the tables lining the walls, one that was laden with paper and pencils. Twilight’s hand glowed lavender as she pushed a stool out from under the desk, then drew out another for herself. “Do you think that you’re up to helping me with some blueprints? No, not helping, do you think you can draw what you have in mind?”</p><p>“Sure,” Ruby said. She’d had to blueprint Crescent Rose and get it approved by a teacher at Signal before she was allowed to actually start making it - and not Dad or Uncle Qrow, either; she’d had to convince someone who wasn’t family - so it was nothing new to her. In fact, as she sat down beside Twilight and got to work, it soon started to feel just like old times. </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0063"><h2>63. Team Goals</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Team WWSR lay out their ambitions</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Team Goals</p><p> </p><p>Russel was the first one to enter the room. </p><p>Weiss had not been… okay, yes, Weiss had been waiting there for him. She wanted – and intended – to have a whole team meeting where they could, if not start over, then at least put a better foot forward from now on, but at the same time, she was conscious of the fact that the R in WWSR was the member of the team of whom she knew the least; she knew Cardin far better after a single meaningful conversation than she knew Russel Thrush. And so, she had sat almost idle in the dorm room, reading a book on post-war colonisation efforts that she had gotten out of the library. </p><p>Mountain Glenn was every bit the tragedy that Professor Port had intimated. Those poor people, trapped underground. It reminded her a little of some of the stories of mining accidents that left the workers buried alive… but on a much, much grander scale. </p><p>As Russel came in, she snapped the book shut, only to realise that it might have seemed more hostile than she had intended it to be. </p><p>Russel’s dark eyes glanced around the otherwise empty dorm room. “I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said anxiously. “I can-”</p><p>“No,” Weiss said quickly. “Don’t. You’re just the person that I wanted to see.”</p><p>Russel’s eyes widened a little. “Why?”</p><p>“Please,” Weiss said, gesturing to one of the chairs pushed underneath the desk on the other side of the room. “Sit down.”</p><p>Russel continued to look wary, like a rabbit in the presence of a fox; he looked as though he might run for the door any second as he pulled out a chair and sat down on it, the wrong way with his legs spread out on either side of the chair and his hands resting on the back. </p><p>“I don’t bite,” Weiss assured him tartly.</p><p>“You don’t normally want to talk, either,” Russel pointed. “At least not to me.”</p><p>Weiss sighed. “I know,” she conceded. “And that is why… I suppose that I should start with an apology. I haven’t been a good leader to you – to anyone on this team – and for that, I’m sorry. The only other thing I can say is that I intend to do better from now on. For that reason, we’ll be having a team meeting soon-”</p><p>“'Team meeting'?” Russel repeated. “Since when do we have team meetings?”</p><p>“Since I decided to start taking my responsibilities seriously,” Weiss declared.</p><p>Russel was silent for a moment. “Is this about the Cardin thing?”</p><p>“The… 'Cardin thing' brought home to me my failings,” Weiss admitted. “What do you think about what happened to him? About what he did?”</p><p>“You don’t care what I think.”</p><p>“Yes, I do,” Weiss replied.</p><p>“No, you don’t.”</p><p>“I will try to care, if you tell me,” Weiss insisted.</p><p>Russel snorted. “I think that… the people in the neighbourhood I grew up in were worse lowlifes than any faunus I could imagine, so I guess it never made sense to me to treat faunus like they were worse than us.”</p><p>“You went along with Cardin’s bullying of Velvet Scarlatina,” Weiss reminded him.</p><p>Russel winced. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did. Not because I thought she was a crook or anything.”</p><p>“What <em>did</em> you think?” Weiss asked, fighting to keep the disdain out of her voice.</p><p>Russel turned his head away from her, his fingers drumming upon the back of his chair. “Is it true what they say, that Sunset Shimmer came back from Mistral and Pyrrha’s rich mom has started paying her money?”</p><p>“I believe so, yes.”</p><p>“Lucky her,” Russel muttered. “I guess… I suppose I was kind of hoping that if I kept well in with Cardin that something like that might happen.”</p><p>“And did it?” Weiss asked.</p><p>“No,” Russel said bluntly. “It wasn’t worth the effort pretending to like the guy on the chance that it might.”</p><p>“You don’t like Cardin?” Weiss asked, surprised. <em>Another thing I didn’t know.</em></p><p>Russel shrugged. “I don’t dislike him, but it’s not like we have anything in common.”</p><p>“I see,” Weiss murmured. “Where do you come from, if you don’t mind me asking?”</p><p>“Anfield,” Russel said.</p><p>“Is that a village, or-?”</p><p>“It’s a part of Vale, not far from the docks,” Russel said. “You might have drove through it on your way back from that fight.”</p><p>“Possibly,” Weiss said. “I didn’t realise. I’ve never been back there.”</p><p>“Lucky you,” Russel said. “You don’t want to go back there. You were lucky to be able to fly in there on a locker, and everyone else who went down there either avoided it, or they got really lucky.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because if you went down there dressed like that, someone would steal your sword off your waist before you knew it, and someone else would have the jacket off your back,” Russel declared. “Bunch of thieving scumbags around there.”</p><p>“Really?” Weiss murmured dryly.</p><p>“Mhmm,” Russel responded. “That person who stole your sword, they’d have sold it on by the time you realised it was missing.”</p><p>Weiss folded her arms. “I can’t help but feel there’s some glorification going on here,” she remarked.</p><p>Russel shrugged. “According to my great-grandpa, time was when everybody round Anfield way was employed on the docks or in the shipyards; he was an engineer on the tugboats, himself. Only there isn’t so much work on the docks no more, and folks don’t want to rely on welfare handouts, so-”</p><p>“They steal things?” Weiss asked.</p><p>“It’s a living,” Russel replied. He hesitated for a moment, before a cheeky grin swept over his face. “Although you may be right, and people round there spend more time talking about how they could lift your hair off your head and they ain’t scared of no cops neither than they do actually lifting stuff. But I don’t know, there must be something to it, I reckon.”</p><p>“And you?” Weiss asked. “Have you ever…?”</p><p>Russel laughed. “If I had hands that fast, then I wouldn’t be getting tossed on my ass by the likes of Pyrrha and Yang every sparring class, would I?”</p><p>He had a point there; nothing in his performance indicated that he was that nimble. Even so, the next question that leapt from the tip of Weiss’ tongue was the obvious one: “So what does somebody from a neighbourhood famed for its criminality want to become a huntsman for?”</p><p>“What does a princess from Atlas want to become a huntress for?” Russel replied.</p><p>“I’m not a princess,” Weiss replied.</p><p>“That thing in your hair looks a lot more like a crown than a hairpin, Miss Schnee,” Russel replied. “I may just be a lad from Anfield, but I know that your dad is the richest man in the world, which makes you a darn sight more princess than probably any of the actual princesses if there are any left; do you get what I’m saying?” He leaned forwards, his chest pressing against the back of the chair. “You’re sitting there asking me all these questions, and that’s fine; you don’t know me. But I don’t know you either, so don’t you think that you ought to answer a few of my questions too?”</p><p>Weiss nodded. “That’s fair enough,” she agreed. “But I did ask first.”</p><p>Russel laughed nervously. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess you did, didn’t you?” He scratched the back of his head with one hand. “I’m named after my granddad, you know.”</p><p>“Is that so?”</p><p>Russel nodded. “And so are eight of my cousins. You see, my granddad had nine kids, and all of them named their eldest son Russel after him – and I’ve got a sister named Rousseau; it was supposed to be a sign of respect, but he always used to moan about how hard it was telling us apart. That’s why everyone in my family calls me Bert.”</p><p>Weiss frowned. “Why?”</p><p>“I don’t know, because grandpa Russ used to, and so they all started doing it, I don’t know where he got it from,” Russel muttered.</p><p>Weiss couldn’t quite keep the smile off her face. “So you came to Beacon so that you could be Russel Thrush, and not… Bert.”</p><p>Russel snorted. “I suppose that’s part of it; there… there’s other parts of it too.”</p><p>“Such as?”</p><p>Russel was silent for a while, a silence that stretched out so long that Weiss began to think that he was simply going to refuse to reply, before he said, “By the time that granddad Russel died, he didn’t have no one left but his family, and not even all of that: Grandma Anthea had left him years ago, and Auntie Rousseau asked <em>her</em> granddad to walk her down the aisle on account of she wasn’t too keen on her old man no more. He’d got barred from the pub after he challenged the barman to a fight because he thought he heard him talking about him behind his back; he got barred from the shop because he tried to fight the owner; he didn’t have no friends left because he’d insulted them all – or hit them. He was always a nice bloke to me, and he loved his family, but… when he died, when I went to his funeral, we had to listen to so much bollocks about how well-liked he was, about how many friends he had. I don’t know who she was trying to fool because we all knew it was rubbish. He was a good man, and he worked hard, but nobody cared he was gone except for us. I want… I don’t want that. I want them to care. I want some <em>respect</em>.”</p><p>The corner of Weiss’ lip rose slightly. “And I will help you get it, if you let me,” she said. “Just like I mean to see that we all get what we want.”</p><p>“Why?” Russel asked.</p><p>“Why what?”</p><p>“Why any of it?” Russel cried. “Why now? Why should you care?”</p><p>“Because I’m your leader, and it’s time I started acting like it,” Weiss said. “And because we succeed when we work together and fail when we don’t. Because walking towards our goals as one is the way that we reach them all.”</p><p>“Did you read that in a book?”</p><p>“No,” Weiss said. “Professor Port told me.”</p><p>Russel’s eyebrows rose.</p><p>“When he isn’t talking about himself, he actually talks a lot of sense,” Weiss said.</p><p>“I’ll take your word for that,” Russel muttered. He waited a moment. “Well?”</p><p>“Well what?”</p><p>“Come on, I’ve told you my life story; now it’s your turn!”</p><p>“Oh, yes,” Weiss muttered. She cleared her throat. “What do you want to know?”</p><p>“What’s it like being rich?” Russel asked.</p><p>Weiss raised one eyebrow.</p><p>“I can dream, can’t I?”</p><p>“We had a cake butler,” Weiss said dryly.</p><p>Russel blinked. “'A cake butler'? You mean, like, a butler, who just brought cake?”</p><p>Weiss nodded.</p><p>Russel blinked again. “You’re kidding me! You are absolutely kidding me! You’re pulling my leg because you think I don’t know any better! You’re not serious!”</p><p>“Aren’t I?” Weiss asked, her tone giving absolutely nothing away.</p><p>Russel stared at her, looking this way and that as though she might have the answer written on her face somewhere if he could just spot it. </p><p>“Wow,” he muttered. “Wow. I mean… wow, it must be great having that much money.”</p><p>“Don’t be so sure,” Weiss said softly.</p><p>“Oh, don’t give me that!” Russel snapped. “Don’t give me that poor little rich girl stuff; whatever it is, I guarantee that it is nothing compared to being actually poor.”</p><p>“Everyone thinks they know me because they know my name,” Weiss declared. “And yet, hardly anyone knows or cares to know who I really am-”</p><p>“Oh, boo hoo,” Russel interrupted. “You still grew up in a nice big house, didn’t you?”</p><p>“Yes, but-”</p><p>“And I bet you had all the best toys that you could ask for, and anything else besides when you were growing up-”</p><p>“No, actually,” Weiss cut him off, gently but firmly.</p><p>Russel frowned. “'No'?”</p><p>“No,” Weiss repeated. “My father… didn’t believe in play. He was determined that his children should be… accomplished, and the sooner we started learning, the better.”</p><p>Russel boggled. “You’re serious? This isn’t a thing like the cake butler?”</p><p>“I’m not conceding anything on that, but yes, this is serious.”</p><p>“So… no toys?”</p><p>“No toys, no playtime,” Weiss said.</p><p>Russel leaned back. “Well he sounds like a complete dick, your dad! Um, no offence.”</p><p>Weiss covered her mouth with one hand as a most inappropriate giggle escaped her lips. “That’s quite alright. I… would never say it in that way, but… you aren’t wrong.”</p><p>“So what did you do all day?”</p><p>“I read, I learned to sing-”</p><p>“You can sing?”</p><p>“And play the piano,” Weiss said. “And the violin. And the flute.”</p><p>“So you did have a kind of playtime, then?”</p><p>Weiss gave him an old-fashioned look.</p><p>“I was only kidding!” Russel said, holding up both hands. </p><p>Weiss sniffed. “And, of course, I practiced my skills as a huntress prior to coming here to Beacon.”</p><p>“I’m starting to think you came here just to get out of that house,” Russel said.</p><p>He was not nearly as wrong as Weiss would have liked, but she said, “I came here to honour my family’s legacy. There was a time when the Schnees did more than just count their money.” <em>Or drink in the garden.</em> She picked up her scroll from where it sat on the bed beside her. “I’m going to ask Flash and Cardin to join us, and then we can talk about how it’s going to be from now on.”</p><p>“How is it going to be?” Russel asked.</p><p>“Better,” Weiss said.</p><p>Thankfully, it didn’t take too long for both Flash and Cardin to join Weiss and Russel; wherever it had been, it hadn’t been so far away that they couldn’t get back in haste when Weiss asked them to. Cardin sat down on his bed next to Weiss’ own, while Flash, like Russel, pulled up a chair but, unlike Russel, sat in it properly. His back was straight, even as his legs were crossed. </p><p>“Thank you for coming so promptly,” Weiss said, getting up off her bed and standing as tall as she could. Fortunately, they were all sitting down, so she was able to look down on them for this part. “And welcome to the first team meeting of Team Wisteria; we should have done these a long time ago.”</p><p>“Why?” Russel asked.</p><p>“Because on the balance of evidence, it seems that we need them,” Weiss declared. “Because I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m tired of Team Wisteria being considered B-league compared to Team Sapphire or Team Iron. I’m tired of us being put in the same bracket as Bluebell. I’m tired of the fact that nobody rates our chances in the Vytal Festival. I am tired…” – she glanced at Russel – “of the fact that we aren’t respected here. And I know that that is partly my fault. I know that, as the team leader, it’s probably mostly my fault. I haven’t paid much attention to some of you… or any attention to some of you, to be perfectly honest. Which is why, if possible, I would like for us to start over, or at least go forward from now as if we have. I am going to lead you better, and we are all going to work together to the kind of success that I think – that I know – that we all want.” She paused for a moment, her gaze sweeping across the room. “I’m not going to pretend that we’re suddenly going to all become best friends; we’re all too different for that. We probably aren’t going to leave Beacon having become a family, with bonds that will last a lifetime. But I promise you that we will leave Beacon as qualified huntsmen and with a record of accomplishment that we can be proud of. So, are you with me?”</p><p>“Always,” Flash said.</p><p>Weiss smiled gratefully at him. </p><p>Russel tucked both his hands behind his head. “It sounds great,” he said, “but some of it also sounds like a pretty tall order. I mean, sure, graduate with good records, awesome, but cracking the top half of the year? Going up against Sapphire and Iron?”</p><p>“You don’t think that we can do it?”</p><p>“No,” Russel said bluntly. “I mean, they’ve got the Invincible Girl, they’ve got Yang, they’ve got Sunset and her broken semblance-”</p><p>“And we’ve got us,” Weiss declared. “And while it’s true that we may not seem to have so much… natural talent at our disposal, I know that we have the materials that we can make something of, if we work together.” Her grandfather had built the world’s greatest commercial empire from the beginnings of nothing but a pick-axe, some charisma, and an educated guess as to where dust might be found; compared to that, unseating their more superficially skilled rivals from the top of the perch should be child’s play. “Tactics and wit will make up for our lack of talent.” She saw that Russel still looked sceptical, so she said, “You don’t have to believe that it will work, at this stage – I hope to prove to you that it can work soon enough – all I ask right now is that you are willing to try. I know that we’ve wasted a lot of time, but we’re still only first-years, and even the Vytal Festival is still months away. If we work hard, then we can be proud even if we fall short, but if we give up now, then we are certain to fail, and we won’t even be able to be proud of trying.” She took a deep breath, as she thought about how her father would hate to hear her say that, or anything like it. She wasn’t allowed to fail; she was a Schnee, and Schnees did not fail.</p><p>
  <em>Except for failing as a parent, apparently.</em>
</p><p>“Well, okay then,” Russel said. “Let’s give this thing a shot!”</p><p>Weiss nodded, turning to the last member of their team, the one who had yet to speak. “Cardin?”</p><p>Cardin sighed. “Yeah,” he said, less enthusiastically than Weiss might have liked. “Like you said, we have to try, otherwise. Yeah.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Weiss murmured. “I’m glad to have you all on board, because only together can we move forward; only together, mutually supporting one another, can we all achieve the goals that we have set for ourselves, which brings me to my next question: what is that you want. I’m not talking about your dreams or your ultimate ambitions, I’m talking about here and now: what is it that we can actually achieve? What is it that we can help one another to achieve?” She looked at her three teammates. “Flash, what is that you want?”</p><p>Flash was silent a moment, looking down at his hands, which were clasped together in this knee. “Immediately?” he asked.</p><p>“Or near enough,” Weiss confirmed. “Something reasonably short term that we can get on with.”</p><p>Flash nodded. “Then I want to win tomorrow’s exercise,” he said. “I want to beat Team Sapphire.”</p><p>Russel’s eyebrows rose. “You want to beat your ex?”</p><p>Flash sighed. “It’s not like that-”</p><p>“Isn’t it?” Russel replied. “Kinda sounds like it.”</p><p>“It… okay, it’s kind of like that, but only because…” He trailed off.</p><p>“You can speak freely,” Weiss assured him. “You all can,” she added quickly. “Although… I suppose that I shouldn’t force you to, if you don’t want to.”</p><p>“No, it’s fine,” Flash said swiftly. “It’s just… I went out with Sunset for a while, and I think I’ve got a good feel for who she is. And if I’m right, if she is who I think she is, then she’s laughing at me right now; she’s laughing at all of us but at me, specifically, for being such a chump, for being stuck down here while she’s soaring so high.”</p><p>“I think you’re underestimating her,” Cardin said.</p><p>Now it was Flash’s turn to raise his eyebrows, and to widen his eyes as well, for that matter. “What did you say?”</p><p>“I said you’re underestimating her,” Cardin repeated. “I don’t think that she’s laughing at you. She might hate you, but I don’t think she enjoys your misfortune.”</p><p>Flash’s eyes, which had been so wide a moment ago, now narrowed. “Are you sure you haven’t been replaced by a White Fang agent?”</p><p>“No,” Cardin said. “I just think… I don’t think she’s vindictive towards you.”</p><p>“You remember that she basically just ruined your life, right?” Russel asked.</p><p>Cardin nodded glumly. “Can you say that I didn’t deserve it?”</p><p>Russel shrugged. “I mean… if it had been one of my cousins that you treated like that, I would have kicked your ass, so… I guess I can see your point.”</p><p>“<em>You</em> would have kicked <em>my</em> ass?” asked Cardin incredulously.</p><p>“Okay, probably not, but I would have given it a try,” Russel replied. “The point is-”</p><p>“The point is that you’re being very sanguine about it,” Flash interrupted.</p><p>Cardin sighed. “I made my bed,” he declared. “What’s the point in being mad at Sunset? She didn’t ruin my life; <em>I </em>ruined my life when I came out with all that crap, I ruined my life when I decided to hide who I was from Skystar instead of changing who I was. I ruined my life when I decided to be a dick. I don’t know, maybe Penny was right about the faunus and they really aren’t any different from us. Whether they are or not, it… it doesn’t much matter now. And as for Sunset… when I talked to her… she didn’t seem to be revelling in what she’d done. It was like she was… I don’t know how to describe it except to say that, when I asked what made her better than me, she said-”</p><p>“'I got lucky,'” Weiss murmured. “She said the same thing to me.”</p><p>“That… doesn’t sound like Sunset,” Flash said. “At least not the Sunset I know.”</p><p>“Maybe you don’t know her as well as you think?” Russel suggested.</p><p>Flash didn’t reply to that, but his expression became a pensive one, with his brow slightly furrowed and his forehead lined with thought. </p><p>“That doesn’t really matter right now,” Weiss declared. “Unless it changes your decision quite radically… even then, it doesn’t matter that much. Not because what you want is unimportant,” she added hastily, lest he should get the wrong idea, “but because beating Team Sapphire and Team Iron in tomorrow’s exercise is precisely the kind of thing we should be aiming for in order to demonstrate our new commitment and resolve. I suppose the question is, is there something else that you want instead?”</p><p>Flash took a moment to consider, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not right now. Not that I can think of.”</p><p>“I see,” Weiss said quietly. “Let me know – let us all know – when or if you change your mind. I intend to hold these meetings regularly so that we can update our goals as we, hopefully, progress them.”</p><p>“You can tell you’re a businessman’s daughter,” Cardin muttered.</p><p>It took Weiss a moment to realise what he meant. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe. “Yes, I suppose it is rather… yes,” she admitted. “I see what you mean. But it’s better than nothing, don’t you think? It’s better than me ignoring you and leaving this team to rot in the doldrums, isn’t it?”</p><p>“Sure,” Cardin agreed. “I just thought it was… worth pointing out.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Weiss murmured. She looked away from him and towards Russel. “As far as Flash’s goal is concerned, once we’re done here, I’ll fill you all in on what I’ve learned about the exercise, and we can strategise in advance, and then get in some training in preparation. But right now: Russel, how about you? What would you like to achieve?”</p><p>Russel clasped his hands behind the back of his head. “I don’t know; what kind of things do you have in mind?”</p><p>“That’s for you to say, not me,” Weiss reminded him. “Or else it won’t be your goal, will it?”</p><p>Russel chuckled. “I guess not. But I don’t know.”</p><p>“It can be anything,” Weiss urged, “no matter how small.”</p><p>“Do I have to come up with something right now?”</p><p>“Yes,” Weiss insisted. “Because if you don’t, then you’ll be helping us with our goals and getting nothing in return, and we still won’t be a team. There must be something?”</p><p>“I… I’d like to get a decent grade on one of Oobleck’s papers for once, I guess,” Russel said. “I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m a moron.”</p><p>“Alright then,” Weiss said. “After we’re done training, we can sit down and see where you’re going wrong and how you can do better.” She swallowed before she turned once more to face Cardin. “And now it’s your turn.”</p><p>Cardin didn’t reply. He didn’t even look at Weiss, his face was lowered towards the ground. “I don’t know either.”</p><p>Weiss sighed. “You just heard me explain to Russel why this is important.”</p><p>“Well, why don’t you tell us what you want then?” Cardin demanded. “What’s your goal that we all have to help you with?”</p><p>That was a fair question, and one that Weiss should have seen coming. She placed one hand upon her hip as she thought about it. She would have said ‘beating Sapphire and Iron in tomorrow’s exercise’ except that Flash had already beaten her to it. What else could she do to put Team WWSR back on the map and show that they meant business from now on? Ah, yes, she had it. “I want this team to win a four on four match in Professor Goodwitch’s class.” She was in the top quartile individually – albeit clinging on to her place there somewhat since the arrival of the students from the other academies – but the team had never managed to triumph in an even fight against another quartet of students. If they could turn that around, it would go a long way towards creating some buzz before the Vytal Festival. “We’re none of us terrible fighters, so we should be able to do it so long as we work together. Something else we can work on in our training session, and now back to you, Cardin.”</p><p>“You don’t want to know what I want.”</p><p>“Yes, we do,” Weiss declared.</p><p>“I-”</p><p>“Not the time, Russel,” Weiss said.</p><p>“I was only kidding.”</p><p>“Still not the time,” Weiss replied magisterially. </p><p>“Okay, okay, sheesh,” Russel muttered.</p><p>Flash leaned forwards, and put a hand on Cardin’s knee. “You want her back, don’t you?”</p><p>Cardin nodded glumly. “It’s the only thing I want.”</p><p>“Good for you,” Russel said, “but I don’t think-”</p><p>“If that’s what you want,” Weiss said. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”</p><p>“What?” Russel cried. “Are you for real?”</p><p>“It’s what Cardin wants,” Weiss said simply.</p><p>“If I’d known that we could say literally anything, then I would have picked something cooler than a grade!” Russel yelled. “What I really want is a million lien!”</p><p>Weiss gave him a slightly frosty look. “Don’t push it, Russel,” she urged him.</p><p>“He said it himself; he lost his girlfriend because he was a dumbass!” Russel insisted. “Why should we help him get her back?”</p><p>That was not a completely invalid question. It was not exactly their business, and to be honest, Weiss was not without instincts telling her exactly the same thing that Russel was telling her: to leave this alone, to have nothing to do with it, to let Cardin sort this particular problem out himself.</p><p>But, as she had suspected, as she had feared, it was the only thing that mattered to him right now. </p><p>
  <em>“Then you had best play matchmaker, Miss Schnee.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yes, Professor.</em>
</p><p>“Because Cardin is our teammate,” Weiss said, “and this is important to him.”</p><p>“And if you want a self-interested reason, it’s hard to fight with a broken heart,” Flash added. “Trust me, I know. So if you want the team to do well, then we kind of need to sort this out.”</p><p>Weiss smiled slightly. “There, see.”</p><p>“You guys don’t need to do this,” Cardin muttered. “Certainly not for the sake of the team.”</p><p>“How about for your sake?” Flash asked. </p><p>Cardin looked at him. “Do you think I deserve it?”</p><p>“I think so,” Flash said.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because you told me you did, when you admitted that it was all your fault,” he told Cardin. “If you hadn’t said that, then you wouldn’t deserve a second chance. But you did. So you do.”</p><p>Cardin leaned back. “Stop that,” he said.</p><p>Flash frowned. “Stop what?”</p><p>“Being so… so nice!”</p><p>“There’s such a thing as being too nice?”</p><p>“Yes!” Cardin said. “And you’re being it!” He hesitated. “But… thanks.” He looked at Weiss. “Thanks.”</p><p>Russel huffed slightly. “So how are we supposed to persuade the First Councillor’s daughter to give this bonehead another shot?”</p><p>Weiss hesitated. “I…”</p><p>“You don’t have a clue, do you?”</p><p>“Not yet, no,” she admitted. “But together, I’m sure that we can think of something. We each have a goal before us, a stepping stone on the road to our final goals, our dreams. And so long as we keep moving forward together, then all of our ambitions can be achieved, and all of our dreams can be made to come true.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0064"><h2>64. Do You Regret</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Pyrrha challenges Sunset to demonstrate her contrition.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Do You Regret?</p><p> </p><p>Pyrrha was sleeping under the tree. </p><p>It was pretty cute, actually. </p><p>A part of Jaune felt like a bit of a voyeur, sitting next to her, watching Pyrrha doze under the dappled shadows of the tree, but another part of him told himself that they were going out, and it wasn’t like he was some random creeper who had stumbled across her. </p><p>And it wasn’t as though she hadn’t known that he was there before she dozed off. </p><p>Besides, to be honest, as cute as she looked while she was sleeping – she was still Pyrrha, after all – it was nothing compared to the way she looked when he could see her eyes and when those eyes lit up her whole face, nothing compared to the way that she moved, so calm and graceful one moment, so fluid and ferocious the next. </p><p>But she was clearly tired, and so, Jaune let her sleep. </p><p>He had things to think about anyway, even if he was occasionally distracted by glancing towards his slumbering girlfriend.</p><p>Pyrrha stirred, and for a moment, Jaune thought that she was about to wake up, but the indistinct murmurings that passed her lips heralded nothing more than that… and then her whole body lolled sideways, so that she was resting upon Jaune’s shoulder. </p><p>Jaune froze. He didn’t dare to move, afraid that if he did, then Pyrrha would be disturbed, and he didn’t want that, not when she was tired.</p><p>It was a little unfortunate, considering that he was not in the most comfortable position right now, but his armour meant that he couldn’t feel anything really sticking into his back, and it wasn’t like he was uncomfortable.</p><p>And it felt pretty good, the feel of her resting against him. If she didn’t mind his shoulder pauldron digging into her arm, then who was he to complain?</p><p>One of her teal drops, dangling from her circlet by its chain, fell across her face and nearly touched her delicate nose. </p><p>Jaune wondered if he ought to brush it away, but then worried that that would look a bit weird if anyone saw, or if Pyrrha woke up to him poking her face while she slept. </p><p>Again, if she could sleep through it, then he wasn’t going to object. </p><p>He smiled at her, her chest rising and falling gently as she slumbered, the patches of light falling through the leaves glinting off her gilded bracer and greaves. One gloved hand gripped her red sash tightly, although Jaune wasn’t sure if she had fallen asleep that way or had moved to grab it while she slept. </p><p>“Sweet dreams,” he whispered before he looked away. </p><p>The light was falling upon him too, descending down through the gaps in the cover that the tree afforded, but Jaune found it easier when he looked at himself to focus on the shadow rather than the light, at all the darkness that surrounded the sunlit areas and lent a mottled effect to him. </p><p>It was unfortunate that the light itself seemed to be principally falling upon the frayed patches of his jeans from where he was wearing them out. </p><p>He should possibly – probably – buy some new clothes. </p><p>But right now, the fact that at least some of his current clothes were showing their wear and tear was a reminder to him that he and Pyrrha were not of the same class. </p><p>And it seemed like, no matter what reasons Lady Nikos might have had at first for disliking him, that difference was the main stumbling block now to her accepting their relationship. </p><p>He could say that it was unfair, he could say that it was backward and primitive, he could say that he deserved to be judged for who he was, not who his family was – and Pyrrha had said all of that, in about as many words, at the spa yesterday – but the truth was that Vale wasn’t so different; it wasn’t so overt about it, but wealthy old families like Cardin's still flocked together – Cardin’s grandfather served on the Council alongside the mother of Cardin’s ex-girlfriend, until she found out what a huge racist he was. Perhaps, in Vale, the fact that the Winchesters were old money counted for as much as the fact that they were what Sunset had called old blood, but… well, Jaune felt that the fact that the Nikos’ family were pretty loaded had something to do with Lady Nikos’ pride, alongside all the ancestors that she could point to. </p><p>The point was that, although Vale might be less in your face about it, there were probably those in this kingdom who would react the way that Lady Nikos had to someone like Jaune dating their daughter. It was the way that the world was, and complaining about it wasn’t going to help.</p><p>And he did want to help. He meant what he had said to Pyrrha: he didn’t want to be the reason why she spent years, her whole life, estranged from her mother. He knew – he had an idea, at least – of what Pyrrha’s heritage, her family history, meant to her, and yet, she had cut herself off from it in a… in a way that Jaune struggled to define – not exactly materially, since her mother hadn’t actually cut her off; not exactly spiritually either, since she remained a Nikos and drew strength from that; but in a strange admixture of the two that came from her self-imposed exile from her family home. It was clear to him that she would not blink first in this battle of wills she was having with her mother; it had brought out a stubborn side in her, or at least a proud one; she would not bend in this. Lady Nikos would have to accept Jaune, at the least.</p><p>And it seemed that she was willing to do that – if Sunset reported back to her that Jaune’s lineage made him an acceptable boyfriend. Put like that, it was a little ridiculous, but that was only because the unspoken rules had been spoken aloud. </p><p>What was his lineage? Jaune only wished he knew. That was not to say that he was completely ignorant of his family history; in fact, he would say that he knew about as much as any other member of his family living did… but that wasn’t saying a great deal, because so much just wasn’t talked about. He knew that his great-great grandfather had fought in the Great War and had wielded the very sword Jaune himself now wielded, but he didn’t know as what or in what battles he had fought; the same, Jaune knew, was very much not true of Pyrrha’s great-great grandfather. Or any member of her family, for that matter; they probably all had all of their deeds recorded for posterity, while Jaune knew only the bare fact that he had, in some way, fought at some point during the war. </p><p>He also knew that after the war, his great-great grandparents had been amongst the first families to found the village of Alba Longa. That was something at least… but it didn’t really compare to founding the capital of a great kingdom. </p><p>There was no getting around the fact: when it came to the ancestors that he knew about, he just couldn’t compare with Pyrrha’s long and illustrious lineage; if you limited Pyrrha’s ancestors to the same timespan as the ones he knew of, then… no, Lady Nikos would never play that fair with him, and even if she did, there was still the fact that one of Pyrrha’s ancestors had been Emperor when his had been, as far as Jaune knew, just an ordinary soldier. </p><p>Not that there was anything wrong with being an ordinary soldier, but it wasn’t the sort of thing that would impress Pyrrha’s mother. </p><p>Which left him with a couple of choices, neither of which was particularly inspiring. </p><p>The superficially easy choice was the one suggested by Sunset in the spa yesterday afternoon: fake it. Make something up. Pretend to have an illustrious lineage, far off in the mists of time, and claim that he had noble or royal blood running in his veins from however many generations back. It all seemed very easy and convenient, and doubtless, Sunset thought that she had it all – or most of it, at least – figured. </p><p>Something that Jaune had been learning about Sunset, as he got to know her better and as he started to be able to see the cracks in her façade, was that while she was undoubtedly very clever, she was also an absolute fool. Yes, she got good grades, and she had a great wealth of knowledge stuffed away in her head, and Jaune would never deny her intelligence, but when it came to actually making decisions… frankly, she didn’t seem to like using her intelligence and appeared to prefer being ruled by her gut, her passions, or what you might describe as her heart if you were feeling charitable. And sometimes, that was a good thing, or at least it had sometimes worked out well for the team and for Jaune personally – like when she had decided to help him keep his place at Beacon – but at other times, it had led her to do things that were either stupid or horrible or both. </p><p>Well… he thought that it was pretty horrible. Probably. Maybe. The more he thought about what she’d done to Cardin… well, it was rough on Weiss for sure that everyone thought she was a racist, and maybe rough on Flash too – Sunset seemed to think he <em>was</em> a racist, but Jaune wasn’t so certain of that – but what about Skystar? Didn’t she deserve to know the truth?</p><p>Jaune wasn’t… he thought the answer might be yes, but at the same time, he couldn’t think that it was worth the cost. Not just to Weiss’ own reputation, but also to Beacon itself. Some people had written about institutional racism, others about the threat to free speech in schools; it had been a storm of articles and scrollcasts raging around Beacon with such ferocity that if it had been a real storm, it would have knocked some of these Atlesian cruisers out of the sky by now. </p><p>Granted, the storm had died down pretty quickly – astonishingly quickly, in fact; Jaune had expected it to run for much longer; it was as if somebody had called for silence and Vale’s journalists had obeyed – but that didn’t change the fact that it was something that the school probably could have done without. Sunset had lit a bonfire when a candle might have done the trick, and it was exhibit A to prove Jaune’s conviction that she didn’t always make the wisest choices. </p><p>All of which was a somewhat long-winded way of saying that Jaune wasn’t convinced that Sunset’s advice was the best advice in this matter, not least because it rested on Sunset’s conviction that Lady Nikos was looking for an honourable exit from the impasse with Pyrrha and that she would grasp eagerly at any lifeline that was offered without looking at it too closely. Jaune… was not so sure about that. It was true that Sunset knew Pyrrha’s mother better than he did – and that they seemed to have a rather cosy connection – but Jaune felt that he knew enough about Lady Nikos to say that she wouldn’t just take his word for it that he was descended from the royal line of Vale and clasp him to her bosom. She was bound to check, and the moment she did, well, not even his transcripts had been good enough to withstand intense scrutiny; it was hard to believe that he could come up with something better when it came to fabricating his ancestry. </p><p>Yes, he had a sword that had the same name as a sword that had once belonged to the royal family. So what? A name was a name; it could have come from anywhere. It could have been given in homage. It didn’t prove anything. </p><p>Plus… he just didn’t like the idea of lying to Pyrrha’s mother in order to get into her good graces. Even if Pyrrha was in on it, he still didn’t like the idea. Not least because he’d be stuck keeping up the deception for years to come, and that could get exhausting. </p><p>He also thought that Sunset hadn’t considered what would happen if Lady Nikos did accept the ruse but it was then found out by other people. Yes, she’d be reconciled with Pyrrha, but she’d also look like a credulous fool, wouldn’t she? Wasn’t that the kind of thing that made you lose face? He remembered how hard it had been to live down that time when Kale had gotten him drunk on apple scrumpy when he was fifteen. How much harder would it be for Lady Nikos to escape having once been tricked by her daughter’s boyfriend into thinking he was someone special?</p><p>Jaune knew that Sunset wouldn’t want to put Lady Nikos in that position; he just didn’t think she’d thought this through.</p><p>Which could be said of a lot of Sunset’s ideas lately, unfortunately.</p><p>Unfortunately for everyone. </p><p>Pyrrha stirred, and this time, she filled the promise of her stirring as her vivid green eyes fluttered open, even as she made wordless and incomprehensible murmuring sound. She blinked rapidly, seeming to take a moment to realise where she was; once she did realise, she sat up rapidly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to-”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Jaune assured her.</p><p>“But you couldn’t move!”</p><p>“Why would I want to?” Jaune asked.</p><p>Pyrrha smiled gratefully at him. “You’re much too sweet.”</p><p>“And you were too tired,” Jaune replied. “You had a rough night last night.”</p><p>“You… heard,” Pyrrha murmured.</p><p>“You don’t usually toss and turn like that,” Jaune told her.</p><p>Pyrrha winced. “Did I keep you awake? I didn’t mean to; I hope that I didn’t disturb everyone else; it’s just that-”</p><p>“It’s okay,” Jaune repeated. “I’m not the one who fell asleep, remember?”</p><p>Pyrrha chuckled, a blush rising to her cheeks. “No, I suppose you didn’t,” she admitted. “It’s just that it’s so warm out here that I… I suppose I just felt rather drowsy all of a sudden.”</p><p>“Is everything okay?” Jaune asked.</p><p>“Yes,” Pyrrha said quickly. “Everything’s fine; I just… I suppose that I’ve had things on my mind.”</p><p>“Me too,” Jaune murmured, his tone becoming a little melancholy. “But... you go first.”</p><p>“Are you sure?”</p><p>Jaune managed a slight smile. “I insist,” he said.</p><p>Pyrrha’s smile widened, if only for a moment. “I’m worried about Phoebe,” she said, “and about this business with Soteria and about… about what will happen next.”</p><p>“What will happen next?” Jaune asked.</p><p>“I don’t know; that’s what worries me,” Pyrrha replied candidly. “But I feel… I feel as though something must, and I… I hate the fact that I can’t see it. Just as I hate the fact that this is all my fault.”</p><p>“Your fault?” Jaune asked. “This isn’t your fault-”</p><p>“Phoebe is my…” Pyrrha trailed off. “My…”</p><p>“Rival?” Jaune suggested.</p><p>Pyrrha hesitated. “I think that Arslan would be rather upset if she heard me describing Phoebe as my rival, or even <em>a</em> rival. She might think that I was drawing a false equivalence between the two of them.” She paused. “Of course, Phoebe would hate me if she heard me saying that.”</p><p>“It sounds a little like she hates you already,” Jaune pointed out.</p><p>“Probably,” Pyrrha admitted, her tone melancholy. “And that’s just the problem, really. I… I am the one that she hates. The one that she hated. And yet, because I’m on your team, then… well, now she hates Sunset too, and there’s a chance that you and Ruby may get involved as well, and-”</p><p>“And you can ask Sunset or Ruby, and they’ll both tell you what I’m about to tell you now,” Jaune declared, squeezing Pyrrha’s hand reassuringly. “That we wouldn’t trade having you on our team for anything, certainly to avoid trouble with the likes of Phoebe Kommenos.”</p><p>Pyrrha looked as though she desperately wanted to be reassured by this, but didn’t quite dare to let herself believe it. “You say that before-”</p><p>“And we’ll say it after,” Jaune insisted. “After all, we’ve faced the White Fang; what can another student possibly do to frighten us?” He smiled and hoped to provoke a smile in Pyrrha in return.</p><p>He failed. Her face remained downcast as she said, “If anything were to happen to you because of my feud, I-”</p><p>“We both know that you would beat yourself up if any of us were hurt, no matter what the cause,” Jaune informed her.</p><p>Pyrrha did not deny it. “Is that so wrong of me, to care for you?”</p><p>“No,” Jaune whispered. “I didn’t say it was. In fact, I think – no, I know – that I’d be exactly the same way. If you were hurt or worse, I… but that doesn’t mean that it’s your fault; just because you’re the one that she hated first doesn’t mean that you deserve to be hated or that you brought anything upon us. Just because Phoebe can’t get over the fact that you beat her in the arena doesn’t mean that she’s justified in… whatever she does.”</p><p>“The fact that she is not justified will not erase the harm she does,” Pyrrha muttered darkly.</p><p>That was unfortunately true. “If it helps,” he said, “I don’t think Professor Ozpin is as easy to fool with good grades and a smart turnout.”</p><p>“No?”</p><p>Jaune shrugged. “He kept me in school, didn’t he?” he asked. “When I was up there, in his office… yes, Sunset really helped me out by lawyering the rules like she did, but I think…” He remembered before he had been called to the headmaster’s office, before Cardin had tried to out him to the authorities, when Professor Ozpin had come upon him before the statue of the huntress. “He knew,” he declared. “He absolutely knew that my transcripts were fake, and maybe Professor Goodwitch did too, but Professor Ozpin… he really wanted to keep me here, and Sunset just gave him an excuse. And he let Ruby in two years early, when a lot of headmasters wouldn’t in spite of what she did. It’s like… it’s like he can see past grades and appearance and see… I don’t know, see what’s underneath.” He chuckled. “Or maybe I just want to think I’m special.”</p><p>Now <em>that</em> raised a smile out of Pyrrha. “You’re the most humble person I’ve ever met.”</p><p>“Considering the kind of people you grew up with, that doesn’t surprise me too much.”</p><p>Pyrrha giggled a little, covering her mouth with her free hand. “I was trying to… but you already knew that, didn’t you?”</p><p>Jaune didn’t feel the need to answer that. “We can handle Phoebe,” he assured her, “I’m serious; we’ve dealt with a lot worse. She might be mean, but I also meant it when I said that I’m sure if she tries anything, the professors here will see through her.”</p><p>Pyrrha nodded her head slightly. “I hope you’re right.”</p><p>“I’m more worried about…”</p><p>Pyrrha waited. “Go on.”</p><p>“No, it’s fine.”</p><p>“Oh, no,” Pyrrha said. “You listened to me and my worries; now I get to listen to you.”</p><p>“Well, alright, you asked for it,” Jaune reminded her. “I was… I guess I wasn’t worrying so much as I was thinking, about your mother and about what she wants to find out about my family history.”</p><p>“And about what Sunset suggested, that you invent an illustrious lineage for yourself,” Pyrrha surmised.</p><p>“Was it that obvious?”</p><p>Pyrrha placed her free hand on top of Jaune’s hand. “Just a little,” she said softly.</p><p>Jaune smiled at her, then looked away, his gaze running out across the courtyard. “You… you’re incredibly rich,” he said.</p><p>“I’m no Weiss Schnee,” Pyrrha said.</p><p>“Nobody else is, but you don’t need to be a Schnee to be rich,” Jaune said. “Your ancestors founded a kingdom. They ruled that kingdom for centuries. And I’m just…” He looked back at her. “Has it never once crossed your mind that your money or your name are all I care about?”</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha said simply.</p><p>Jaune blinked. “No? Never?”</p><p>“Never,” Pyrrha said. “Whether that makes me a naïve girl or a hopeless romantic, I don’t know, but… no, I’ve never doubted you that way. I’ve always known… I’ve always trusted you, Jaune. I feel safe with you. I can’t imagine you ever hurting me.”</p><p>Jaune was silent for a moment. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond to that. He wasn’t sure that it was possible to respond to that. What could he say to such a declaration? He trusted Pyrrha, but it was easy to trust someone who was taking such a step downwards to be with you; the only ulterior motive Pyrrha could have had was if this was part of some long term plan to prank him for his unrealistic expectations, and that… well, that just wasn’t Pyrrha’s style, was it?</p><p>“I… Pyrrha, you’ve got to stop saying these things, they make me feel really inadequate by comparison.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Pyrrha said quickly. “I didn’t mean to-”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Jaune assured her. “I just meant… you’ve got such an open heart that it… it kind of awes me sometimes. It humbles me.” It amazed him, a little; in her own way, Pyrrha was every bit as innocent as Ruby, perhaps more so; it was a little incredible that nobody had hurt her in the past, taken advantage of her open heart. </p><p><em>Of course, in spite of what she said, an open heart doesn’t have to mean naïve. </em>After all, she had been pretty firm in rejecting her mother’s preferred suitor, so it wasn’t like she couldn’t smell a rat; she just didn’t pick up any kind of noxious stench from Jaune. </p><p>He took that as a compliment. </p><p>“I don’t want to lie to your mother,” he said.</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha murmured. “No, I didn’t think you would.”</p><p>“How…?” Jaune hesitated. “How do you feel about that?”</p><p>“I… I’m glad to hear you say it,” Pyrrha replied. “It’s not that I want this… nothing would please me more than for my mother to accept you, but I want her to accept you as my choice, as the man I chose, not as the phoney heir to the throne of Vale. Sunset means well, but she still doesn’t understand why I had to do what I’ve done. If you win her acceptance based on a lie then… I fear she will not learn anything.”</p><p>“I think that’s going a little far,” Jaune said. “If she hadn’t learned anything, then she wouldn’t have asked Sunset to look into my family in the first place.”</p><p>“I… suppose that’s true,” Pyrrha conceded. “She was not willing to listen at all before.”</p><p>“I was thinking…” Jaune said. “It’s a longshot, I know, and I don’t know how you feel about it, but I was thinking that Sunset and I could actually research my family history, see what we can dig up. I don’t know much about my family’s past beyond the Great War, and I don’t know if there’s anything to find, but maybe there is. Unless… you don’t want me to?”</p><p>“Don’t want you to?” Pyrrha repeated. “Why would I want to stop you?”</p><p>“Well… say it turned out that one of my ancestors was something special?” Jaune suggested. “I mean, it probably won’t happen, but what if it did? If your mother accepted me because of that, then… I guess-”</p><p>“It’s not so important if it’s the truth,” Pyrrha informed. “I know what I said, and I must admit that if my mother accepted you because you turned out to be the long lost heir to a duchy or the like, then I would be… I wish that she would simply accept you because you are the man I love, brave and kind, but you will still be that man and still be brave and still be kind whether you are the descendant of a king or a duke or a farmer. I would not, could not, ask you to hide who you are simply so that I can try and make a point to my mother.” She smiled. “After all, I’m the last person who could complain about anyone else having a distinguished lineage.”</p><p>Jaune grinned, although it swiftly faded from his face. What Pyrrha was saying was that she didn't mind what the truth turned out to be; she just didn't want him to lie. That cut him to the quick with a sharp reminder of the fact that he was, indeed, lying to her about something: specifically, he was lying by omitting the fact that he knew that Sunset was behind the exposure of Cardin and Bon Bon and, more importantly, what had been done to Lyra.</p><p><em>More of Sunset's terrible decisions.</em> He hadn't intended to tell Pyrrha, but… now that he was in this situation, how could he not?</p><p>"It was Sunset," he said.</p><p>"Excuse me?" Pyrrha replied.</p><p>"Sunset was the one who released that audio of Cardin and Bon Bon, and Sunset was the one who revealed all that stuff about Lyra too," Jaune confessed.</p><p>"Are you sure?"</p><p>Jaune nodded glumly. "It's what we talked about alone, when you and Ruby went on ahead to breakfast. She… admitted it, eventually."</p><p>Pyrrha was silent for a moment; silent and almost without expression. "I… I see. How long have you known?"</p><p>"I didn't know for sure, not until she admitted it," Jaune said. "I didn't want you or Ruby to know."</p><p>Pyrrha frowned. "Why not?"</p><p>"I was… I was worried that you wouldn't be able to forgive her," Jaune replied quietly.</p><p>"I could always forgive Sunset," Pyrrha said, her tone containing a very mild reproach. "Provided that she was truly contrite."</p><p>"I think she is," Jaune said. "She seemed to understand… I mean, I can't judge what she did to Cardin; I'm not a faunus, and so I don't think that I can be the guy to say that what he said wasn't so bad, you know?"</p><p>"No, I agree with you completely," Pyrrha murmured. "And, as for myself, if you had such a terrible secret, then I would prefer to know about it; for all that it would break my heart if you turned out to be someone other than who I thought you were, I would still rather know than be fooled by a false happiness." She paused for a moment and rose to her feet ere she spoke again. "But that was a terrible thing to do to Lyra."</p><p>Jaune started to get up himself. "Are you going somewhere?"</p><p>"I'm going to find Sunset," Pyrrha told him. "As I said, I will always forgive her if she's contrite, but actions speak louder than words. I need to know that she not only understands what she did was wrong but that she regrets it too. And that means that she has to prove it."</p><hr/><p>"Do you regret it?"</p><p>Sunset's ears pricked up at the sound of Pyrrha's voice. She, Sunset, was in the garage, with the door open to admit as much of the sunlight as possible while she did some tuning up on her motorcycle. She was currently on her back, jacket off and arms stained with oil and grease, and had just finished reattaching a particularly troublesome nut when she was summoned.</p><p>She looked up. Pyrrha stood in the doorway, casting a shadow inside the garage. Her expression was stern, and unyielding as her armour.</p><p>"Hello to you too, Pyrrha," Sunset replied as she sat up. She levitated a rag into her glowing hands and began to wipe the oil off with it, or tried to at least.</p><p>Pyrrha's expression did not alter, nor did her tone become any less stony. "Do you regret it?"</p><p>Sunset glanced from Pyrrha to Jaune. She had an idea of what this was about, an idea that made her stomach chill, but she had to ask anyway, "Do I regret what?"</p><p>"What you did to Lyra," Pyrrha explained in a voice as sharp as Miló.</p><p>So that was what this was all about. Sunset felt a pang of irritation towards Jaune, who had, if not said that he would keep it to himself, at the very least implied it. But it was hard to be too upset with him just because he had declined to keep secrets from his girlfriend. You were supposed to be honest with your girl, after all; at least Sunset thought that you were. Honesty was one of the pillars of a relationship, at least if you were the man in it; girls ought to be allowed more leeway to take account of the fact that excellent ladies like Sunset, Pyrrha, and Blake were so often lowering themselves to the level of lunkheads like Flash, Jaune, and Sun.</p><p>At least, that was how Sunset saw it. So, even though he had – arguably – betrayed her, Sunset couldn't bring herself to be too upset about it in this instance; he was showing that heart of gold, after all.</p><p>
  <em>You're a lucky girl, Pyrrha.</em>
</p><p>And besides, what she had done was deserving of censure. She had already acknowledged that to Jaune, even if she hadn't acknowledged it to Blake… Blake whom she hadn't spoken to since she had dropped the audio. Sunset abruptly found herself wondering if those two things might be connected. Was Blake mad at her? Rainbow seemed to have gotten over her disgust at what Sunset had done to Lyra, at least in the sense of not doing anything about what Sunset had done to Cardin and Bon Bon, possibly because Cardin and Bon Bon had both said such outrageously racist things, but Blake? Sunset had no idea how Blake felt about it.</p><p>
  <em>Should I ask her?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>How badly do I want to know the truth?</em>
</p><p>That was not, in any case, something to worry about right now. What was something to worry about right now was Pyrrha, standing in front of her, knowing the truth and looking none too happy about it.</p><p>Sunset got to her feet, if only as a stalling tactic. It was… it should probably have been an easier question to answer than it was. Did she regret what she had done to Lyra? It was strange, but she regretted what she had done to Cardin far more, if only because of the way that she had destroyed his relationship – yes, destroying his relationship had been the point of the exercise, but she was allowed to hold two contradictory ideas in her head, as demonstrated by the ease with which she did so. She regretted the hurt that she had done to him, regretted it so much that she was resolved to make it right even if she didn't know exactly how to do so. But Lyra? What she had done to Lyra didn't figure in her mind in the same way, though she had had no cause to hurt Lyra and some at least to inflict pain on Cardin. And yet it was the vengeance earned that troubled her more than the cruelty callously meted out.</p><p>She would like to say it was because Lyra didn't seem to have really suffered anything worse than a little temporary embarrassment, but the truth was it was probably as much that she saw herself in Cardin's pain.</p><p>
  <em>I'm a terrible person, aren't I?</em>
</p><p>None of that, of course, was what Pyrrha wanted to hear. Pyrrha wanted to hear – or Sunset guessed she did – that Sunset did, in fact, regret it. And she did regret it. She regretted it less than the more deserved thing that she had done, but nevertheless… she could acknowledge that it had been a cruel thing, and undeserved; it had been an unworthy thing, action for the sake of action, punishment by proxy, hurting Lyra because she wanted to hurt someone.</p><p>"Yes," she said. "I regret it. I should have just challenged Bon Bon to a duel and kicked her ass."</p><p>Pyrrha did not demur from that. "That would have been a more acceptable way of airing your grievance," she agreed. "But you didn't."</p><p>"No," Sunset agreed, her voice quiet and brittle. She almost wanted – no, she <em>did</em> want – to skip this conversation and get to the point where Pyrrha explained what she had planned to do next. Had she just lost a friend? Would the team be divided in two for the second time? What did Pyrrha mean to do? "No, I didn't."</p><p>"Why not?" Pyrrha demanded. "How could you do something so viciously misguided?"</p><p>"Because I wanted to send Bon Bon a message: leave my friends alone," Sunset said. "Isn't the duty to avenge a friend supposed to be a sacred one?"</p><p>"Revenge for death or injury, not humiliation that Blake shrugged off as utterly unimportant," Pyrrha declared. "And revenge upon they who did the injury, not their friend in turn. What did Lyra have to do with any of this?"</p><p>Sunset looked away. "None," she said. "None at all except that, as you say, she was Bon Bon's friend. I shouldn't have done it. Jaune helped me see that I shouldn't have done it. As I said, I regret it."</p><p>"Do you?" Pyrrha asked.</p><p>"I just said so, didn't I?"</p><p>"Then show me," Pyrrha insisted. "Go to Professor Ozpin and admit what you did."</p><p>Sunset said nothing for a moment. Now they had reached the end of the conversation, and she had not expected this. "You… want me to confess?"</p><p>Pyrrha nodded, a slight, and slightly stiff gesture. "If you are contrite, then you'll admit what you've done and take the consequences for it."</p><p>"And then what?"</p><p>"And then I will say nothing more about it," Pyrrha declared. "And Ruby doesn't have to know."</p><p>Sunset's eyes narrowed at the pretty clear implications of that. "That sounds almost like blackmail, Pyrrha," she said.</p><p>"You asked for this, Sunset," Pyrrha informed her.</p><p>"By doing what I did?"</p><p>"No," Pyrrha replied. "In the Bullhead, on the way back from the Forever Fall."</p><p>
  <em>The Forever Fall? But that was… oh. Oh, right.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Just… in the future, if I'm becoming too much of a jerk… if I'm getting too awful… stop me."</em>
</p><p>Sunset snorted softly. "So, this is how you're going to stop me?"</p><p>"I'm hoping that we don't have to stop you," Pyrrha murmured. "Jaune says that you've already realised that you were walking down a dark path."</p><p>"But you need proof?" Sunset asked.</p><p>Pyrrha hesitated before she said, "Actions speak louder than words."</p><p>That was true enough. It was also true that Pyrrha was really being quite reasonable. Rainbow Dash, Blake, even Jaune had all been too soft on her, giving warnings that they had not or would not follow through on. Although none of them were Cardin, in that none of them relished the power they had over Sunset, they had all made the same mistake of failing to match their own words with actions and so shown themselves to be toothless.</p><p>Pyrrha was not making the same mistake. Pyrrha was getting straight down to business.</p><p>
  <em>This is why she is the best of us; she strikes without hesitation because she has a clean conscience and a spotless intent.</em>
</p><p>And she was doing so while still offering Sunset mercy. For Ruby to remain ignorant – she would have to explain whatever punishment Professor Ozpin chose to mete out to her, but that was not impossible – for Pyrrha to put the matter aside as though she had forgotten, that was more than Sunset deserved and more than she had a right to expect.</p><p>And Sunset did regret it. If there were other things that she regretted more, then, well, she could confess those too.</p><p>To Professor Ozpin… and to Twilight, too.</p><p>
  <em>And Twilight will tell… her.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Dear Princess Celestia… I haven't changed at all.</em>
</p><hr/><p>The elevator ground slowly.</p><p>Sunset was sure that it was doing it on purpose.</p><p>And in the meantime, as she waited for the lift to complete its ascent to Professor Ozpin’s office – why did he have to sit up so high? – she was trapped within this metal box, rattling up the Emerald Tower, with nothing to do but think.</p><p>Or brood.</p><p>She had a great many things to think or brood upon.</p><p>She did not want to go and see Professor Ozpin. This would be the first time that she had gone up to his office since she had started to put the pieces together about what he knew, since she had started to wonder if his designs on Ruby or Pyrrha might be to turn them into one of his prophets. It was the first time since she had had something approaching real evidence to back up her suspicions of the man.</p><p>Would he realise that? Would he be able to tell? Sunset knew that the old man knew more than he let on, but she had also suspected – or feared – that he was able to perceive more than he ought to have. He knew about her magic – no surprise there – but he also… there was something about him, as if he could look into her soul. She didn’t like it. She never had.</p><p>Just like she’d never liked him even before she had solid cause to dislike him and to fear what he intended for her friends.</p><p>Her friends. The reason why she was inside this elevator cab, being born with painful, agonising slowness towards a man she did not want to see, because Pyrrha had asked it of her.</p><p>Pyrrha had done more than asked it; Pyrrha had demanded it as the price of her continued friendship.</p><p>Sunset frowned. That was… not fair. That was an interpretation born out of fear and dislike of Professor Ozpin so strong it sought to blame the one responsible for sending her to Professor Ozpin. But it wasn’t fair to think of what they had done like that. It might be literally correct, but that didn’t mean that it was right.</p><p>No, no, it wasn’t even correct; Pyrrha hadn’t threatened to turn away from Sunset… although she had pretty strongly implied it.</p><p>But Sunset had asked for that, when she asked them to stop her.</p><p>
  <em>I didn’t mean that.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I didn’t know what I meant.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Was I expecting them to physically stop me? To beat me down until I cried for mercy?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>That might have been preferable to this.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I’ll just get a couple of detentions or something.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And Ruby doesn’t have to know.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Pyrrha is doing the right thing. Jaune, Blake, Rainbow Dash, they’ve all been too soft on me. This is the kind of medicine I understand.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>That doesn’t make it taste any better.</em>
</p><p>Sunset folded her arms and leaned against the back of the elevator. She glanced at the wall to her right; her reflection looked back at her from the metal panels; it was distorted, twisted like a funhouse mirror. Her reflection seemed to be wearing a sour expression nonetheless.</p><p>“Is it worth it?” her twisted reflection asked.</p><p>Sunset wrinkled her nose. “Is what worth what? Be specific?”</p><p>“You know what I mean,” her reflection replied. “I’m you, remember? Is having friends worth all this effort, all this aggravation?”</p><p>“Yes!”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because I have people that I can depend on, that’s why!”</p><p>“Can you?” her reflection demanded. “Then what are you doing here?”</p><p>“I’m making amends.”</p><p>“You’re submitting to Pyrrha’s will.”</p><p>“There’s nothing wrong with submission as long as the one that you’re submitting to is just.”</p><p>“That doesn’t mean you like it.”</p><p>“That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it.”</p><p>“You’re abasing yourself!” her reflection sneered. “What happened to your pride?”</p><p>“I am as proud as ever.”</p><p>“Hardly. You’re letting precious Pyrrha push you around-”</p><p>“I’m proving to her that I’m not a bad person,” Sunset declared. “I’m proving to myself that I’m not a bad person.”</p><p>“We were better off by ourselves.”</p><p>“No, we weren’t.”</p><p>“Nobody to please. Nobody to answer to.”</p><p>“Nobody to care about us. Nobody to help us out.”</p><p>“When was the last time any of our so-called friends helped us out?”</p><p>“They’re doing it right now,” Sunset muttered.</p><p>“We do so much for all of them,” her reflection proclaimed. “We save their lives, we fight their battles, and all that we get from them in return is more and more hassle and demands upon us. ‘Sunset do this,’ ‘Sunset do that,’ ‘Sunset let me take all the glory-’”</p><p>“I don’t give a crap!” Sunset snarled, slamming her fist into the wall. “We were not better off by ourselves, okay? Let’s be honest if we’re going to do this: we were miserable and lonely, and we hated every second of it! So I don’t care what you have to say or what you think or what we have to put up with, we’re sticking to it because it’s still better by ten miles than what we had before!” She took in a deep breath, her chest rising and falling. “We’re sticking to it because I care about them, and that’s enough. That’s enough. I care about them, and I’m going to stay with them, and if you don’t like it, then tough.”</p><p>The elevator door slid open.</p><p>“Miss… Shimmer?” Professor Ozpin asked; he had gotten up from his desk and looked as though he had been walking towards the elevator as it opened; he leaned upon his cane as he bent forwards to take a look inside. “Are you alone in there?”</p><p>Sunset’s eyebrow rose. “Yes, Professor. Is that a problem?”</p><p>“Not a problem, Miss Shimmer; I simply thought I heard raised voices coming from inside.”</p><p><em>Did I say all of that out loud?</em> Sunset cleared her throat loudly, running one hand through her fiery hair. “Nope, nobody here but me, Professor,” she declared with faux good cheer in her voice as she stepped out of the elevator cab. “Not even me in there any more.” She laughed nervously. “It must have been the creaking of the cables.”</p><p>“Probably,” Professor Ozpin appeared to acknowledge, in a tone that gave little away as to whether he believed her or not. “Now, what can I do for you, Miss Shimmer?”</p><p>Sunset let the question hang in the air for a moment, lingering like one of the Atlesian cruisers visible out of the windows. She didn’t meet his eyes. She took another step forwards, and her tail twitched as she clasped her hands together behind her back. “I… I have something to tell you, Professor. It… it was me. I released the audio of Cardin and Bon Bon to the media… and I released Lyra’s personal data too.”</p><p>Professor Ozpin was still for a moment, and silent. He gazed down upon her, his grey eyes cloudy and inscrutable. His voice, when it came, was soft; Sunset almost had to strain to hear him. “I see. May I ask why?”</p><p>“I wanted to punish them,” Sunset said. “For what they did to Blake.”</p><p>“What did Miss Heartstrings do to Miss Belladonna?” Professor Ozpin asked.</p><p>Sunset bit her lip. “Nothing,” she confessed. “I did that to injure Bon Bon by proxy.”</p><p>“I see,” Professor Ozpin repeated, his voice becoming sterner. He turned away from her and walked around and then behind his desk. However, he did not sit down; he remained standing, set above Sunset. “And why do you tell me this now?”</p><p>“I’m not sure that’s any of your business, Professor,” Sunset replied, taking a couple of steps closer to his desk, under the grinding gears of the clock.</p><p>“On the contrary, Miss Shimmer,” Professor Ozpin, “I consider it very much my business why you decided to torment a fellow student who had done you no wrong and then decided to confess the fact.”</p><p>“'Torment' is a harsh word, Professor.”</p><p>Professor Ozpin raised one grey eyebrow into the recesses of his bangs. “You will forgive me for saying so, Miss Shimmer, but you seem more contrite about what many would see – considering what Mister Winchester and Miss Bonaventure said to Miss Belladonna – as the lesser offence.”</p><p>Sunset shuffled uncomfortably in place. “It is the offence that I regret more,” she admitted.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>Sunset hesitated. “Because I destroyed a love,” she said. “Because a flower bloomed in the garden, and I have poisoned it. That was, I confess, my intention for my actions, but now that I behold the fruits of that same… I am disgusted with myself.”</p><p>“And yet you are not disgusted with yourself for having attacked someone who did you no wrong, by exposing her secrets to the school, by holding her up to mockery.”</p><p>“Cardin has suffered by my actions more than Lyra has,” Sunset declared. “I am not aware that her true friends have forsaken her, that her teammates hold her in any less affection than they did before, that she endures anything more now than a little light teasing. Cardin… Cardin has lost something rare and beautiful.”</p><p>“So your regret is proportional to the consequences of your actions, as you perceive them, and not upon the morality of the act itself?”</p><p>“I’m aware that what I did was wrong, if that’s what you’re asking,” Sunset replied. “But… yes, Professor, my regret is from the harm, not from the act. Why should it be otherwise? If I throw a punch at someone in anger, should I not regret the blow that lands more than that which missed?”</p><p>“Some might argue that you should regret that blow that did not deserve to fall more than that which did,” Professor Ozpin murmured. “Some might argue that what Mister Winchester and Miss Bonaventure said and planned to do was so reprehensible that they, in the common parlance, had it coming.”</p><p>“I’m sure that some people do, Professor,” Sunset replied. <em>Rainbow and Pyrrha amongst them.</em> “I don’t know if you feel that way as well, and I don’t expect it to influence how you punish me – or what you punish me for – but it’s how I feel, and I… I don’t see the point in lying about that.” <em>Not to you, at least.</em></p><p>Now, at last, Professor Ozpin took his seat. “I see,” he murmured. “I must confess that I am not blind to the merits of your position, Miss Shimmer; there are certainly times when I too weigh up the consequences of my actions and decide that, although the act itself may seem disreputable to an outsider, it has nevertheless accomplished a worthy goal or avoided a much greater harm.”</p><p><em>Is that how you justify all of this? </em>Sunset wondered.<em> All of the lies, the hiding away of the world’s magic – and with it, all the world’s hope also – the stuffing away in boxes of people who would otherwise have flown far and free, the keeping of secrets from Ruby, the using people to advance your agenda? Is it all justified in your mind because it avoids much greater harm?</em></p><p>It turned out that there were limits to Sunset’s consequentialism, and those limits started where the actions touched her friends.</p><p>
  <em>I’m a hypocrite. Who would have guessed?</em>
</p><p>Her eyes narrowed a little. Why had Professor Ozpin felt the need to tell her that? He had no need to explain himself to her, especially not in these circumstances. So why say it? Why let her know that he agreed with her position, at least in part? Why should he go out of his way so?</p><p><em>Unless it’s because he knows I’m onto him and he thinks that he can make me understand that way. </em>Sunset’s tail shivered, brushing against both her legs in turn.</p><p>
  <em>And the worst part is that I can’t even ask him why he’s telling me this to get a feel for whether I’m on the right track or not.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Does he know I know, or doesn’t he?</em>
</p><p>“It is for that reason,” Professor Ozpin continued, “that I have turned a blind eye to some previous malefactions of yours, Miss Shimmer. Your removal of Mister Arc’s ostensible transcripts from the records, for one thing, was justified by a focus upon consequence. It was better that Mister Arc remain at this school than that you should be punished for what was, after all, an act of theft.”</p><p><em>He does know!</em> Sunset felt as though metal jaws were closing in on either side of her; it was all that she could do not to teleport away. “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about, Professor.”</p><p>Professor Ozpin chuckled. “Very well, Miss Shimmer, we will maintain that fiction, if you wish.” He did not mention Summer Rose’s diary; whether he didn’t realise that was missing too or he didn’t want to discuss the implications of the fact that he had had the journal in the first place – after all, if you wanted to talk about consequences, it was hard to argue that Ruby knowing a little more about her mother wasn’t some sort of net good – Sunset did not know. But she found herself glad that he did not bring it up.</p><p>His tone became serious once more as he added, “However, I am afraid that I cannot overlook this new offence on the same grounds.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t expect you too, Professor.”</p><p>Professor Ozpin did not reply immediately. He sat back in his chair and kept her waiting. Princess Celestia had sometimes done that, in an effort to give Sunset more time to think about what she had done and why it had been wrong.</p><p>It hadn’t always worked, and Sunset wasn’t sure that – if that was Professor Ozpin’s intent – it was working now. She couldn’t just change how she felt so swiftly and without thought. She did feel more guilty about what she’d done to Cardin than what she’d done to Lyra, and whether that was because of consequentialism or because she felt more kinship with Cardin… it wasn’t something that she could just wish away because she’d been told she should.</p><p>“What you have done is a serious matter, Miss Shimmer,” Professor Ozpin reminded her.</p><p>“I’m aware, Professor.”</p><p>“Are you?”</p><p>“I’m aware of the severity; I just don’t feel it caused… as much bother as it might have,” Sunset replied.</p><p>“How much ‘bother’ was it your intent to cause?” Professor Ozpin asked.</p><p>“Enough that Bon Bon wouldn’t have dared say those things to Blake,” Sunset said.</p><p>“Hmm,” Professor Ozpin murmured. “Do you remember what I told you, Miss Shimmer, on the night of your first encounter with Mister Torchwick?”</p><p>Sunset nodded. “Nobody comes to Beacon a hero, Professor.”</p><p>“Indeed, Miss Shimmer,” Professor Ozpin said. “I daresay that the girl I met that night would not have done these things… because she would not have cared enough to intervene on Miss Belladonna’s behalf.”</p><p>Sunset sighed. “There is much truth in what you say, Professor; I have… learned to care for others since I have been here.”</p><p>“But not to care wisely, or to channel those feelings into more productive avenues,” Professor Ozpin remarked coolly.</p><p>Sunset inhaled through her nostrils. “Perhaps not, Professor, but there are still three years and more to come.”</p><p>“Perhaps,” Professor Ozpin said softly.</p><p>Sunset’s ears pricked up. <em>'Perhaps'? What do you mean, 'perhaps'?</em> Was he going to expel her? Was he going to kick her out? Was her adventure going to end here? “Professor, I… I came to you! Surely that entitles me to a little consideration.”</p><p>“Surely you agree, Miss Shimmer, that some acts are beyond consideration?”</p><p>“I’m not sure that I do, Professor; I certainly don’t think my acts are amongst them.”</p><p>“No, I don’t suppose you do, Miss Shimmer,” Professor Ozpin replied. “However, you may put your fears at rest; I have no intention of expelling you from this school.”</p><p>Sunset fought very hard to suppress her sigh of relief; she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.</p><p>“Detention,” Professor Ozpin said, “Tomorrow night, with Professor Goodwitch.”</p><p>Sunset blinked. “One night of detention, Professor?” That was… extraordinarily generous of him.</p><p>But wasn’t that what Raven had warned Ruby about? That Professor Ozpin played favourites and turned a blind eye to the teams that he had set his eyes upon?</p><p>
  <em>Does he know that I know that, and he’s sending me a message?</em>
</p><p>“As you pointed out, Miss Shimmer, there seems to have been little harm done to Miss Heartstrings in the end,” Professor Ozpin said. “And as for the matter of Mister Winchester and Miss Bonaventure, I have no wish to fuel the fires that are, thankfully, dying down around that revelation by making you a cause celebre for those who might otherwise claim that I am punishing a whistleblower. Better to let that particular business lie where it has fallen.”</p><p>“I… see, Professor,” Sunset murmured. <em>Is that really all there is to it?</em> She had her doubts, to say the least.</p><p>“That will be all, Miss Shimmer,” Professor Ozpin said.</p><p>Sunset nodded sharply. “Of course, Professor.” She turned away and began to walk back towards the elevator.</p><p>“Miss Shimmer?” Professor Ozpin said.</p><p>Sunset stopped, and looked over her shoulder. “Something else, Professor?”</p><p>“Next time you happen to be recording an incident like the one between Mister Winchester, Miss Bonaventure, and Miss Belladonna, come to me before you go to the press,” Professor Ozpin said.</p><p><em>I’d feel a lot less guilty if I’d done that, certainly,</em> Sunset thought. <em>And Cardin and Skystar might still be together.</em> “Yes, Professor,” she said. “You have my word.”</p><hr/><p>Pyrrha waited in the tower lobby for Sunset to descend again. And as she waited, she could not help but feel disappointed. Disappointed a little with Jaune, she must admit, for having kept this secret from her after he had known – or even when he had begun to suspect. But even more disappointed with Sunset; mostly disappointed with Sunset. </p><p>They had known. Lyra had known the truth, and though she had been generous enough not to attempt to persuade Pyrrha of the fact… was it still generous when it had kept the truth from her?</p><p>She had trusted Sunset. She had believed that she was different, better, that she was beyond such things as this. </p><p>She hoped that she was not completely foolish in such hope and trust. She did not think so. She had seen a change in Sunset; they all had. This was an aberration. A step backwards. This was not who Sunset had become.</p><p>At least, she hoped it was not. </p><p>It was not. She believed it was not. She trusted it was not.</p><p>Sunset was still her friend, and as her friend, so Pyrrha trusted her. </p><p>And Sunset had proved that she was worthy of that trust, not only by admitting that she was at fault to Pyrrha but also to Professor Ozpin. If she had refused to go, then Pyrrha would have been forced to entertain more serious doubts, but since Sunset had gone, all Pyrrha was left with was the twinge of disappointment. </p><p>She wished it had not come to this. She wished that Sunset had not fallen so. </p><p>Jaune blamed Cinder. Pyrrha… would have liked it to be so easy. </p><p>She didn’t particularly like Cinder herself, but at the same time… there was something within Sunset that drove her to… to do such things as this.</p><p>It was something that Pyrrha would have to accept, as the price of being Sunset’s friend.</p><p>Accept, and try to guard her friend against her own worst impulses.</p><p>The elevator door opened, and Sunset stepped out into the lobby with its ambient green glow. She looked around and caught sight of Pyrrha, who had in any case begun to make her way towards Sunset.</p><p>“You didn’t need to wait for me,” Sunset pointed out.</p><p>“No,” Pyrrha agreed. “But I wanted to. How…?” She hesitated. “How did it go?”</p><p>Now it was Sunset’s turn to fall briefly silent. “I have detention,” she murmured, “tomorrow night.”</p><p>“'Tomorrow night'?” Pyrrha repeated. “You… I mean, you were only given-”</p><p>“You don’t need to hide it; I was surprised to get off so lightly too,” Sunset cut her off. “I think it’s a bad sign.”</p><p>“You wanted to be punished more?”</p><p>“It’s like Raven said; he’s letting me get away with stuff because he’s got an interest in our team.”</p><p>Pyrrha wanted nothing so much in that moment as to tell Sunset that she was being absolutely ridiculous. And yet, the words would not emerge from out of her throat; they stuck there as though it was their intent to choke her to death. Why had Professor Ozpin been so lenient? Why give out a punishment that was so token? It was little more than a slap on the wrist for what Sunset had done. </p><p>Was it possible that the offence was not actually so great as Pyrrha had thought? When she had heard what Sunset had done, Pyrrha had been shocked that Sunset could descend so low; now, she was confronted with the possibility – vouchsafed by the headmaster, no less – that it was not actually something of any matter whatsoever. </p><p>Yet still she would have rather believed that than believed in Sunset’s paranoia. </p><p>“Or perhaps it really was no great matter,” Pyrrha murmured. “Nevertheless, I am grateful that you did this.”</p><p>“And I’m grateful that you made me,” Sunset said.</p><p>“You don’t need to pretend-”</p><p>“I’m not,” Sunset insisted. “Seriously, I mean it; I… I needed to do this, and you were the only one who made me do it. Jaune, Rainbow, Blake, none of them had the guts to hold my feet to the fire like this, only you. I needed it. I… need you.”</p><p>“And you have me,” Pyrrha said, smiling a little as she held out one hand. There was nothing more upon this matter to be said; she had given her word that, if Sunset confessed, then she would say no more about it; and she would hold to it. </p><p>Even if it did niggle at her mind from time to time.</p><p>Sunset took her hand, and clasped it warmly. “This won’t happen again,” she vowed.</p><p>“I know,” Pyrrha replied, and she believed it.</p><p>She wanted to believe it. </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0065"><h2>65. Weak Piping Time of Peace</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sunset and Cinder attend a play, but when it turns out that there is nobody to play the leading role, Cinder steps into the breach.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Weak Piping Time of Peace</p><p> </p><p>“So,” Cinder said, her arms folded across her chest. “You told him everything?”</p><p>“No, I didn’t tell him everything; I told him what I did,” Sunset corrected as she strode towards the garage.”</p><p>“I fail to see the difference,” Cinder muttered as she walked after her.</p><p>Sunset turned to face her, walking backwards a step. “I didn’t tell him that you helped me get into Lyra’s scroll-”</p><p>“As I recall, I did <em>everything</em> to get you into Lyra’s scroll.”</p><p>“And I didn’t tell him that you… were there when I decided to out Cardin and Bon Bon,” Sunset added, ignoring Cinder’s last comment, for all that it was perfectly true. “I only told him that I did… that it was me. I took responsibility; I didn’t drop you in it. <em>That’s </em>the difference.”</p><p>“How very generous of you,” Cinder said dryly. “Why?”</p><p>“Why did I confess, or why did I not name you?”</p><p>Cinder paused for a moment. “Both.”</p><p>Sunset shrugged. “I didn’t name you because why would I?”</p><p>“Because I was there?” Cinder suggested. “Because I helped?”</p><p>“You helped because I asked you to,” Sunset said. “Because you’re a good friend.” She paused. “Although a better friend might have told me no and explained that it was a terrible idea.”</p><p>“That would require me to believe that it <em>was</em> a terrible idea,” Cinder drawled.</p><p>“It was,” Sunset insisted. “It was… I confessed because I had done wrong.”</p><p>“That didn’t stop you doing the wrong,” Cinder pointed out. “Was not justice served on Cardin and Bon Bon?”</p><p>“'Justice'?” Sunset repeated. “Where is the justice in breaking a girl’s heart?”</p><p>“Where is the virtue in keeping her blind to the inadequacies of her man for the sake of a little temporary happiness?” Cinder asked. “She may be broken-hearted now, but in time, those scars will heal, and she will not be saddled with a boyfriend who holds views she holds abhorrent.”</p><p>Sunset disliked how much sense that made. She shook her head. “If you had seen how wretched he looked afterwards-”</p><p>“Was not the point to make him wretched?” Cinder asked.</p><p>“Yes, but that doesn’t mean that I… if I had known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have… I regret it; is that not enough?”</p><p>“Not if your regrets are foolish,” Cinder said. “Are you so in love with the idea of love that you hold it better to be blind in love than to be wise to him who is not worthy of your love?”</p><p>“Maybe I am!” Sunset snapped. “I was happier in love with Flash than I ever was wise to his inadequacy, to his prejudice, to his hatred of the faunuskind. If I could return to that state of bliss that we enjoyed I… I would give up Soteria to Phoebe Kommenos in a heartbeat for such a thing. Ten times over. I would give up pride and honour both and all the favours done to me by Lady Nikos. If this is what it means to see clearly then pluck out the eyes of my heart and make me blind again.”</p><p>Cinder stared at her, her own smouldering eyes practically boggling in disbelief. “You truly mean this,” she whispered. “You would rather dwell in ignorance and call it love than know the truth? You would rather go back to pretending for the sake of… him? Flash Sentry?”</p><p>“I thought he loved me once,” Sunset whispered.</p><p>“You were the more deceived, as you have told the tale,” Cinder declared. “And yet you would rather continue to be deceived.”</p><p>“What has the truth bestowed on me but heartache?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Cinder’s gaze was without sympathy. “Better to see the world for what it really is than live in dreams,” she said. “For all dreams end, and waking must come sooner or later, however painful the waking up may be.”</p><p>Sunset was silent for a moment. “You… speak from experience?”</p><p>Cinder took a moment to reply, her voice quiet. “In a manner of speaking.”</p><p>“I see,” Sunset whispered. “And I am sorry for it, but… your experience is not mine, and it does not change the fact that I regret what I did, to Cardin and to Skystar both.”</p><p>“And Bon Bon?”</p><p>“Bon Bon is not near my conscience,” Sunset confessed. “Except that in damaging her, I damaged Cardin too. Lyra… stands between them.”</p><p>“I see,” Cinder said. “I still don’t think that you have anything to be ashamed of?”</p><p>“I hurt a girl who had done me no harm in order to wound her friend; is that not something to be ashamed of?” Sunset demanded.</p><p>Cinder shrugged. “What else could you have done?”</p><p>“Nothing,” Sunset said. “I should have done nothing.”</p><p>“And let Blake suffer?”</p><p>“Blake didn’t ask for my help, nor need it,” Sunset said.</p><p>“Should a friend need to ask for help in order to get it?”</p><p>“Of course not, but they should require it,” Sunset declared. “It was my pride, and the hurt done to my pride, that made me do those things.”</p><p>“Your pride would not be hurt if you didn’t care for Blake,” Cinder pointed out.</p><p>“That does not make my intentions noble.”</p><p>“Nor does it make them base,” Cinder pointed out. “Many good things can be done with a less than noble intent.”</p><p>“I know it well enough.”</p><p>“Then why did you confess your so-called offences to Professor Ozpin?”</p><p>“Because I had done bad things and needed to be punished; how hard is that to understand?” Sunset snapped.</p><p>“I want to understand why you suddenly became convinced that you had done bad things, you didn’t think so before?” Cinder said. She smirked. “Was it Jaune? Or Pyrrha? It cannot be Ruby, she is too righteous by far, she would have shouted out your ‘crimes’ if she learned of them. Blake and Rainbow Dash, the stalwarts of Atlas, simply told you that you were a naughty girl, don’t do it again, but you didn’t listen to them anyway-”</p><p>“Cinder,” Sunset warned reproachfully.</p><p>“I wonder how Atlas intends to stop the White Fang if that’s the attitude that they take to what they regard as criminality. Actually, in the case of the White Fang, it seems the attitude they take to criminality is to fawn upon the criminal and offer them a place within their serried ranks-”</p><p>“Cinder,” Sunset growled.</p><p>Cinder chuckled. “But that is of no matter here except insofar as it leaves Jaune or Pyrrha as our suspects. Or was it both of them?” Sunset must have given the answer away upon her face somehow, for Cinder went on, “It was both of them, wasn’t it? Did they take you one at a time or both together-?”</p><p>“What does it matter?!” Sunset yelled, her ears flattening down atop her head as the words loudly left her mouth. “What does it matter if Jaune or Pyrrha or both of them spoke to me? They opened my eyes.”</p><p>“Or blinded you,” Cinder suggested. “Covered your vision with the blindfold of their spurious morality? Or did they not even have to go so far?”</p><p>“What are you talking about?”</p><p>“Did they threaten you? Intimidate you into turning yourself in?”</p><p>“Even Pyrrha couldn’t intimidate me,” Sunset declared disdainfully.</p><p>“Not with brute force, no,” Cinder allowed. “But did they-?”</p><p>“Drop it,” Sunset snapped.</p><p>Cinder’s eyes narrowed. “Am I getting warm?”</p><p>“You’re getting on my last nerve is what you’re getting,” Sunset growled. “I didn’t need Jaune or Pyrrha to tell me what to do any more than I needed you to tell me to do the things that I confessed to!”</p><p>Cinder was silent for a moment. “What did they say to you?”</p><p>“Were you not listening to me?” Sunset demanded. “Jaune says that you’re a bad influence on me, you know that?”</p><p>Cinder’s face was expressionless. “No,” she said softly. “I didn’t know that.”</p><p>“I’m starting to see what he’s talking about,” Sunset muttered. “What is this, Cinder? I’ve already told you that you’re safe. You have nothing to worry about; I’m not going to name you in any way. So why are you so interested in convincing me that I did the right thing before?”</p><p>“I merely…” Cinder trailed off. “Forgive me,” she said, bowing her head slightly as a few strands of hair fell down around her face. “I… I just wanted to understand your sudden change of mind, that’s all.”</p><p>“It’s not that sudden.”</p><p>“It’s sudden to me.”</p><p>“That’s only because we haven’t spoken in a few days.”</p><p>“Indeed,” Cinder acknowledged. “And that is neither your fault nor mine, but… I should have remembered. Forgive me. I don’t want to fight you.”</p><p>“Nor I with you,” Sunset said at once. She waved one hand as her ears began to rise. “It’s fine; it doesn’t matter; I just don’t want to talk about it.”</p><p>“Then I will not press you on the matter further,” Cinder said. “Save only to say ‘thank you’ for shouldering all the blame upon your own shoulders and leaving none on mine.”</p><p>Sunset inhaled through her nostrils. “Yes, well… spurious morality?”</p><p>Cinder chuckled. “Did it truly not trouble you at all to be lectured by the likes of Pyrrha Nikos?”</p><p>“No,” Sunset said flatly. “No, it did not.”</p><p>“Not at all?” Cinder said. “It bothers you not in the least bit that she, who has lived a life of the most disgusting privilege, who had everything that she ever wanted-”</p><p>“She had none of the things that she truly wanted-”</p><p>“I doubt that very much,” Cinder said, interrupting Sunset just as Sunset had interrupted Cinder. “She is the only child and heir of the Nikos family, the Princess Without a Crown; although they are not the richest family in all of Remnant, there were more than enough money to provide for all her needs and most of her desires, born gifted with no need to train-”</p><p>“Pyrrha has worked damn hard to get where she is today; there’s no way that anyone could be that good on pure-”</p><p>“She will never understand the likes of us, who have had to work and sweat and struggle-”</p><p>“Pyrrha understands me very well; we’ve both striven hard to become the best at what we-”</p><p>“And then she has the gall to-”</p><p>“Will you stop interrupting me while I am interrupting you?” Sunset yelled. “Seriously, Cinder, what is with you today? First, you want to argue about the things I did, now Pyrrha, what’s going on?”</p><p>“What’s the matter?” Cinder asked. “Am I required to like all of your friends?”</p><p>Sunset took a step back. “You… you don’t like my teammates?”</p><p>“Not particularly,” Cinder admitted. “Ruby is… a person, I suppose. Jaune is rather tedious, but inoffensive for all that – although the fact that he thinks I’m a bad influence makes me want to keep my distance from now; I’m clearly making a terrible impression.” She covered her mouth with one hand while she laughed. </p><p>“But Pyrrha… I must confess that, no, I do not like Pyrrha Nikos. Or should I say that I dislike the way that everyone fawns upon her. The Invincible Girl, the Princess Without a Crown, the pride and glory of Mistral reborn. I am as fair as she, and so say I that I’m as skilled in arms and all the arts of war as Pyrrha Nikos is, and yet, because I was not born a Nikos, because no army of dead ancestors go before my name like heralds, I am accounted nothing by comparison. She bestrides the world like a colossus, and we must creep about around her feet and find ourselves dishonourable graves. You know this. You’ve experienced firsthand just what I mean. Does it not trouble you? Does it not prick you with envy?”</p><p>“No,” Sunset lied. “Not at all.” She shook her head. “You are wrong about her. You are so wrong that I don’t even know where to begin except… you’ve fought beside her, against the karkadann. Was that not enough to let you look past all of that which others focus on and see the real Pyrrha?”</p><p>“What real Pyrrha? She’s a nonentity!” Cinder cried.</p><p>Sunset took a step towards her, and then another. “You are precisely wrong,” she said, her voice cold and sharp. “And you will never say that again.”</p><p>Cinder stared down at Sunset. “Will I not?”</p><p>“Not if you wish to be in my presence again,” Sunset declared, her voice acquiring an edge of a growl to it. “I will not hear her spoken of in such a manner.”</p><p>“Because you are a team leader?” Cinder asked. “Or a retainer to the House of Nikos?”</p><p>“Because I am her <em>friend</em>,” Sunset hissed. “And if you wish to be my friend, then you will respect that. You don’t have to like my friends – although I wish you would – but you do have to shut up about the fact that you don’t like them where I can hear you.”</p><p>“I see,” Cinder whispered. “I suppose I thought we’d reached the point where we could be honest with one another.”</p><p>“Honesty is overrated; loyalty is what matters,” Sunset insisted.</p><p>“I understand that now,” Cinder said. The corners of her lips tugged slightly upwards. “So… shall I go?”</p><p>Sunset hesitated for a moment, and then took a step back. “No. Not if we understand each other.”</p><p>“I fear that I don’t understand you quite so well as I thought,” Cinder confessed. “But I understand enough, now.”</p><p>“I’m glad to hear it,” Sunset muttered as she turned away and fished her scroll out of her jacket pocket, using it to open up the garage door. It ground upwards slowly, rattling all the while as the light crept into the dark space until Sunset’s motorcycle stood revealed.</p><p>Sunset grinned, gesturing with both arms to encompass the vehicle. “There you go! Isn’t she beautiful?”</p><p>Cinder’s eyebrows rose. “We’re going into Vale… on that?”</p><p>“I know; it’s going to be great.”</p><p>“Are we going to be alive at the end of it?”</p><p>Sunset looked at her. “Don’t start on this as well.”</p><p>“I’m sorry, am I not allowed to insult your monstrosity of a motorcycle as well as your friends?”</p><p>“Why would you want to insult such a work of art?” Sunset demanded. “Haven’t you got eyes?”</p><p>“I plucked the eyes out of my heart so that I would not be heartbroken,” Cinder drawled.</p><p>Sunset rolled <em>her</em> eyes. “Just get on the bike.” Sunset levitated her black helmet into her hand and pulled it on, crushing her ears a little but leaving a great mass of her hair to fall down her back as she climbed onto the machine. She felt Cinder get on behind her, the leader of Team CLEM’s arms wrapped around her waist, holding her tight. </p><p>“Ready?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“I don’t know; perhaps I ought to write my will first.”</p><p>Sunset huffed as she hit the ignition button. Nobody had any appreciation for her engineering skills.</p><p>Nevertheless, and in spite of all of Cinder’s sneers and fears alike, Sunset’s monument to the beauties of profoundly asymmetrical design carried them both away from Beacon, down the long, winding, and quiet highway that connected the school and the city by road – most traffic used the air; only a few large scale supply runs came by lorry, and the occasional student like Sunset, Yang, or Flash with their own vehicle used this road – until they entered the walls by the King’s Gate. </p><p>Built along the ancient boundary of the city – or at least, the boundary as it had stood at the time of the Great War when the Last King had laid down a new sacred boundary to accommodate the exiles and ex-slaves fleeing into Vale from Mistral and Mantle – the walls, also known as the Red Line, were the best defence that Vale had against a sudden emergence of grimm from out of the wilds. The walls were built high and thick and looked to be made of steel or some such metal, although with how thick they were, Sunset had little doubt that there was stone involved somewhere. Sunset had seen these defences – defences that did not encircle Beacon, which relied solely upon the cliffs and upon the students for its security – but once before, when she and Blake had come this way to enter Vale by road instead of air. They were no less impressive upon the second time around, towering above Sunset and Cinder on the motorcycle as they drove through a gate wide enough to admit six large trucks side by side. </p><p>The gatehouse, for want of a better word – although it put Sunset in mind of something much more antiquated than the chunky, modern building that loomed over them – was even broader than the rest of the walls, with what looked like bomb racks set above it to descend upon any grimm assaulting the gate itself. It was flanked by towers jutting out of the wall, and similar towers were set at intervals all along the wall itself, each one containing three or four heavy weapons pointing outwards in different directions. The towers and gatehouse were the most manned part of the wall; there was little evidence of any Valish troops upon the rest of the battlements, though there was plenty of room for them to press shoulder to shoulder if required. </p><p>“So this is where the tax lien is going,” Cinder observed as Sunset slowed down to pass through the gate.</p><p>“You’re talking about the Green Line?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“I’m talking about the people who are so unfortunate as to live on the other side of this wall,” Cinder affirmed.</p><p>Sunset accelerated again once she got onto the other side of the gate. It was true that the Red Line did not mark the modern boundary of Vale; they had already passed through crowded housing districts on the way: long rows of council terraces, high-rises built to hold as many people as could be packed in like sardines, post-war prefabs from when such things had been fashionable. Vale had grown too large to be constrained within its walls, and the poorest of its population had spilled outwards into districts that were tall and cramped in equal measure. It was no coincidence that traffic had increased as well: there might be houses beyond the Red Line, but there was precious little work, and so, a constant tide of humanity flowed inwards towards the factories and shops and offices that kept all the people living without the wall in work. </p><p>And beyond those residential districts, there was farmland – far more of it than could be contained within the city’s agridistrict – and cottages and a few great estates and even some settlements that were more like villages than part of a great city. All of them were supposedly protected under the aegis of the Green Line, but – as Yang had confirmed for them all as a result of her mission – the Green Line was unfinished, left permanently half-completed, a victim of perpetual budgetary wrangles in the Council, and what work had recently begun upon it was a little late, as far as Sunset and doubtless many others were concerned. </p><p>Rainbow Dash said that Atlesian CBs had begun working on the Green Line alongside the Valish engineers to speed it up. No doubt, somebody somewhere was annoyed about that, but Sunset was equally sure that the people actually living out past the Red Line thought it was a good idea. </p><p>Sunset kept on driving, passing through the heart of Vale now, moving sometimes down broad highways and sometimes down narrow sidestreets, weaving between flashy sports cars in garish red and yellow and beat up old family SUVs in subdued greys and blues. Cinder clung to her as Sunset guided them past neon-lit department stores and badly-lit mom and pop shops, past offices where workers burned the midnight oil and bars where they burned the candle at both ends; they drove under pools of streetlight and through alleyways of complete darkness until she came to a stop not far from Winchester Park, where she dismounted off her bike and chained it to a lamppost.</p><p>The streets nearby were pretty full of pedestrian traffic, crowds of people heading down the pavements towards the park, so hopefully, the sheer number of eyes would prevent anybody from stealing her motorcycle. </p><p>Sunset spotted a van parked across the street selling burgers and chips. “Hungry?” she asked Cinder, gesturing towards the van. </p><p>“Not particularly,” Cinder murmured.</p><p>“Really? I’m offering to pay.”</p><p>Cinder rolled her eyes. “You must stop assuming that my reluctance to consume recklessly is the result of parsimony.”</p><p>“I’ll believe that when I actually see you get out your lien and pay for something.”</p><p>“How can I, when you’re always offering to pay?” Cinder asked.</p><p>That was a better point than Sunset had expected. “I… look, do you want anything?”</p><p>“No, I really don’t,” Cinder insisted. “But, lest you think that I’m just a cheapskate, why don’t you get whatever it is you want on me.”</p><p>“I can’t do that,” Sunset declared.</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>“Because I can’t let you pay for me when you’re not having anything; it’s ridiculous.”</p><p>Cinder sighed. “How about I share something with you, will that satisfy?”</p><p>It did satisfy, as a point of fact; they got some chips and mayo – Pyrrha would have a fit – in a polystyrene box from which they nibbled, fastidiously in Cinder’s case; she pecked like a bird trying to get a worm out of the ground as they walked down the street. </p><p>“Are you looking forward to this?” Cinder asked.</p><p>Sunset swallowed the chip that she’d just finished chewing. “Definitely, you?”</p><p>“Oh, absolutely,” Cinder agreed. “This is my favourite play.”</p><p>“You know it?”</p><p>Cinder nodded eagerly. “It’s incredible,” she pronounced, her fiery eyes a-gleam. “A tale of kings and plots and bloody murders!” she grinned and practically skipped a step as she walked in front of Sunset and turned to face her. “I can’t imagine the kind of heart that would not thrill to such a thing. I’m not sure that I want to.”</p><p>Sunset grinned. “Have you seen it before?”</p><p>“Once.”</p><p>“Only once, and you love it so much?”</p><p>“I’ve read the text more times than I care to recall,” Cinder said. “I know that, as a good Mistralian, I should revere our own heroic epics best of all, but… something about this play, this tale of ambition, it… it’s so much grander. You’ll see when we get inside, I promise.”</p><p>They were almost at the park now, and the wrought-iron archway was covered by a banner proclaiming ‘Shakst’spur in the Park’; green balloons were tied by string to the iron above the banner, tugging on their restraints as they sought to float away. Already, Sunset could see the stage ahead, a wooden scaffold raised above the park, a circular stage with curtain awnings marking off the point beyond which the audience could not go. A paper backdrop, painted to resemble an old-fashioned castle, stood upon the rear edge of the stage itself, with gaps for entrances and exits, and upon the wooden boards sat nothing but a throne, or what passed for such; it looked like little more than a padded chair. But then, that was the point of theatre, wasn’t it? You had to use your imagination to turn that paper backdrop to a castle wall, that padded chair into a throne, the actors in their tawdry costumes into kings and queens. </p><p>The crowds moving down the street were squeezing into huddled masses heading towards the gate, even as a group of stewards in hi-vis jackets worked to separate them out again, to check their tickets or sell tickets to those that had none, while on the other side of the gate, Sunset could see more stewards selling programmes and transparent rain ponchos. </p><p>It was growing dark now, the sun receding and the moon coming into view, the pilot lights of the Atlesian cruisers blinking amongst the stars that were slowly showing their light above, but the very fact that she could see the stars and cruiser lights told Sunset that it was a clear evening, with little chance of rain and no need for a poncho. She and Cinder – Sunset had already bought their tickets; they were on her scroll – paused a little way before the gate to finish off at least a few more of their chips, and as they stopped, Sunset’s attention was drawn by the sound of a voice she recognised as Skystar Aris.</p><p>“No, there isn’t anything else going on between us. I found out, and I dumped him; that’s all there is to it.”</p><p>“Do you really expect us to believe that you didn’t know? Is that what you expect Vale to believe?”</p><p>“It’s the truth!” Skystar insisted, her voice cracking.</p><p>“You were his girlfriend; how could you not know?”</p><p>“Is this break-up just staged to distance your mother from the crisis?”</p><p>“This has nothing to do with my mother,” Skystar cried. “Please, will you just leave me alone?”</p><p>But they didn’t leave her alone. Skystar stood a little way off, pressed against the iron fence of the park, backed against it, at bay like a doe run to the cliff-edge by the hounds of the hunters. And just like hounds, the press pack swarmed around her, barking questions as the cameras snarled their flashes into her face. </p><p>Nobody moved to help her. Nobody did anything. The crowds passed by as if she did not exist, deaf to her need, blind to her peril. </p><p>They didn’t care. It wasn’t their problem.</p><p>Skystar turned this way and that, seeking a way out that did not exist; her eyes were wide and her mouth was open, her face framed in a look of fearful distress. She was wearing a sparkling blue cocktail dress that left her arms exposed from the shoulders down; the moonlight shone upon her fair skin as she twisted and writhed in her distress; Sunset was almost surprised that the words they hurled at her had left no bruises on her arms. </p><p>
  <em>This is all my fault. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>This isn’t what I wanted.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It wasn’t what I intended… but only because I didn’t think so far ahead. </em>
</p><p>Sunset’s squirming guilt was supplemented by the fires of anger; a thunderous scowl settled upon her brow as she strode over, throwing her chips into the trash as she shoved her way through the apathetic crowd who couldn’t care less. Maybe they thought it wasn’t their problem. Well, maybe Sunset would decide that it wasn’t <em>her</em> problem the next time some grimm got through the wall, and how would they like that? </p><p>“Leave her alone!” Sunset snapped, bulling her way through the press pack, shoving reporters and photographers alike aside to plant herself foursquare between them and Skystar. To think that she had cooperated with these animals, that she had fed them, unleashed them.</p><p>
  <em>I have been a fool and a villain both.</em>
</p><p>“Leave her alone!” she shouted, turning her self-disgust into outward facing anger as she grabbed the camera out of someone’s hand and crushed the lens in her aura-strengthened grip. “Get lost, the lot of you! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!”</p><p>“Who are you?” one of them demanded.</p><p>“Yeah, who do you think you are?”</p><p>Sunset raised her hand, a faint green glow surrounded her palm as she used a touch of telekinesis to shove – not throw; she didn’t want to get in trouble for breaking anyone’s back – the offending parasite who had spoken backwards a dozen feet, his shoes slipping and sliding on the pavement, people scattering to get out of his way as he was born backwards into the road. He yelped as he dashed to the other side of the street to avoid a passing taxi. </p><p>“I’m Sunset Shimmer,” Sunset declared, “and I’ve asked you nicely to clear out. Who wants me to ask them rudely next?”</p><p>They scattered, turning away, some of them making more haste than others, dispersing in their different directions but all of them heading off out of sight. </p><p>Cinder began to applaud ironically, a smirk set upon her face. </p><p>“Th-thank you,” Skystar whispered. As Sunset turned to look at her, she saw that the Amity Princess had been crying; she could see the lines on her cheeks where her mascara had run. Her hair was dishevelled, and the sparkling silver diadem set in it was askew. “I hoped that tonight would be about the f-festival, but… but ever since Cardy- since Cardin and I… since everyone found out those things, it… it’s all that they want to ask me about.”</p><p>Sunset winced, pricked as with daggers. “Is it… always this bad?”</p><p>“Not always,” Skystar whimpered. “But they knew I’d be here. M-mother said that maybe I should give up being Amity Princess, but I… I don’t want to let Vale down, you know? I didn’t expect there’d be so many. I didn’t know what to do, and… thank you, Sunset.” She threw her arms around Sunset’s neck; her trembling form seemed light and frail as she clung to the huntress as though, if she let go, she would be swept away in an instant by a great tide of misfortunes.</p><p>Sunset froze. She didn’t deserve Skystar’s gratitude, not by a long shot, not when she was responsible for all of her sorrows. </p><p>She screwed her eyes tight shut. “I’m sorry, Skystar.”</p><p>“'Sorry'?” Skystar repeated. “Sunset, what do you have to be-”</p><p>“It was me,” Sunset said. “I heard Cardin in the laundry room with Blake, and I recorded him, and I leaked it, and I should have-”</p><p>“What?” Skystar asked, her voice soft as she spoke practically into Sunset’s ear. “What should you have done?”</p><p>Sunset hesitated. “Kept it to myself?”</p><p>“So that I could go on living a lie?” Skystar asked. “So that I could go on thinking that I knew who Cardin was, thinking that he was thinking that he was so much better than he was, thinking that he was someone I could… I know that I must seem like a mess right now, but… but I’m glad to know the truth. Really.”</p><p>Sunset slowly placed her arms around Skystar. “Did… did you love him?”</p><p>“No,” Skystar said. “I loved the man I thought he was, but that man… that man never existed at all. He was just… a shadow of a thought.”</p><p>Sunset held her close. “It gets easier,” she lied.</p><p>“I hope so,” Skystar replied. “Sunset?”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“Next time, maybe tell me before you tell the press, okay?”</p><p>Sunset snorted. “Deal.”</p><p>Skystar released Sunset, who took a step or two back to give her some room. Skystar reached into the purse that dangled from her arm, pulling out a compact which she flipped open to examine herself. “Oh dear,” she murmured. She looked up at Sunset, and then at Cinder. “What are you two doing here? Is it for the play?” When Cinder nodded, Skystar winced. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but… I’m sorry to disappoint everybody, but I’m just not sure how we can go on.”</p><p>“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?” Cinder asked.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Skystar said. “But the actress playing Richard broke her leg in a cycling accident a couple of days ago, and tonight, I’ve just heard that the understudy is in hospital with food poisoning. There’s no time to rehearse anybody else, and we can’t put on <em>Richard the Second</em> without a Richard.”</p><p>“It does seem like a bit of a barrier,” Sunset admitted.</p><p>“Not necessarily,” Cinder murmured, folding her arms across her chest. She glanced at the stage, with its paper backdrop and its stuffed chair throne. “I’ll do it.”</p><p>“Excuse me?” Skystar asked.</p><p>“I’ll play Richard,” Cinder declared. “I know every line, every word by heart.”</p><p>“Seriously?” Sunset demanded. “You… you’re serious?”</p><p>“Deadly serious,” Cinder said. “The show must go on, after all, and I… I’ve always wanted to be on stage.”</p><p>“You mean you’ve never acted before?” Skystar asked.</p><p>Cinder chuckled. “I’ve never been on stage before; I’ve been acting half my life.”</p><p>Skystar stared at her. “Who are you?”</p><p>“Cinder Fall, leader of Team Clementine of Haven Academy.”</p><p>“A huntress?” Skystar said. “Well… I suppose it <em>is</em> the Vytal Festival. Are you sure you can do it? It will only be for tonight; tomorrow, I’ll be able to find someone else.”</p><p>“One night only,” Cinder murmured. “Yes, I can do it.”</p><p>“Are you sure?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“Trust me, Sunset,” Cinder urged. “I’ll blow you away.”</p><p>“Alright,” Skystar said. “Go backstage and get changed.”</p><p>Cinder bowed extravagantly, “Right away,” she purred, and with a very satisfied smile upon her face, she headed towards the gate.</p><p>Skystar was quiet for a moment. “Is she going to be able to manage?”</p><p>“I hope so,” Sunset murmured in reply.</p><p>Skystar nodded, although what exactly she was nodding at, Sunset was unsure of. “Do you… do you really regret what you did?”</p><p>Sunset looked down at the pavement. “I regret breaking your heart.”</p><p>“Cardin did that, when he lied to me,” Skystar said. “You did the right thing.”</p><p>“The right thing has made you hounded.”</p><p>“I know, but… it’s still better knowing,” Skystar whispered. “Gods, can you imagine if I’d married him, without knowing how he really felt?”</p><p>“That… that would have been… I see your point,” Sunset admitted. Imagine being trapped in marriage with someone who was evil, without realising it; imagine realising that the person you had bound your life to had hidden the depths of their wickedness and depravity from you in order to bind you to them. She couldn’t imagine what that must feel like, but she doubted that there could be any worse feeling in the world. </p><p>Sunset stayed with her while she cleaned herself up, reapplied her eyeshadow, straightened the crown in her hair, and as she watched Skystar do all this, she was reminded that she had decided – in the privacy of her own mind at least – that she would try and make amends for what she’d done by helping Cardin out.</p><p>And, with Skystar right in front of her and no one else around, there was not likely to be much better time than now. </p><p>Even though it still was not a very good time. </p><p>Sunset reached up and scratched the back of her neck with one hand. “You know… Skystar… Cardin, he… he’s really broken up about… about the fact that you broke up.”</p><p>The fact that Skystar didn’t say ‘good’ was perhaps the only saving grace of the situation. She said, in a clipped tone, “I’d rather not talk about Cardin right now, if that’s all the same to you.”</p><p>“Sorry,” Sunset murmured. “I just… I don’t think that he’s as bad as the audio makes him sound.”</p><p>Skystar looked at her. “Did he say those things?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Then he’s as bad as it sounds,” Skystar replied, bending down to pry a pebble that had stuck in her high-heeled shoes. </p><p>Sunset frowned. “Is there… is there no way that you’d consider giving him another chance?”</p><p>Skystar looked up. “Sunset!” she cried. “How can you say that? How can you ask me that? You’re the one who released the audio!”</p><p>“I know, and I regret it,” Sunset declared. “I <em>really</em> regret it; I regret the fact that I’ve made you… this, and I regret the fact that I’ve turned Cardin into a hollow shell of a man. I… I lied, before; it doesn’t get any easier. It’s been over two years since my boyfriend broke up with me, and I’m still not over it.”</p><p>Skystar straightened up. “That’s… not very comforting.”</p><p>“You want the truth? That’s the truth,” Sunset said. “It hurts every day, and it doesn’t stop.”</p><p>Skystar reached out and awkwardly patted Sunset on the shoulder. “Did you love him?”</p><p>“I love him; I hate him,” Sunset declared. “I want him back; I want him to suffer. I blame him; I blame myself. Every time I think about Pyrrha and Jaune, I get so jealous that she’s got it right, that she’s happy while I… while I’m alone. That’s when I don’t suspect that Jaune is going to hurt her because he’s a guy and a guy hurt me, and believe me, I understand exactly how this sounds-”</p><p>“Do you?” Skystar asked.</p><p>“Pathetic?” Sunset guessed.</p><p>“And just a little scary, too.”</p><p>Sunset snorted. “Yeah, that sounds about right,” she admitted. “The point is… the point is I don’t… I don’t want to see you or Cardin end up the same way, especially not since this is all my fault.”</p><p>“His fault,” Skystar insisted. “Not yours. Why did you break up?”</p><p>Sunset was silent for a moment. “Because I was a faunus.”</p><p>Skystar let out a little muffled gasp. “How can you love a man who could say something like that?”</p><p>Sunset shoved her hands into her pockets. “Because sometimes, I don’t know if I believe him or not. Sometimes… when I think about the way that he… that he didn’t have any problems with other faunus, I wonder… if there wasn’t something more I could have done to keep him.”</p><p>“I… I see,” Skystar whispered. “I mean, I don’t, but… I don’t really know what to say.”</p><p>“You don’t have to say anything about me,” Sunset told her. “But you could say that you’ll give Cardin another shot.”</p><p>Skystar shook her head. “I can’t.”</p><p>“Because you believe him?”</p><p>“Because either he was lying to me, or he was lying to everyone up at Beacon,” Skystar declared. “And I don’t know how I’m supposed to trust someone who can lie so easily about who they are. I don’t know how I’m supposed to know that the man I… the man I knew or thought I knew is the real Cardin and not the one on that recording. Please, Sunset, can we not talk about this any more?”</p><p>“No,” Sunset agreed, because… because it was fair enough, really, wasn’t it? “No, okay, I won’t say anything more about it.”</p><p>
  <em>I’ll have to think of a way that Cardin can prove to you which side of him is real and which isn’t.</em>
</p><p>“Thank you,” Skystar whispered. “I think… I think I’m ready now.”</p><p>Sunset stayed by Skystar’s side still as they made their way through the wrought iron gate – the stewards didn’t even ask to see Sunset’s ticket – and made their way through the crowd gathering in front of the stage. Sunset lingered almost – but not quite – backstage as Skystar went back to check that everything was ready. </p><p>Sunset, finding herself alone, thrust her hands into her pockets. She was glad that Cinder’s dream was coming true, don’t get her wrong, but she would have liked to have had someone to be here with. She seemed to be the only person who was here by themselves. </p><p>Her stomach growled a little, and Sunset regretted that she had thrown away her chips. </p><p>Fortunately, there were some nice old ladies moving amongst the crowd selling concessions, so Sunset brought an apple and a little plastic tub of chocolate-coated raisins, the latter of which she put in her pocket for later while she ate the crunchy apple now, biting into the juicy flesh as she waited. </p><p>From somewhere presumably backstage, a string quartet – or however many instruments; Sunset couldn’t actually see to count – was playing ambient music. Someone casually dressed came out onto the stage and lit the candles burning in tall candlesticks around the stage’s edge, set out of reach of the audience. As the night darkened, those candles became the main source of consistent light.</p><p>Chatter filled the park as the crowd waited. </p><p>Eventually, the music stilled, and Skystar emerged; from the smile on her face, one would never have guessed that she had been a mess not too long ago. </p><p>
  <em>Maybe she should have played Richard.</em>
</p><p>Skystar waved enthusiastically as she walked to the front of the stage, her heels tapping upon the wooden boards. “Good evening, everyone! Hello, and to anyone visiting from the other kingdoms, welcome to Vale. My name is Skystar Aris, and as the Amity Princess, I thought it would be great if we could use this, the 40<sup>th</sup> Vytal Festival, to celebrate our Valish culture and share it with the rest of Remnant. And so here we are, Shakst’spur in the Park! This is how they used to do theatre in the olden days! They didn’t have seats, they didn’t have lights, they didn’t even have a ceiling. Thankfully, it isn’t raining.” She giggled a little. “Now, we almost didn’t have a show for you tonight, because unfortunately, both the actresses who could have played Richard have suffered unfortunate accidents. Luckily, we have secured a last-minute replacement. Her name is Cinder Fall; she’s a huntress, and she’s making her debut tonight, so please go easy on her. She’s been very kind just to show up at all. But with that said, I really hope that you enjoy the play; everyone has worked really hard on it; this… it’s Shakst’spur, what more can I say? And so, without further ado, I present, this Vytal Festival, Richard the Second!” As the crowd began to applaud, Skystar hopped down off the stage and made her way through the crowd to stand by Sunset. </p><p>“You don’t mind if I stay with you, do you?” Skystar asked, speaking into Sunset’s ear to be heard over the applause. “It’s just that… you make me feel safe.”</p><p>Sunset snorted. “Any huntress could do that.”</p><p>“Not every huntress would care.”</p><p>Sunset frowned a little. “Maybe not,” she admitted. “But all the good ones would.” </p><p>“And they wouldn’t all have helped me either.”</p><p><em>The good ones… they would have found a better way.</em> “I hope I didn’t cause you more trouble.”</p><p>“I’m not sure that’s possible,” Skystar replied. “And I’ll make sure that you don’t get in any trouble either, I promise.”</p><p>Sunset said nothing more, for Cinder had just walked on stage. </p><p>She was at once completely recognisable and yet at the same time utterly unrecognisable. She walked with a stoop and one shoulder higher than the other. Her left arm hung limp and useless by her side. She was dressed all in black, with a heavy gold – or gold-looking – chain around her neck. </p><p>And yet, at the same time, she was completely Cinder Fall. The way she strutted onto the stage, the way that her eyes burned, the way the way the smirk played upon her lips. The way that her eyes seemed to seek out Sunset as she swept her gaze across the audience and lingered there a moment longer than necessary. </p><p>She walked forwards until she was standing centre stage, illuminated by the candles burning before her. </p><p>She showed no fear of the audience, though it was much larger than any crowd that had watched her fight in combat class. </p><p>
  <em>At least we know she won’t freeze up in the Amity Coliseum.</em>
</p><p>Cinder held her peace a moment. Then she began to speak. Her voice was crisp and firm and clear as a bell. </p><p>“Now is the work of many years complete,” she said, “The sun shines now on a united Vale. And all the rains that fell upon our house illumine now this many-coloured Arc. Now do the sovereign powers of heaven throw o’er us their Mantle of protection,” And as she said so, Cinder gestured upwards with one hand, grinning as she indicated the Atlesian fleet that hung in the skies above, throwing its protection over Vale. “While we hang up our bruised arms, or else for show and sport alone make use of them,” Cinder continued. “Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings are, our dreadful marches to delightful measures. And those with whom we warred on Tuesday last, this Friday morn we take into the embrace of our arms and share with them a cup of wine, and oaths of friendship and dear brotherhood.” </p><p>Cinder scoffed in disdain. “Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his furious brow, and ‘stead of mounting on his steed to lead a host of fearful gentlemen in arms, he capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber to the lascivious plucking of…” Cinder allowed the dirty-minded members of the audience a moment to dwell upon what he might be plucking in a lady’s chamber, “...a lyre.” She chuckled. “But I, in this weak piping time of peace, have no delight to pass away the time.” Cinder fell silent for a moment, sweeping her eyes across the audience and once more alighting upon Sunset. She looked down upon her, her smouldering gaze affixed upon the huntress in the crowd, meanwhile the crowd was silent. Cinder held them spellbound, they hung upon her next word. </p><p>They waited. She kept them waiting. </p><p>Cinder turned, her cloak sweeping about her as she stalked towards the far edge of the stage. Her voice became less firm, less certain; the confidence drained out of her. “Love forswore me in my mother’s dying-bed,” she said. “And, that she loved me not and willed it so I should not deal in love forevermore, she did corrupt frail nature with some bribe, that I be rudely stamped and want love’s majesty. I am deformed, like to an ursa surfeited with uneven spikes of sharp, protruding bone. I am not made to court an amorous looking-glass; dogs bark at me as I halt by them. Am I to make my heaven in a lady’s lap, and deck my body in gay ornaments?” She turned to Sunset once again, a wry smile upon her face. “Shall I witch sweet ladies with my words and looks? Hah! Say rather I should spy my shadow in the sun, and descant on mine own deformity.”</p><p>She sighed, and bowed her head a moment, and closed her eyes. Her words came slowly, each one imbued with power. “Then, since the earth affords no joy to me, I’ll make my heaven to dream upon the crown, and while I live I’ll count this world a <em>hell</em> until that crown, gilded and glorious, rests firm and undisputed on my brow. </p><p>“And yet I know not how to get the crown. For many lives stand between me and possession and I am like one who stands upon a cliff and spies some far off place where I would stand, and wish my feet could travel swift as thought without regard for all that lies between. </p><p>“A thorny wood lies between me and the crown, and as I rend the thorns that I may pass so I am rent by the thorns of frustrated ambition pricking at my skin, tormenting me with mine own failure to get the crown. Yet will I free myself from this torment or cleave my way through with a bloody axe!” Cinder shouted, stamping her feet as she strode forward so loudly, they were like iron-shod horses’ hooves. “Plots have I laid, by libels, false reports, and fashioned enmities, to set old friends in deadly hate against the other, to make old foes reach for their swords once more, to fill these fair well-spoken days with oaths of wrath. For as I hate the idle pleasures of these days I am determined to prove a villain.” She laughed. “And be the death and downfall of these things I hate. </p><p>“As I am subtle, false and treacherous, this peace in Vale will not for long endure and as the horrid flames of war rise up once more,” – she held out her hand above the candle flame, pressing her palm closer and closer to the fire and taking no hurt from it. Easily done with aura, of course, but it made the audience ooh and aah appreciatively all the same – “I’ll walk through fire and blood to claim the crown.” Once more, she paused; once more, she looked at Sunset; now, she walked towards her. “I shall smile,” she said, and smiled to prove it, “and murder while I smile, and cry content to that which grieves my heart. I’ll devour more warriors than a beowolf can. I will transform more men than e’er the God of Faunus did, and unlike him I’ll change men back to beasts and set them snarling red in tooth and claw to tear the throats out of my enemies! I will blind all these northern gallants, and laugh to watch them stumbling and fumbling, and in their blindness turn their blades ‘gainst one another and their oathsworn friends. I’ll shoot an arrow through the heart of my dear enemy, and ‘fore I shoot I’ll ask them ‘do you mock me now? Do you rate me for my deformity? Do you still call me villain, dog, accursed cur, still spurn me with your foot and drive me off?’” Cinder had begun to shout, but now, she ceased and calmed her voice once more. “Shall I do this, and yet not get a crown? Fie! Though it be twice as high I’ll pluck it down!” She mimed plucking with one hand. </p><p>And the crowd erupted in applause. It rolled like tidal waves onto the stage and Cinder. It broke upon her like a storm. It fell upon her like the rain. </p><p>And Cinder bowed, and spread out her arms wide on either side, and looked at Sunset.</p><p>“That was… incredible!” Skystar gasped, as she too clapped her hands together.</p><p>Sunset, too, applauded. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it was.” It had been a concerted performance: vengeful, angry, intelligent, ambitious, word perfect, devoid of any hesitation save by intent. </p><p>She was, indeed, a tremendous actor.</p><p>And this was the role she had been born to play.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0066"><h2>66. Baited Lure</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sunset and company embark on their assignment in the Emerald Forest</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Baited Lure</p><p> </p><p>"Good morning, students!" Professor Port boomed jovially as the freshman class assembled in front of the docking pads. "I hope that you're all well-rested and ready for an exciting practical test!" He chuckled. "As you're all aware, this practical exercise will see you all returning to the Emerald Forest; however, what you will not yet be aware of is the special circumstances governing this exercise."</p><p>Sunset shifted her weight from one foot to another. She had guessed that there would be some kind of twist in the tale here; otherwise, the premise of returning to the Emerald Forest yet again for another grimm hunt would have been almost banal; after all, they'd already shown that they could handle that last semester. Unfortunately, knowing that there was a twist coming hadn't helped Sunset work out what the twist was, and as she looked around the faces of her fellow students – her own teammates and others – it didn't seem like anyone had much idea of what was coming next.</p><p>Professor Port went on. "You will be inserted into the forest in waves via these Bullheads here," he said, gesturing to the three Bullheads waiting on the docking pads behind him. "Each wave will consist of eight students in four pairs, and each pair will be assigned a route to follow from their starting position. Your route can be followed via your scrolls or by markers placed in the forest by myself and Miss Schnee on Friday. Your objective is not to hunt grimm, although you should be prepared to kill any creature that crosses your path." He chuckled again. "Your objective is to reach the end of your designated route, collect a relic, and then return to the starting position for pick-up."</p><p>Yang raised her hand.</p><p>"Yes, Miss Xiao Long?"</p><p>"This doesn't sound much different from Initiation, Professor," Yang pointed out.</p><p>"Indeed not, Miss Xiao Long, but only because you haven't heard the good part yet," Professor Port declared. "I told you that each wave would consist of four pairs of students; you may have assumed that I meant partner pairs; however, in actual fact, the pairs in which you must fight your way through the forest have been chosen by me, completely at random."</p><p>Whispers and murmurings began to break out amongst the gathered students. Some people gasped in shock or alarm. Jaune turned a little paler than usual at the prospect, and Pyrrha's eyes widened slightly in distress, although doubtless for slightly different reasons.</p><p>Rainbow raised her hand, but didn't wait to be acknowledged before she demanded, "Why, Professor? Why are our teams getting split up?"</p><p>"Yeah," Nora agreed. "What's the point of training to fight in teams if when it comes time to actually fight, we have to do it alongside people we don't know and don't know if we can trust?"</p><p>"Do you imagine that in the course of your careers as huntsmen and huntresses, you will have the good fortune to only fight alongside those whom you know and trust?" The voice of Professor Ozpin, coming from behind the crowd of students, caused many to turn around to see him there, holding a scroll lightly in one hand and a steaming mug in the other. "Forgive me, Peter, but I thought I might come and observe the exercise, if it's not too much trouble."</p><p>"Not at all, Oz," Professor Port said. "I'm sure the students will be motivated to even greater feats under your watchful eye."</p><p>Professor Ozpin chuckled. "Your flattery will be the death of me," he murmured as he began to walk forwards. The students parted for him, clearing out of his way and opening up a path for him through their mass until he stood beside Professor Port. "Now," he added, "I do believe that you have already been set some work by Doctor Oobleck along similar lines as this."</p><p>"Yes, Professor," Pyrrha said. "But that was academic work; this-"</p><p>"Is real work, Miss Nikos, real huntsman work," Professor Ozpin interrupted. "Not to diminish the importance of what you learn in the classroom, of course. But how better to see if you can work together with others from outside your team, perhaps even outside your academy, than by making you work together in the field? Cooperation," he declared, "is the highest purpose of the Vytal Festival. Do not forget that."</p><p>Clearly, this was no mere fancy of Professor Port, no mere notion that had come to him in the middle of the night; this was, if not an official school policy, then certainly something that the school – represented by no less a person than its headmaster – was smiling on. Further objections, then, were unlikely to alter the state of affairs. Sunset did still have one question, however, and she raised her hand.</p><p>"Yes, Miss Shimmer?" Professor Port acknowledged.</p><p>"What happens if we don't come across any grimm, Professor?" Sunset asked. They had been told that the purpose was not to hunt, but it wouldn't be much of a Grimm Studies exercise if they got away without hunting, would it?</p><p>Professor Port's voice was rich with amusement. "I don't think that's likely, Miss Shimmer; in fact, I’m confident that you’ll all find plenty of grimm to keep you all on your toes." He laughed again.</p><p>"Oh great," Jaune murmured.</p><p>Pyrrha put one hand on his shoulder. "You'll be fine," she assured him.</p><p>"Maybe," Jaune whispered. "If I get a partner who can pick up my slack."</p><p>"Don't underestimate yourself," Pyrrha urged. "You've improved so much already."</p><p>Jaune glanced at her. "It's just… whenever we've gone into battle… I always knew that you were there to… you know."</p><p>Pyrrha frowned, even as the morning light glinted off the circlet on her brow. She hesitated for a moment, then swiftly took off her belt. "Sunset, would you mind holding this for me for a minute?"</p><p>"Um, yeah, sure," Sunset said, as Pyrrha thrust the belt into her hands. Sunset gripped it, feeling the weight of Pyrrha's various pouches and the metal disk that bore her crest pulling downwards towards the ground.</p><p>Pyrrha's hands and fingers moved quickly and deftly as she untied the long scarlet sash from round her waist.</p><p>"Pyrrha?" Jaune asked. "What are you doing?"</p><p>Pyrrha said nothing, but a slight smile tugged upon the corners of her mouth as she tied her sash around Jaune's waist in turn. "Wear this," she said, "and keep me close. That way, even though we both have other partners, I'll still be with you."</p><p>Ruby cooed appreciatively, and Sunset found a smile spreading across her face.</p><p>Jaune looked down at the long sash falling towards his feet, but not quite reaching them because he was taller than Pyrrha. "Pyrrha… I can't take this-"</p><p>"Yes," Pyrrha interrupted him, "you can. You can give it back when the exercise is over, but until then, you <em>can</em> wear it." She took his hands in her own. "For me."</p><p>Jaune looked into her eyes. "Pyrrha-"</p><p>"Now kiss!" Nora cried, causing laughter amidst the students who had watched this little exchange. Pyrrha and Jaune both flushed at the reminder that, yes, they were surrounded by their fellow students, and both drew back half a step and let go of one another's hands.</p><p>They didn't need to be embarrassed, in Sunset's opinion; people were watching, but the smiles upon their faces were fond, not mocking; everyone who cared at all seemed to have found the whole thing as sweet as Ruby and Sunset.</p><p>Professor Port cleared his throat. "Now, when I announce the names of the first four pairs of students, please move towards the Bullhead on my right. The first pair in the first wave will be Arslan Altan and Sunset Shimmer; you will be heading north from the landing zone."</p><p>"Good luck," Pyrrha said as Sunset walked towards the Bullhead. Arslan joined her from the other side of the group of students. They both nodded to one another, but said nothing as they walked past Professors Port and Ozpin onto the docking pad and leapt up onto the waiting Bullhead.</p><p>"So," Sunset said.</p><p>"So," Arslan replied.</p><p>They stared at each other for a moment, their faces giving nothing away.</p><p>Sunset's tail twitched.</p><p>"Could have been worse," they both said at the same time.</p><p>Arslan grinned. "I knew I liked you," she declared.</p><p>"Jaune Arc and Flash Sentry," Professor Port announced. "Please head east from the landing zone."</p><p><em>Alphabetical order, sort of," </em>Sunset thought as she and Arslan waited for Jaune and Flash to join them. "Hey, Jaune, welcome aboard," she said. "Flash."</p><p>Flash sighed. "Hey, Sunset."</p><p>"Is everything okay?" Arslan asked.</p><p>"Don't ask," Flash said.</p><p>Jaune frowned.</p><p>"Hey," Sunset said to Jaune. "It's going to be okay; you'll be fine."</p><p>"Missing P-money already, huh?" Arslan asked.</p><p>"Yeah," Jaune admitted. "Yeah, I guess so."</p><p>"That's rough," Arslan said. "Sweet of her to give you that sash, though; she's worn one of those ever since I've known her."</p><p>"The same one?" Sunset asked.</p><p>"Nah, she would have tripped over it when we first met; the one she wore then was a lot shorter," Arslan explained. "She scaled up the length once she hit her growth spurt."</p><p>Jaune clutched the trailing tail of the sash within his hand and said nothing.</p><p>"She's been teaching you, if I hear right," Arslan observed.</p><p>"What do you hear?" Sunset demanded.</p><p>Arslan shrugged. "Mostly incredulity," she admitted. "And I admit that you don't exactly seem like first-rate boyfriend material-"</p><p>"Thanks," Jaune muttered.</p><p>"But are you going to cheat on her?"</p><p>"No!" Jaune cried. "Why would you-?"</p><p>"Do you gamble?"</p><p>"No," Jaune said, more quietly and with less outrage in his voice.</p><p>"Do you drink?"</p><p>"No."</p><p>"Then Pyrrha's no less of a role model for getting involved with you, so what's the problem?" Arslan asked. "Anyway, my point is, have some faith in your teacher, even if you've got none in yourself. 'Cause take it from me, she knows what she's doing."</p><p>"We don't need to take it from you; we've seen it for ourselves," Sunset declared.</p><p>"But thanks anyway," Jaune added.</p><p>"Sage Ayana and Twilight Sparkle, you will head south from the landing zone."</p><p><em>I can imagine how Rainbow feels about this,</em> Sunset thought.</p><p>Sage – he was one of Sun's teammates, but that was about the extent of Sunset's knowledge of him – was a big man, with dark skin and green hair growing like grass atop his head. He was swathed in a long white coat, and he had a sword almost as big as he was slung across his back. He had to duck his head a little to avoid banging it on the Bullhead ceiling. "Morning," he said, his voice gruff and deep.</p><p>"Hey guys," Twilight said, as she climbed in after him. "Sunset, Jaune, Flash."</p><p>"Hey, Twilight," Flash greeted.</p><p>"Hey," Jaune said. "How are you feeling?"</p><p>"How am <em>I</em> feeling?" Twilight repeated. "You're asking me how I'm doing?"</p><p>Jaune nodded. "Because… well, trust me, I get it."</p><p>Twilight let out a nervous laugh. "Then… it doesn't really need saying, does it?"</p><p>Sunset bit her lip. She was pretty tempted to ask Sage if he wouldn't mind swapping partners, but she wasn't sure if that would be allowed. Probably not.</p><p>
  <em>It's just an exercise, she'll be fine. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I hope she'll be fine.</em>
</p><p>"Blake Belladonna and Ruby Rose, you should head west from the drop point," Professor Port declared.</p><p>Sunset chuckled. "Poor Pyrrha; I wonder if she's feeling left out?"</p><p>"She might be feeling a little lonely," Jaune replied.</p><p>"Hey guys," Ruby said cheerfully as she leapt aboard. "You okay, Twilight?"<br/>"I'm fine, thank you," Twilight said, only moderately convincingly.</p><p>"Why does everyone keep asking her that?" Sage asked.</p><p>Nobody answered him; instead, as Blake jumped up into the belly of the airship, she said, "Quite a coincidence, so many of us ending up in the first wave, huh?"</p><p>"A positive one," Sunset replied.</p><p>Blake didn’t meet Sunset’s eyes. Sunset was uncomfortably reminded of the fact that this was the first time they had spoken since Sunset had… betrayed her trust. “Mhmm,” Blake murmured.</p><p>"Remember your cardinal directions, group one!" Professor Port urged. "And good luck!"</p><p>The engines on the wings outside tilted, shifting from pointing backwards behind the airship to pointing downwards at the docking pad beneath them. Everyone grabbed hold of one of the straps that hung from the ceiling as the airship lifted off, rising off the black and blue docking pad and into the sky. As the Bullhead turned, Sunset was afforded a glimpse of the crowd of students waiting their turn to be called; Pyrrha was a particularly noticeable figure, even without the splash of vibrant red that usually hung about her waist. The sunlight glinted off her gilded armour still. As they took off, Sunset saw Pyrrha raised one hand to them, and all three of Pyrrha's teammates waved back before they were carried out of sight.</p><p>The Bullhead carried them over the length of Beacon's canvas, not flying particularly high – not least, Sunset presumed, because the land was about to descend in height substantially very soon – so that the shadow of the Emerald Tower and some of the other taller buildings fell upon them as they were born over the courtyard and the farm and across the green expanse of unused land that lay between Beacon and the cliffs. Over the cliffs, they flew, as the world fell away sharply beneath them, the rocky cliff-face giving way to the verdant canopy of the Emerald Forest.</p><p>"So," Arslan said, "how do you think they're going to ensure that there are grimm on this Grimm Studies field trip?"</p><p>"Probably they've planted lures along the four routes to draw in grimm," Twilight murmured.</p><p>"They can do that?" Jaune asked.</p><p>Twilight nodded. "There are some very high-tech models being rolled out in Atlas for use by huntsmen that use chemical compounds to mimic the pheromones given off by humans in high-stress situations."</p><p>"But people have been using more traditional methods to accomplish the same goal for… probably for as long as the girmm have been a threat," Blake added.</p><p>Ruby nodded. "Uncle Qrow taught me and Yang a way to make one by rubbing pork cutlets all over us; it was really gross, but super cool at the same time."</p><p>Sunset cringed. "Why?"</p><p>"To get our sweat all over the meat so that the grimm would think it was human flesh," Ruby declared eagerly.</p><p>"Riiiiiiight," Arslan muttered. "Honestly, huntsmen. What a waste of meat."</p><p>"Did it work?" Jaune asked.</p><p>Ruby nodded. "We got a couple of beowolves doing that."</p><p>"A couple of beowolves won't be much of a test," Sunset said.</p><p>"I wouldn't say no to a more… uneventful experience," Twilight declared.</p><p>"That was just one lure," Blake reminded them. "The forest, or at least the routes we've been instructed to take, are probably littered with them."</p><p>"Right," Flash agreed. "I hope you don't mind, Jaune, when I say that I'd rather Weiss was here for this."</p><p>"Go ahead," Jaune told him. "I'd rather have Pyrrha here, too."</p><p>"We'd all rather have our partners by our sides; that's the reason we don't," Sage said.</p><p>"Speak for yourselves, my partner isn't speaking to me after I called him a dickhead," Arslan said. "Which just proves how much of a dickhead he is, in my opinion."</p><p>"Is that Bolin?" Sunset asked.</p><p>"Uh huh."</p><p>"Yeah, you've got the better deal with me," Sunset said confidently.</p><p>Arslan smirked. "Right back at you, Sunnyside."</p><p>"It's Sunset."</p><p>"Not all the time, it isn't."</p><p>The Bullhead carried them into the midst of the forest, descending into a clearing encircled by tall trees, casting their shadows over a space where none of their forest brethren sought to venture. They dismounted onto grass that was green and springy beneath their feet, and as the airship ascended once more, leaving them behind, Sunset could see that four paths had been cut through the woods around them, snaking slightly as they manoeuvred through the trees in the four cardinal directions.</p><p>There was nothing else to be seen but the paths. The grass was the only thing saving the clearing from being completely barren, and there was nothing else to be seen here.</p><p>The four paths, marked with red flags, called out to them.</p><p>"So," Jaune said, "I guess there's not much to do right now but get going."</p><p>Ruby smiled. "You'll be fine, Jaune. And when we're all done, you'll laugh at how nervous you were at the start of this."</p><p>Jaune's laughter now had a nervous edge to it, "I hope so; I mean, probably, you're right."</p><p>Blake looked up at the sky. "How long do you think it will be until the next group arrives?"</p><p>"I don't know," Sunset said. "Why?"</p><p>"I was just thinking," Blake said, glancing towards Twilight, "that if we're going to be on our own for a while, we should keep in contact; that way, if any pair gets into real trouble, they can call for help and another group can double back to assist them."</p><p>"We'll be fine," Sage declared.</p><p>"Don't be so sure," Flash replied. "The moment you underestimate the grimm is the moment they get you. I think it sounds like a good idea."</p><p>"Me too," Sunset agreed.</p><p>Blake nodded. "I've got Sunset, Jaune, and Twilight's numbers, and the reverse too, so… if we don't hear or see another Bullhead soon, let's just check in every so often, okay?"</p><p>"Okay with me," Sunset said, glancing at Arslan to see if she had any objections; not that Sunset would have taken any notice if she did have objections, but Sunset wanted to know if her temporary partner was the sort to let pride get in the way. Thankfully, Arslan made no such objection; in fact, she said nothing at all.</p><p>"You're all worrying about this far too much," Sage said. "You'll see, this is going to be a cakewalk. Come on, Twilight," he added, turning away and unsheathing his immense sword – it was marked with the numerals I through XII running down the blade for some reason – from off his back as he set off down the southward path.</p><p>Twilight smiled sheepishly at them, then pressed a button on the neck of her armour to bring up the helmet section of her purple-tinted, glowing suit. Her face disappeared beneath the blank, featureless visage of her helm, and yet, Sunset found she could imagine her face within nonetheless. She did not imagine that Twilight's nerves were much eased for now being completely enclosed within her powered armour.</p><p>Motorised sounds – whirrs and squeaks – issued from said armour as she turned and followed after Sage.</p><p>The remaining three pairs looked at one another.</p><p>"Good luck," Blake said.</p><p>Sunset nodded. "Good luck to all three of you," she said. She paused a moment, not looking at Flash. Then she relented. "All four of you."</p><p>"Thanks," Flash said heavily, and then it was his turn to hesitate. "You too."</p><p>Then they split up, Flash and Jaune heading east, Ruby and Blake heading west, and Sunset and Arslan heading north.</p><p>Sunset slung Sol Invictus off her shoulder, holding it in both hands as she and Arslan walked down the path.</p><p>"Why do you have that?" Arslan asked. "Your semblance does more damage."</p><p>Sunset shrugged. "I haven't always used my semblance," she said.</p><p>"You mean it took you a while to find it?"</p><p>"Something like that," Sunset muttered. "Why don't you use a weapon?"</p><p>"I've got a knife," Arslan pointed out.</p><p>"Sure you have, but you know what I mean."</p><p>"The lion doesn't carry weapons," Arslan said. "If his claws and teeth can't keep his skin safe, then it is not worth keeping."</p><p>Sunset's eyes narrowed. "You're aware that you're not actually a lion? You're not even a lion faunus."</p><p>"Do you think that I'd call myself the Golden Lion of Mistral if I was a lion faunus?" Arslan replied. "I'd get dogpiled for… not racism, but that thing where if you're a faunus and you play up to stereotypes."</p><p>"I know what you mean," Sunset confirmed. "My point stands: you're not a lion."</p><p>"But like a lion, I was born with weapons," Arslan insisted. "And those weapons will see me through." She paused. "I didn't always have fancy tutors to teach me how to fight, you know."</p><p>"Really," Sunset murmured dryly.</p><p>"Unlike Pyrrha, it wasn't until <em>after</em> I started placing that I had the money to hire a trainer to iron out my technique."</p><p>"Is this your apologia for why you can't beat her?" Sunset asked.</p><p>"No, I'm just saying that I first learned how to fight tussling with my friends or fighting the kids from a couple of streets over," Arslan explained. "By the time anyone started teaching me how to fight, I'd gotten used to punches and kicks, and using a weapon just felt… it didn't fit with me. And besides,I don't need to apologise for the fact that I haven't beaten Pyrrha yet; she's that good."</p><p>"Indeed she is."</p><p>"But I'll get her one of these days."</p><p>Sunset scoffed. "I'm not so sure of that."</p><p>Arslan grinned. "I wouldn't expect a friend of hers to say anything less, so long as they really were a friend of hers." Arslan kicked a stone out of her path; it hit a nearby tree with a thump. "She seems happy."</p><p>"Pyrrha?"</p><p>"Of course Pyrrha, who else?" Arslan demanded.</p><p>"She seems happy because she is happy," Sunset replied. "I hope. More or less."</p><p>"More or less?"</p><p>"She's worried about Phoebe," Sunset explained.</p><p>"You don't want to worry about Phoebe Kommenos; she's a hack with pretensions," Arslan sneered dismissively. "Now, she's kind of rich, so those pretensions can carry her a ways, but sooner or later, she always runs into her lack of talent. She might want to think she's one of P-money's rivals, but there's so much distance between them it's not even funny. She doesn't even have a fanbase."</p><p>"Not even sad, lonely guys who think she's gorgeous?" Sunset asked.</p><p>"So what if she is? We're all gorgeous," Arslan replied. "And anyway, you shouldn't insult the audience by calling them names; it's bad for building loyalty."</p><p>Sunset smirked. "Do you mean to tell me that there is no one who supports you because they fancy you?"</p><p>"You mean, does my agent get creepy messages that he makes sure I never see, of course he does," Arslan admitted. "And if you call up Pyrrha's mother, she'll tell you the same. My point is, even if you're one of those guys, you're probably going to want someone with a… softer personality. Like Pyrrha, so maybe Jaune should watch himself next time he's in Mistral."</p><p>"You won't insult the fans, but you're more worried about them than you are about Phoebe?"</p><p>"Phoebe didn't have the guts to take you on herself," Arslan reminded her. "That says everything you need to know. But, other than that, Pyrrha's happy, isn't she?"</p><p>"Yes."</p><p>"Good," Arslan said. "I… her smile doesn't look as fake now as it did back home sometimes."</p><p>"No, it isn't," Sunset said. "Does that matter to you?"</p><p>There was a rustling in the bushes to Sunset's left. She turned, Sol Invictus flying to her shoulder as Sunset cocked the rifle; Arslan turned too, her whole body flowing smoothly into a fighting stance, knees bent, palms poised to strike. </p><p>A raccoon poked its head out of the bush, took one look at the pair of them, and then darted back into cover with a squeak of alarm.</p><p>Sunset uncocked her rifle and lowered the barrel down to the ground.</p><p>Arslan grunted. “So, I take it you can’t do that thing where you sense trouble coming with your aura?”</p><p>“No,” Sunset admitted. “I take it you can’t either.”</p><p>“Why would I need to? I could always see my opponents coming out of the other tunnel,” Arslan said. She looked around. “One of the reasons I don’t like forests – you can’t see what’s coming.”</p><p>“A lion who doesn’t like woods, imagine that.”</p><p>“There’s nothing odd about it, lions are creatures of the high plains,” Arslan reminded her.</p><p>“Well… okay, fair enough.”</p><p>“Mind you, I’m not too keen on the high plains either,” Arslan admitted. “I don’t really like the countryside, to be honest. It’s got a funny smell. Give me the smell of old clothes and food going off in the fridge because the power company cut you off any day.”</p><p>“You can keep it; I’d rather have this,” Sunset muttered. <em>Food going off in the fridge? Ugh!</em></p><p>Arslan chuckled. “Let me guess… your family used to be something, back in the day. That day’s past now, and your money’s run out, along with any power or influence that you used to have, but all the same, they never let you forget where you came from.”</p><p>Sunset snorted. “Is that what you really think? How many faunus do you know whose families used to be something?”</p><p>Arslan shrugged. “Okay then, explain it to me.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Have you got somewhere better to be?” Arslan asked. “Or do you want to pass the day in silence?”</p><p>Sunset opted for silence… but only for a couple of minutes as they trekked down the trail, still failing to encounter any grimm. Then she said, “My family didn’t used to be anything. I was adopted, in a manner of speaking, by the ruler of my community. Outside the kingdoms.”</p><p>“Ah,” Arslan murmured. “That explains that part… and then you left, came to the kingdoms, and in doing so, got a lot poorer than you used to be.”</p><p>“I… had to get used to not having all my needs catered for, yes,” Sunset acknowledged.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Why what?”</p><p>“Why did you leave?” Arslan asked. “Why did you go from living like Pyrrha to doing this?”</p><p>“Pyrrha lives like Pyrrha and does this,” Sunset pointed out.</p><p>“And I don’t get that either; I think she’s nuts.”</p><p>“From someone who’s doing this too?”</p><p>“I’m only here for three years; this isn’t my plan for the future at stake,” Arslan informed her. “I mean, sometimes, I think I must be mad to have come here at all, but in the end, the prize is worth it.”</p><p>“If you mean a Vytal crown, you can dream on,” Sunset told her. “Pyrrha has that in the bag already.”</p><p>“Keep talking like that, and you and I are going to have another appointment in the arena,” Arslan muttered.</p><p>“You haven’t beaten her yet; what makes you think this year is going to be any different?”</p><p>“I’m bound to get lucky sometime.”</p><p><em>Not necessarily,</em> Sunset thought, but did not say. “So that’s all you’re here for? The Vytal Festival?”</p><p>“Are you judging me too?” Arslan asked.</p><p>“No, just… a little surprised,” Sunset replied. “I would never judge anyone for seeking after eternal glory.”</p><p>“Because that’s why you’re here?” Arslan guessed. “That’s why you left your home, beyond the kingdoms?”</p><p>Sunset hesitated. “Let’s just say the world I was born into was too small for my ambitions.”</p><p>Arslan shook her head. “If you wanted your name to live forever, then you should have come to Mistral and taken up professional tournament fighting. Then you’d have your fill of glory and more, I guarantee it, with your skill.”</p><p>“I didn’t think they let outsiders fight in the Mistral tournaments,” Sunset replied.</p><p>“There aren’t many, and they have to work hard to get over the bias of the crowd, but there are some,” Arslan said.</p><p>“Well, if I’d known that, then…” Sunset mused. “I probably would have made the wrong choice.”</p><p>“What’s so wrong about it?”</p><p>“I’m a better person for coming here,” Sunset replied. She paused, wondering how true that really was. “Or at least… here, I can recognise when I’ve done the wrong thing. My friends can help me recognise it. That wasn’t always true. It wouldn’t have been true in Mistral, in the arena.”</p><p>“Fair enough,” Arslan relented good naturedly. “But… I don’t know what glory or renown you expect to find in this profession. I don’t like the fact that Pyrrha’s going to walk away from the arena for this, but I get it: she thinks that she’s doing something meaningful, doing a service, and so she’s ready to commit to it because that’s something that matters to her.”</p><p>“Pyrrha thinks she can save the world,” Sunset declared.</p><p>Arslan rolled her eyes. “Break a record for tournament wins, and she starts getting delusions of grandeur.” She paused. “It <em>is</em> a delusion, right?”</p><p>Sunset did not reply at once. It was a difficult question to answer, and not only because she was Pyrrha’s friend. There was a desire to believe that it was not a delusion – or an illusion, to describe it more charitably – to believe that Pyrrha’s dreams <em>could</em> be made a reality, that Team SAPR could be the tip of the spear that drove back the darkness. </p><p>But the world seemed so much larger now than it had done when Sunset and Pyrrha had sat on the roof and discussed whether destiny was a choice or an ineffable force; there were so many things they knew of now that they had been blind to before: the magic of Remnant, the women who commanded it, the secrets and the machinations of Professor Ozpin. It seemed harder, now, to believe that even Pyrrha’s prodigious skill, even their team so dazzlingly composed, could effect the kind of great change upon the world that Pyrrha wished.</p><p>But Sunset refused to admit that fact, not to Arslan, maybe not even to herself. She had crossed worlds in pursuit of nothing more than ambition and desire, languished unregarded for years sustained by nothing more than her sense of her own worth; she would not falter now, not when recognition was beginning to come her way. </p><p>Not when she had something to fight for. </p><p>“Whether it is or it isn’t,” Sunset declared. “We’re going to try it regardless, for Pyrrha’s sake.”</p><p>From somewhere to the south, the sound of gunfire echoed through the woods towards them. </p><hr/><p>Pyrrha’s sash fluttered gently in the breeze that gusted through the forest, rising up away from Jaune’s leg for a moment before falling down again to brush against his pants as the wind rose and fell. </p><p>Jaune glanced down at it. His sword was drawn, and his shield was held before him, but his eyes were continuously being drawn downwards towards that sash. </p><p>In some ways, this was what he’d wanted: a chance to prove himself, to show that he wasn’t a burden, that he could manage without the girls and, in managing without them, prove too that he could help them when they needed it. </p><p>In other ways, this was pretty terrifying. </p><p>He hadn’t realised until she wasn’t there anymore just how used he’d gotten to having Pyrrha there; yes, she stood back, and she let him fight his own battles, but the fact of the matter was that she was always there, and if he screwed up or found himself in real trouble, then he knew that she would bail him out, and he wouldn’t even have to ask because that was the kind of person she was. </p><p>Only now… only now, she wasn’t here, she wasn’t beside him, she was somewhere up on the docking pad, and she might not be getting down here for some time, depending on what partner she was allocated, and that meant… that meant that they would both be fighting without the other.</p><p>He was not nearly so worried about Pyrrha in that situation because, come on, it was Pyrrha, but that wasn’t to say that he wasn’t worried at all. Pyrrha was amazing, but if he could do nothing else, he could at least stimulate her aura, and she would be without that facility today. </p><p>He recognised that that was nothing compared to his issues, but still…</p><p>Just because he could understand why Professor Port had decided to shake things up – and he was right; this was a more effective way of seeing if they could work together than Doctor Oobleck’s coursework – didn’t mean that he had to like it. Didn’t they have teams for a reason? Didn’t they have partners for a reason? He liked fighting alongside someone he could trust, someone who trusted him, someone… someone he understood.</p><p>Now he was fighting alongside someone he didn’t know at all. </p><p>Jaune really wasn’t sure what to make of Flash Sentry, walking in front of him, his armour gleaming. In person, he seemed okay; Jaune thought that Weiss might be interested in him if she’d give herself enough of a break to admit that it was okay to feel that kind of thing. He was a better fighter than Jaune, and it was a toss-up between him and Dove as to who was the stronger boy in their class as far as sparring went; to be honest, if Jaune had been coming to Flash fresh, with no preconceptions whatsoever, he probably would have looked up to the guy… once he got over his jealousy of the fact that Weiss obviously liked him, of course. </p><p>But Jaune wasn’t coming to Flash Sentry fresh; he was coming to him from everything that Sunset had said, or let slip, or implied, and most of it was… not that great. And while Sunset was not above lying – and even when she wasn’t lying, she didn’t always have the clearest perspective on things – one thing that Jaune was sure she wasn’t lying about was how badly hurt she’d been by Flash Sentry. </p><p>It was at the root of her messed-up views on relationships and how men ought to treat women, of that Jaune was sure; okay, 'messed up' was possibly a little harsh, but she seemed to have this view that men ought to be perfect storybook prince charmings that even Ruby or Pyrrha probably would have found to be a little much, and Jaune was certain that she wouldn’t have gone around telling Sun to put Blake at the centre of his life with no thought for his teammates if she hadn’t been trying to spare Blake what had been done to her.</p><p>She wasn’t faking that. Jaune didn’t think that Sunset was <em>capable </em>of faking that kind of hurt. And Flash was the one that had hurt her. </p><p>Of course, Sunset had hurt him in turn – although he didn’t think she’d really meant to with that business with the audio – but he had started it, or at least, it seemed like he had. </p><p>Jaune didn’t get it. Not one bit. He didn’t get how someone who otherwise seemed so nice could hurt someone like that. </p><p>He didn’t get it, and he didn’t much like it. It made him suspect how much of what Flash showed the school was all some kind of act. </p><p>He had never gotten around to talking to Pyrrha about it. Other things had always gotten in the way. </p><p>Which meant that he hadn’t made a decision on what he was going to do about all this before he and Flash had been thrown together by fate. </p><p>Against that was the fact that, well, Sunset <em>had</em> done him wrong recently, and Jaune was pretty sure that she hadn’t apologised – fat chance of that, where Flash was concerned – and he was probably owed a sorry from someone, especially since Sunset had told Professor Ozpin what she’d done so he wasn’t even going to be revealing any secrets. </p><p>Which was good, because Sunset’s misdeeds weren’t really the kind of secrets that he wanted to be keeping. </p><p>But it did make it harder to work out how he ought to interact with this guy. </p><p>He glanced down at the sash around his waist and once more wished that Pyrrha were here.</p><p>“It suits you,” Flash observed.</p><p>Jaune looked up. “Huh?”</p><p>“The sash, it suits you,” Flash told him. “Maybe you should think about getting one for yourself, one that’s actually yours, I mean.”</p><p>“Huh,” Jaune said. He hadn’t considered that before, but now… maybe. It was something to think about anyway. “Maybe.”</p><p>Flash glanced back at him. “You’re a lucky guy, you know that?”</p><p>“So I’m told,” Jaune said.</p><p>“You don’t believe it.”</p><p>“No, I know it’s true, it just…” Jaune trailed off, worried that <em>it gets a little irritating sometimes to be talked about as though I’ve got nothing going for me</em> might come off wrong; he didn’t know Flash well enough to be sure that he would get it. He was lucky, and he knew that, but was it wrong for him to maybe want someone to think that Pyrrha wasn’t unlucky herself? “You were pretty lucky yourself, once.”</p><p>Flash’s face fell. “That… I’d rather not talk about that,” he said, his voice chilling noticeably.</p><p><em>I’ll bet you wouldn’t,</em> Jaune thought, but didn’t press the matter. He still hadn’t decided if that was a good idea or not. “Right, fine.” He hesitated. “How… how’s it going?”</p><p>Flash blinked. “How’s it going?”</p><p>“You know,” Jaune said. “With… with the things that… the things that-”</p><p>“The things that Sunset released?” Flash guessed.</p><p>A sigh escaped from Jaune’s lips. “You know?”</p><p>“I guessed,” Flash said. “It’s the kind of thing that Sunset would do.”</p><p>“I’m not so sure,” Jaune replied.</p><p>Flash’s eyebrows rose, disappearing beneath his glimmering, crested helmet. “You’ve got a better opinion of her than I do.”</p><p>“I’m not sure that’s hard,” Jaune replied.</p><p>Flash winced a little. “Maybe… maybe not. But she did do it, so that says a little bit about which of us has the measure of her, don’t you think?”</p><p>“I’m still not so sure,” Jaune insisted. “She really… I know what she’s done, but Sunset was getting a lot better, until…”</p><p>Flash took a step towards him. “'Until'?”</p><p>Jaune shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, it’s not your problem.”</p><p>“'Problem'?” Flash repeated. “What problem?”</p><p>“Oh, <em>now</em> you care?” Jaune asked. “Sorry, I just-”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Flash said. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. You don’t have to explain anything to me. Just… is she okay?”</p><p>Jaune’s mouth opened a little. “Is she okay? You… <em>you</em> are asking me that?”</p><p>“I know how it must sound-”</p><p>“Do you?” Jaune demanded. “Do you really?”</p><p>“Just because we broke up doesn’t mean that I stopped caring!” Flash snapped. “I always wanted Sunset to be happy. I was glad because I thought that she was getting better thanks to your team, only now you’re telling me that there’s a problem?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Jaune replied, his tone almost as hot. “I mean, obviously, there’s some kind of a problem, but I’m not sure it’s Sunset’s fault. She… she has this friend, one of the students who arrived from Haven.”</p><p>“You think she’s a bad influence?”</p><p>“Sunset says not.”</p><p>“Sunset would say that,” Flash told him.</p><p>“That’s what I thought, too,” Jaune agreed. “I’m just… not sure what I can do about it. They really get on well together, and if Sunset’s right… I don’t want to accuse this other girl for no reason, and I don’t want to drive a wedge between Sunset and a friend.”</p><p>Flash was quiet for a moment. “I… I don’t know, man. I really don’t know. Sorry, but… that’s just not something I can help you with.”</p><p>“Right,” Jaune murmured. “So… how is it going? After… after what Sunset did?”</p><p>“How’s it going with people thinking that I’m a racist?” Flash asked.</p><p><em>Well, aren’t you?</em> Jaune thought. “Something like that.”</p><p>“Most people who think that probably already thought it, if they knew who I was, for one reason or another,” Flash replied. “And… I can’t blame Sunset for what she did. It wasn’t the best thing, but when you think about what Cardin and Bon Bon said… you have to keep a proportion about this stuff, you know? Calling for the faunus to be wiped out is much worse than leaking audio of someone calling for the faunus to be wiped out, and considering what it must have been like for Blake and Sunset to hear that… a human like me doesn’t have much grounds to complain about anything. We have to learn our place when it comes to this stuff, you know?”</p><p>“I guess,” Jaune said. “Either way… I’m sorry that it happened.”</p><p>“Not a lot did happen,” Flash replied. “I think… I don’t know, because she won’t say, but I think Weiss might have done something to make it all go away. And I’m not sure what she did, but it worked.”</p><p>"Huh," Jaune said, for want of anything better to say. "That, um… lucky you, I guess."</p><p>"Lucky us," Flash agreed. "Not so lucky Weiss."</p><p>"What makes you say that?"</p><p>"Oh, nothing," Flash said. "It's really not my place to say."</p><p>Jaune might have said more, but his attention – and Flash's too – was stolen away by the sound of gunfire coming from the west.</p><p>It had begun.</p><hr/><p>"It's kind of weird that we haven't seen any grimm yet, don't you think?" Ruby asked. "I mean, Professor Port made out like this task would be difficult."</p><p>"It is a little strange," Blake allowed. "Whether or not it's the kind of thing we ought to complain about is…"</p><p>"We're here to learn how to fight, not to walk through the woods," Ruby pointed out. "A hike down a trail and back with no grimm isn't going to teach us anything."</p><p>"Except how to walk long distances," Blake pointed out.</p><p>"Maybe, but when is that going to be useful?" Ruby asked.</p><p>Blake shrugged. "It might not, but I've not always been lucky enough to have ready transportation on stand-by."</p><p>"That <em>is</em> a good point," Ruby admitted. "All the same, I'd rather that there were-" She stopped, her whole body tensing.</p><p>Blake had felt it too: grimm, to the left… and the right. Not too many of them, as far as she could tell. Her aura spread her sense out around her, probing into the undergrowth and through the trees, perceiving what eyes and ears and nose could not. She could sense the squirrel up above, the chicks in the nest a couple of trees away, the mother who had just flown off to gather food. Their souls pricked upon the edges of Blake's consciousness, while if she closed her eyes, she could perceive Ruby's inner light blazing like a supernova in front of her.</p><p>In the midst of such light, the grimm were utter darkness. They had no souls to sense, but that was what enabled Blake – and Ruby – to detect them. They were shadows, blots of pure darkness blotting out the light. She could sense six of them, moving in from the edges of her conscious range; there might be more a little further off, although Blake couldn't sense them.</p><p>Ruby had Crescent Rose in hand; Blake's Gambol Shroud was in its pistol configuration. She glanced at Ruby and gestured leftwards with her head.</p><p>Ruby took one hand off her weapon for just a second to point to her right, nodding in acknowledgement.</p><p>It was Blake's turn to take a hand off Gambol Shroud. She held up three fingers, sensing with her aura the grimm slinking closer. They were quiet; if she hadn't trained this aspect of her aura, she would never have known they were coming.</p><p>Blake lowered one finger; two remained.</p><p>Perhaps it was their lack of numbers that made them stealthy like this. Certainly, they didn't seem to be this quiet when there were more of them.</p><p>Blake lowered another finger. One remained.</p><p>Then again, they were rarely so stealthy even in smaller numbers.</p><p>Blake lowered her last finger, her hand now clenched into a fist, and Ruby and Blake sprang into action, Blake to the left and Ruby to the right.</p><p>They were beowolves – six beowolves – and easily dealt with; to gunfire or to blade, they died one after the other, their greater than usual stealth proving to bear no relation to any greater than usual fighting potential. One by one, Ruby and Blake each turned their trio of foes to ash, and then they returned to the path once more.</p><p>"You wanted some grimm," Blake observed.</p><p>Ruby grinned. "I guess I did. It still doesn't add up to what Professor Port made it sound like, though."</p><p>"Professor Port often sounds as though he exaggerates his stories," Blake replied. "Maybe he's taken to exaggerating his classes too?"</p><p>Ruby chuckled. "Maybe, but Sunset says-"</p><p>"Hang on a second," Blake said, holding up one hand as she felt her scroll beginning to vibrate. Considering that they had agreed to keep in touch and that sound was perfectly capable of travelling through the Emerald Forest, she guessed it was either Jaune, Sunset or Twilight checking in.</p><p>It turned out to be Sunset. Blake hesitated, not sure if she wanted to accept the call or not, not sure if she wanted to talk to Sunset or not after what she'd done.</p><p>But she guessed that Ruby didn't know what Sunset had done, and Blake didn't want to be the one to tell her, so she answered the call. "Hey," she said.</p><p>"Hey, Blake," Sunset replied. "We heard shooting from down your way; is everything okay?"</p><p>"Just a few beowolves; everything's fine," Blake assured her. "Isn't that right, Ruby?"</p><p>"We're all good here, Sunset," Ruby declared. "How are you guys doing? Have you checked on Jaune?"</p><p>"Not yet," Sunset replied. "We haven't seen mask or spike of a grimm since we got here; you two are the only sounds of shooting we've heard, but Jaune and Flash don't have guns, so I'll check in on them. Have you heard from Twilight?"</p><p>"No, I'll check in with her," Blake told Sunset.</p><p>"Great," Sunset said. "It's strange how quiet it is, isn't it?"</p><p>"You're not the only one to have noticed that," Blake observed, glancing at Ruby. "Maybe when more students show up, we'll attract more grimm?"</p><p>"What happened to luring them to us?"</p><p>"Lures don't always work," Ruby explained. "Uncle Qrow said that the grimm can sometimes tell that it's not a real person but a trick, especially older grimm."</p><p>"Well that's a lot of use, isn't it?" Sunset demanded.</p><p>"It's better than nothing, right?" Ruby asked in reply.</p><p>“I guess so,” Sunset muttered. “It’s kind of weird; you’d think that even if the grimm were just wandering around at random, we’d have seen some by now. I wonder if it will count against our scores if we don’t have to fight?”</p><p>“Glad to see you’ve got your priorities straight,” Blake muttered.</p><p>Sunset chuckled, a laugh that acquired more of a nervous edge the longer it went on. “Hey, Blake…”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>Sunset reached around and scratched the back of her head. “So… are we good?”</p><p>Blake fell silent. What was she supposed to say to that? Were they good? Were they <em>good</em>? After what Sunset had done, she had the nerve to ask that? She had lied to Blake; she had lied to Blake’s face; she had promised that she wouldn’t take any further action and then she had…</p><p>Then she had exposed two people who had said some of the most egregiously racist things ever to come out of the mouth of a human. Bon Bon… Bon Bon had sounded like Adam when the black mood was on him, when a mission had gone badly, when valued comrades had been lost in battle, then he had spoken thus, talked of killing the humans, of making a new ocean of their blood, wiping them off the face of Remnant. Blake had tried to tell herself that he didn’t really mean it, that he was angry, lost in the fullest flow of his grief, that he would calm down and such thoughts would fly from him. She wasn’t sure if she still believed that, unfortunately, but the fact was that Bon Bon and Cardin, however much they might dislike her, had no such excuse. </p><p>Theirs was an offence committed against Blake, true, but it was also window into their hearts and souls… and Blake wasn’t sure that she had the right to demand that Sunset shut that window against the sight of the other faunus in the school, the students who interacted with them, who might count them friends, not knowing how they really felt. </p><p>Blake had considered the possibility, based on Starlight’s guess, that their words were lies, bait to draw her into rash action… but could you really say such things and not mean it, at least a little?</p><p>If Bon Bon or Cardin had done something smaller scale, then ironically, Blake would have felt much more justified in being angry at Sunset for retaliation. But this, what they had actually said, it… it was bigger than Blake, in a way that she didn’t feel so secure in her right to judge. </p><p>“We…we’re not bad,” Blake said.</p><p>Sunset sighed with relief. “That’s… good to hear. I was starting to worry because-”</p><p>Someone – Arslan Altan? – squawked with alarm somewhere out of sight.</p><p>“Arslan?” Sunset yelled. “Arslan!” </p><p>She must have dropped the scroll, for her face disappeared; Blake was gifted with a shot of the sky, of trees swirling around her; and then there was a thudding sound, and she could see nothing but soil.</p><p>But she could hear Sol Invictus barking: once, twice, thrice, four times, five times, six.</p><p>Sunset shouted something wordless and angry.</p><p>“Sunset?” Blake demanded. “Sunset, are you okay? Sunset!”</p><hr/><p>Phoebe Kommenos sat in Doctor Oobleck’s history class, but her mind was elsewhere. Not on dull dates of boring old people who were not her ancestors, no; her mind was in the Emerald Forest, where she had just turned on all of the lures that she had placed along the four routes set by Professor Port. </p><p>She had known in advance that third-year students would be asked to seed the way. She knew that because they had been informed earlier in the week that, on Saturday, they would be tasked with making the lures in a special class with Professor Greene before they actually went into the forest with Professor Port to set them up. For the third-year students, setting the bait – and risking grimm attack in the process – was as much an exercise as it was for the first-years to progress through the woods. </p><p>And so, knowing what was coming, Phoebe had bought some Atlesian-made lures, so much more advanced than the traditional nonsense Professor Greene had them making – Turnus was right; the north really was racing ahead of everyone else, weren’t they? It was rather embarrassing for the rest of Remnant – and planted them, in clusters, one cluster per route.</p><p>And she had just turned them on. </p><p>You weren’t meant to bunch lures up like that. That was something that Professor Greene and Professor Port had both emphasised. You shouldn’t bunch them up, or else you might attract rather more grimm than you bargained for.</p><p>Of course, that was precisely why Phoebe had done it. </p><p>It wasn’t going to be her fighting off all those grimm, after all.</p><p>And when this little practical exercise devolved into a bloody fiasco, Phoebe would venture back into the Emerald Forest and pluck Soteria from Sunset Shimmer’s bloody corpse. </p><p>It wasn’t as though she’d be needing it any more. </p><p>And if she got Pyrrha too, then… well, it was a pity that Phoebe would never get to triumph over her in the sight of men, but on the other hand, it was one less opponent to worry about on her road to Vytal Festival triumph. </p><p>And would not the shade of Phoebe’s mother rejoice to see Pyrrha’s mother weep, and pull her hair and rend her clothes and screech in grief at the loss of her daughter, the last of their line, the pride of Mistral?</p><p>Turnus might even look at her, if Pyrrha were gone. </p><p>Phoebe couldn’t quite keep the smile from off her face. Yes, everything was going to be perfect.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0067"><h2>67. Strictly For the Birds</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sunset and Arslan get more trouble than they bargained for.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Strictly For the Birds</p><p> </p><p>Pyrrha reached down to nervously tug at her sash, only to remember that it wasn’t there. She’d given it to Jaune before he left. </p><p>Before he went off into the forest without her, with Flash Sentry to guard his flank. </p><p>It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Jaune – he really had come a long way, and she was sure that Flash was perfectly capable – but… she would have rather that she’d been with him, just in case. </p><p>
  <em>It’s a good thing he doesn’t know what you’re thinking.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Except that he probably does. I just hope he isn’t offended by it. </em>
</p><p>She took comfort from the fact that Jaune had seemed a little nervous himself. Not that it was a good thing that he was nervous! He had no reason to be; he had many reasons to be confident; it was only the grimm in the Emerald Forest after all. No, what she meant was that the fact that he was nervous meant that he would probably forgive Pyrrha being nervous on his behalf. </p><p>Nevertheless, it was probably not something that she should be dwelling onup. </p><p>Which was why it was especially unfortunate that it was the only thing that she could think of.</p><p>She supposed that she possibly ought to have been concerned for her other teammates, but the fact of the matter was that not only were Ruby and Sunset both more skilled individually than Jaune, but also they were accompanied by partners whom she knew. Arslan was, physically, the strongest fighter Pyrrha had ever fought, and only Sunset had come closer to defeating her; Blake was the bravest of the brave, and her skill at arms was almost equal to her courage. Flash was the only one that Pyrrha did not know well – or at least know their abilities intimately – and he was partnered with Jaune who… who benefited from having a reliable partner.</p><p>Pyrrha tried to distract herself by wondering about who her partner might be; it didn’t really work, but it did cause her to sweep her gaze across the crowd of students – she very much hoped that she was not partnered with Cinder Fall – and as she did so, she was reminded that she was not the only student who was worried about their partner in the forest without them. </p><p>Rainbow Dash stood with her arms folded across her chest, a decidedly sour look upon her face, brow knotted, nose wrinkled, lips pursed together in a pout. If there had been a storm cloud brewing above her head, it would not have made her look any more miserable or incensed. </p><p><em>Of course, Twilight.</em> Pyrrha felt rather selfish, thinking only of her own discomfort and ignoring the fact that there were others in her position. </p><p>“Excuse me, please,” Pyrrha murmured, as she made her way through the crowd of waiting teams to approach the three remaining members of Team RSPT. Ciel also looked a little concerned, although not to the same extent as Rainbow Dash; her lips were pursed together, and her mouth was tightly shut. Penny looked uncomfortable, but it seemed that that discomfort was as related to the looks and obvious attitudes of Rainbow and Ciel as it was to any worries that she might have about Twilight. </p><p>“Pyrrha!” she said, and sounded less excited and more relieved to see someone without a thunderous face. “Hello again!”</p><p>Pyrrha smiled. “Hello again indeed, Penny,. Rainbow, Ciel.”</p><p>“Hey,” Rainbow grunted, briefly glancing Pyrrha’s way with her magenta eyes. </p><p>Pyrrha kept the smile upon her face as she placed one hand on Rainbow’s shoulder. “We have to believe in both of them.”</p><p>Rainbow sucked in a sharp intake of breath. “I don’t like letting Twi go into battle without me.”</p><p>“I understand,” Pyrrha assured him. “I don’t like letting Jaune go into battle without <em>me</em> either. But the fact remains, we have to believe in them.”</p><p>“Are you worried?” Penny asked.</p><p>“I…” Pyrrha hesitated. “Yes, yes, I am, a little worried.”</p><p>“But why?” inquired Penny. “Isn’t this just an ordinary exercise? Isn’t this normal?”</p><p>“It’s still live fire,” Rainbow muttered. “Things can still go wrong.”</p><p>“I suppose so,” Penny admitted. “But, still… is this because Jaune… isn’t very good?”</p><p>“Penny!” Ciel reproached her. “That is not a very polite thing to say, especially behind someone’s back.”</p><p>“And you’re wrong, in any case,” Pyrrha declared firmly. “Jaune has improved a great deal; he has so much promise and potential. I’ve never seen anyone work as hard as him to get better.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Penny said quickly. “I didn’t mean to upset you or insult anybody.”</p><p>“It’s alright, Penny,” Pyrrha replied, her voice softening noticeably. “I didn’t mean to snap either; it’s just that… so many people insult Jaune for the most wrongheaded reasons, I suppose it’s made me rather defensive.”</p><p>“Is that because you love him?”</p><p>Pyrrha chuckled. “I suppose it is, yes, although I like to think that I would worry about him even if we were just good friends.” She looked at Rainbow. “Speaking of friends, you know Flash Sentry, don’t you? From Canterlot?”</p><p>Rainbow nodded. “That’s right. Honestly, if he was partnered with Twilight, I’d feel a whole lot better.”</p><p>“But if Flash Sentry and Twilight Sparkle were partnered, neither of them would have headed into the woods in the first wave,” Penny pointed out.</p><p>“Even better,” Rainbow declared. “One of the few things I like about this is that Rainbow <em>Dash</em> has to be called pretty soon, no matter what partner I get.”</p><p>“If anyone is called next,” Ciel murmured, “it feels as though the next wave should have been ordered into their Bullhead by now.”</p><p>She had a point. Pyrrha had been under the impression that the students would be called up fairly quickly in succession. Now, it was possible that her understanding had been mistaken – Professor Port had never confirmed this face, and neither had Professor Ozpin; it was possible that they didn’t want to flow the forest with students, but rather wanted to feed them in gradually in small packets, although that risked all the grimm being killed by the first students into the forest – but nevertheless, she was surprised by the fact that the first Bullhead had returned and no new students had been named to enter the Emerald Forest in the next batch. </p><p>The fact that Professor Port and Professor Ozpin were now huddled together, looking at their scrolls, with their backs to the students, was not an encouraging sign either. </p><p>“Anyway,” Rainbow said, in the tone of someone who was intentionally trying to move the discussion back onto safer ground, “Flash… Flash is a solid guy. I trusted him to look after Twilight when Ciel and Penny and me went looking for Blake, and the fact that he then ditched Twilight to jump into a locker and fly to the docks like a madman doesn’t change the fact that he’s… he’s a solid guy. He’s not the best or anything, but he knows what he’s doing. Like I said, if he were with Twilight right now, I’d feel a whole lot better. I don’t know this Sage guy at all.”</p><p>“Sage is a cool guy,” Sun said, appearing behind them from… somewhere.</p><p>“How do you do that?” Rainbow demanded. “You’re like some kind of ninja or something.”</p><p>Sun shrugged. “You’ve got nothing to worry about; seriously, have you seen Sage? The guy’s the strongest on our team.”</p><p>“Yeah, I could see that he was big,” Rainbow said. “But is he fast? Is he agile? Is he good enough to do the work of two people?”</p><p>“Why would he need to- oh. Ohhhh, right,” Sun said. “Well… yeah. Probably. I mean, Twilight’s not <em>completely </em>helpless, right?”</p><p>“Thanks, you’re making me feel a whole lot better,” Rainbow said flatly. “Why couldn’t Twilight have gotten partnered up with Blake; then I wouldn’t have any worries at all.”</p><p>“None at all?” Ciel asked, raising one sceptical eyebrow.</p><p>“Okay, so I’d still have <em>some</em> worries,” Rainbow admitted. “But Blake’s got the mettle; we all agree on that, right? She’d get Twilight through this, no problem. This Sage doesn’t even know that he has to look out for Twilight, not the way Blake does.”</p><p>“I think we should have faith in our friends,” Penny said. “In all our friends.”</p><p>Pyrrha took a deep breath, and the smile returned to her face. “You’re quite right, Penny, and you chide us rightly. We should believe in them; it’s the least that we can do.”</p><p>“I’m sure that they’ll all set really high scores that it will be tough for us to beat,” Penny added. “But then we’ll beat them anyway. And I’ll be sure to beat your score too, Pyrrha!”</p><p>Pyrrha chuckled. “Will you now? That sounds like a challenge, Penny.”</p><p>Penny grinned. “That’s exactly why I said it.”</p><p>“Well, if you’ll forgive the cliché, I have no intention of giving up without a fight,” Pyrrha declared.</p><p>“Assuming that we are allowed to get to the fight,” Ciel muttered.</p><p>“I’m sure they’re just… they’re probably… okay, I’ve got no idea what the hold up is,” Sun admitted.</p><p>They were not alone in beginning to find the delay inexplicable, and concerning for the fact that it could not be explained. Whispers were beginning to flow amongst the other teams; people were shuffling impatiently in place; murmurs were rising as people wondered at the cause of the delay.</p><p>The murmurs and the mutters and the whispers must have reached the ears of Professor Ozpin where he stood with Professor Port, because the headmaster turned to address them all. “I’m sure that you’re all impatient to get going and take part in this exercise,” he said genially. “However, I must ask you all to be patient. Your turn will come, even if it does not come right away.”</p><p>Rainbow raised her hand. “What’s the hold up, sir?”</p><p>“There is no hold up, Miss Dash; this was always how the exercise was planned to go,” Professor Ozpin declared. “We are giving the first wave of students a good amount of time to make headway before we send in any more students to join them.”</p><p><em>Then why were you and Professor Port huddled together as you had a decision to make?</em> Pyrrha wondered. She had always regarded Sunset’s suspicions of the headmaster as being rather unfounded, based more on Sunset’s paranoia than in any facts. But now, as she watched Professor tell what she was almost certain was a lie with that bland look upon his face… for the first time, she began to wonder if there might be something in what Sunset said.</p><p>“Do you believe that?” Rainbow muttered, in a tone that suggested she didn’t believe it either.</p><p>“I… I’m not sure,” Pyrrha said, which was almost a lie in it’s own right. “But I’m sure Penny’s right: everyone will be absolutely fine down there. Perfectly, absolutely fine.”</p><hr/><p>Arslan squawked in alarm as her legs disappeared beneath the earth; her arms flailed for a moment as grass and soil gave way beneath her and she was dragged bodily beneath the earth. </p><p>“Arslan?” Sunset cried. “Arslan!” </p><p>She dropped her scroll – she could just about hear Blake frantically demanding to know what was going on – as she reached out for her temporary partner with one hand. </p><p>Her hand was just about to clasp Arslan’s, to try and drag her to safety, when the head of a creep, the bony skull that looked reptilian without really resembling any reptile that Sunset could name, emerged from out of the ground to clamp its jaws around Sunset’s arm. </p><p>Sunset grunted in pain and blasted the visible part of the grimm with a bolt of magic from her other hand, causing the head to dissipate in a cloud of smoke and ash. </p><p>But in the meantime, Arslan had disappeared, pulled under the earth by what was presumably another creep, or several of them. </p><p>Just like the other creeps that were starting to emerge from underground, growling and snarling. </p><p>Sunset felt something move under her leg. She teleported, just a couple of feet upwards into the air, high enough to avoid the creep that snapped its head up out of the ground and tried to grab her the way that they had grabbed Arslan. Sunset pulled Sol Invictus off her shoulder – where she had slung it again when she called Blake – and shot it, blowing its head clean off before she landed on the ground. She darted backwards a couple of steps, not wanting to stay in any one place too long; she didn’t want to get grabbed and pulled down; she wanted them to come up here where she could get at them. </p><p>In the meantime, some of them had already come up out of the ground, and they snarled as they waddled on their two legs towards her, their broad tails waggling.</p><p>Sol Invictus fired another shot, and a third, bringing down two more creeps. Sunset leapt aside as another creep pushed its snout up from the soil to try and grab her leg, then she shot that one too. It took two shots to bring down a slightly larger creep, not quite an alpha to Sunset’s reckoning but on its way there, and then Sunset’s six shots were up. She skewered another creep on the point of her bayonet, and then she shouted in anger as she reversed the rifle and brained another grimm with the wooden butt of the weapon. </p><p>She could still hear Blake’s voice, a little muffled, calling out her name from out of the discarded scroll… but then she heard the sound of Crescent Rose roaring in anger from Blake’s position, and Blake stopped calling her name after that. </p><p>Sunset would have worried, but her own troubles were far more immediate at the moment: more creeps emerged from underground with every passing moment, there were at least a dozen of them out now, and although a dozen creeps weren’t anything worry about particularly, the fact that more of them kept coming was a little bit worrying, as was the fact that Sunset couldn’t see how many of them were still under the ground, biding their time.</p><p>Like the one that managed to get the drop on her; she had stood still too long, not moved quickly enough, and the creep – this one <em>was</em> large enough to be an alpha – managed to close its jaws around Sunset’s booted foot and retreat underground before Sunset could do anything, dragging Sunset with it. </p><p>Sunset teleported, and this time, she didn’t just teleport off the ground but into one of the trees that stood on either side of the path, appearing amidst the stout lower branches that were thick enough to support her wait. </p><p>More creeps burrowed up from out of the ground, turning their bony faces upwards as they growled. </p><p>They had no eyes, Sunset noticed, or at least not eyes the way that beowolves and ursai had eyes; they had only slits on their bone masks that might be for seeing or might just be the scars of battles long ago. </p><p>Sunset’s hand glowed as she grabbed her scroll in the grip of her telekinesis and levitated it up into her outstretched hand before the creeps could eat it. Fortunately, it didn’t look too damaged for being dropped. Unfortunately, Blake had hung up on her. </p><p>Judging by the sound of shooting from the south – Gambol Shroud and Crescent Rose – it sounded as though Blake and Ruby had troubles of their own. </p><p>Then there was another sound, a sound that was at once a boom and a hiss both at once, and it was accompanied by a bright glow of light that erupted in the corner of Sunset’s eye. </p><p>That wasn’t something she recognised from Gambol Shroud or Crescent Rose, unless either Ruby or Blake had been doing upgrades without telling her. And besides, she could hear them elsewhere. All the noise was coming from the south, but from different directions with that.</p><p>
  <em>Jaune and Flash don’t use guns, which means it must be Sage… or Twilight.</em>
</p><p>The emergence of the alpha creep – an alpha creep, at least – reminded Sunset that she had her own situation to think of first. Surrounded by grimm, with no partner-</p><p>There was a stirring underground; the earth shifted, bucking upwards, forming a mound that bulged up and out in first one direction then another. </p><p>
  <em>Another creep? That one must be even bigger than the first alpha!</em>
</p><p>The ground erupted; Sunset had just enough time to see a creep being punched upwards before the punch destroyed it, and Arslan Altan, a savage smile upon her face, laughing a fierce warrior’s laugh, emerged through the smoke and the ash as her leap carried her upwards beyond the grimm which snarled and snapped at her. </p><p>Sunset grabbed her in her telekinesis, enveloping her temporary partner in a green haze and levitating her into the tree next to Sunset. </p><p>“Thanks,” Arslan said. “I’m not sure I’d want to land straight in the middle of that lot.”</p><p>“You’re welcome,” Sunset said, snapping Sol Invictus open to reload. “I thought you were done for.”</p><p>“Please, it’ll take more than… whatever these are-“</p><p>“Creeps,” Sunset supplied.</p><p>“Right, it will take more than creeps to finish off the Golden Lion of Mistral,” Arslan braggedsaid. “I mean, I’ve got so much to live for. I haven’t even beaten Pyrrha yet.”</p><p>Sunset rolled her eyes. “Even so, you did get dragged underground by a grimm which had already bitten you once.”</p><p>Arslan ran one hand through her mane of pale blonde hair, shaking loose some of the dirt that was stuck there. “Not my first time.,” she said.</p><p>Sunset glanced at her but decided to hold off on asking for the details of that particular story until they were both safely out of this predicament. She finished reloading her rifle and snapped it shut once more. </p><p>She could still hear Gambol Shroud and Crescent Rose firing off to the south. </p><p>“You don’t mind if I take care of this quickly, do you?” Sunset said. It would cost her a bit of magic, but it would enable them to double back to the others in case they needed help that much sooner, which was worth it in her opinion. </p><p>Arslan made an ‘after you’ gesture. “Be my guest.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Sunset replied as she laid Sol Invictus on her lap and held out both her hands, her fingers spread out. </p><p>Fortunately, creeps were far from the toughest of grimm. </p><p>Sunset’s fingertips glowed with a soft green light for a moment before miniature blasts of magic, smaller than her palm blasts, only minute in diameter, began to leap down from those same fingertips to strike the grimm like thunderbolts. They were smaller blasts, and weaker than those she shot from her palms, but they flew faster by far, they flew at a rate of fire that would have done credit to at Atlesian rotary cannon, they flew so fast that Sunset’s fingers began to burn from the rate of her fire, they flew fast enough that the creeps could not escape her power by fleeing underground again. They were too slow, and her magic was too fast, and it was powerful enough to deal with their ilk. </p><p>The alpha took several blasts to kill, the others only one or two, dying as they howled, as they bit at the tree and tried in vain to bring it down, as they tried to burrow back beneath the earth.</p><p>They all died all the same, and in a brief space of time, there was nothing left of them. </p><p>Sunset winced a little at the burning pain in her fingers, which felt as though they were about to start smoking, as well as throbbing achingly to demand her constant and unceasing attention. She wished that she’d brought a canteen of water to cool them down with, for what little good it might have done. </p><p>She looked down to make sure that she had gotten all of the creeps. There was no sign of any more of them crawling up from out of the ground, fortunately. </p><p>“Neat semblance,” Arslan said. “Very versatile.”</p><p>“So I’ve been told,” Sunset grunted. “Now, once we get down, we need to head south again.”</p><p>“'South'?” Arslan repeated. “What do we want to head south for?”</p><p>“Can you not hear the gunfire?” Sunset demanded.</p><p>“Do you not remember this is supposed to be a test?” Arslan replied. “Of course they’re in a fight; we’re all supposed to be in fights.”</p><p>“We agreed to keep in touch so that we could help each other if we needed it.”</p><p>“They haven’t called to say they need it.”</p><p>“It’s a little hard to do when you’re fighting for your life,” Sunset said tartly. “If it’s nothing to worry about, the worst that happens is that we have to spend just a little longer in this forest; now I don’t know about you, but I’d rather that than abandon my friends.”</p><p>Arslan sighed. “Sure, whatever. Let’s go check on everybody else. Maybe we’ll meet them halfway coming to check on us.”</p><p>“That would be lovely,” Sunset said. “We’ll start with-”</p><p>The shrill shriek of a nevermore split the sky.  </p><p>Sunset got up, balancing upon the branches of the tree, to see the avian grimm swooping through the air towards them. It was definitely at the larger end of the scale for its type, with black wings as wide as the Beacon docking pads and talons large enough to pick up an ursa in each one. Four red eyes burned in a bone mask covered in markings as red as blood. It cried out again as it dived towards them. </p><p>Sunset raised the palm of her hand, a bolt of magic leaping up to strike the nevermore upon its black-feathered breast. The grimm shrieked but did not deviate from its course. </p><p>It fell on Sunset, talons outstretched. </p><p>Sunset leapt from the tree, but too slow, or else the nevermore was too swift, for its black claws closed around her, pressing against her cuirass, squeezing her back as it carried her upwards into the blue above the forest, as though Sunset were a tortoise and the nevermore were an eagle which meant to drop her to the ground to smash her shell.</p><p>A knife flew out of the tree which had lately been Sunset’s perch, burying itself in the nevermore’s thigh as it ascended. The nevermore let out a harsh, croaking cry of pain and banked away, but as it flew, it carried Arslan with it, desperately clinging to the rope descending from her knife, bobbing up and down in the air as the wind ruffled through her wild mane and made her sashes flutter like streamers on a kite.</p><p>Arslan shouted something up to Sunset, but her words were snatched away by the air, and Sunset didn’t hear them.</p><p>“What?” Sunset yelled back.</p><p>“BOLIN!” Arslan roared. “BOLIN!”</p><p>Shamefully, it took Sunset a moment to realise what she meant, and when she realised, she was even more ashamed for not having come up with it herself. </p><p>
  <em>Give me a break; I haven’t been here long.</em>
</p><p>Her hand glowed as she sought to draw Soteria with telekinesis. It was wedged a little bit, stuck thanks to the way to that the nevermore was holding her so tight, but with a little wriggling and writhing in its grasp – the grimm took no notice; it probably just thought she was trying to escape – she was able to free the venerable black blade, holding it in the grip of her magic, carrying it along beside her but never bearing it into her hand. </p><p>She had different plans in mind. </p><p>Just as she had with Bolin, just as Arslan had suggested, Sunset wielded the blade with magic, not with her hands, and with her magic, she wielded the sword far beyond her own reach, guiding it, swathed in green telekinetic glow, upwards to where the nevermore’s right wing beat against the air. </p><p>Sunset slashed at the wing where it metmade the grimm’s body, slicing at those black feathers, slashing at them, hacking at them. The nevermore screamed and weaved from side to side, but if its aim was to throw off Sunset, it was grievously disappointed. Sunset’s grip, her magical grip, was not disturbed, and this sword, this blade of heroes, this artiefact of an older and a nobler world, clove through the wing slowly but with a relentless certainty.</p><p>The nevermore screamed again, and as it screamed, its talons opened, and it released Sunset. The world spun around her, and then it was only Sunset’s hair spinning around her as it covered her eyes so that there was nothing in her view, nothing in her world, but a wheel of fire consuming her vision. She felt the air rushing past her, and could only imagine the ground rushing towards her, before she grabbed herself in the grip of her own magic. </p><p>She preferred to teleport, as a rule, and growing up in Equestria, she had had nothing but contempt for those unicorns who used their telekinesis on themselves to levitate and play at flight as though they were pegasi. She had always wanted to fly for real, upon real wings, and had preferred to wait for the day when she would earn such instead of playing at a second-rate imitation of the same.</p><p>But in this situation, it seemed like the best course of action. </p><p>Sunset’s hair fell out of her face as she hung, suspended, on her back as though the air beneath her had frozen solid. </p><p>Sunset had scarcely a moment to marvel at it before a cry from Arslan alerted her to the fact that her temporary partner was also falling towards the ground. Sunset gritted her teeth as she grabbed her too, holding her face down and facing the earth, and she was just about able to grab Sol Invictus and Soteria as well and pull them towards her as she gently, slowly lowered everyone and everything safely down to plant them harmlessly down on the ground. </p><p>She took a deep breath. That was… not as bad as she’d thought it would be. She kind of wished she’d taken it up years ago. </p><p>She still preferred teleporting though, as a rule. </p><p>A shrill, angry cry alerted them to the fact that the nevermore, injured by still very much alive, was descending upon them. </p><p>Actually, it might be more accurate to say that it was falling, its body wobbling a little as its damaged wing proved unequal to the task of keeping it aloft. Nevertheless, if it was falling, it was clear that it had chosen to fall towards them instead of anywhere else it might have gone, and its angry cries were directed towards the pair of them. </p><p>“Grab your sword,” Arslan told her. “With your hands.”</p><p>“Why?” Sunset asked, although she did as she was bidden and clasped the ornamented hilt of Soteria in her grasp.</p><p>“Trust me,” Arslan said.</p><p>“Why?” Sunset repeated.</p><p>The nevermore landed, crushing trees to splinters beneath its bulk, kicking up a storm of dust and wood shavings that momentarily engulfed Sunset and Arslan and made them shield their eyes against it. </p><p>When the dust storm cleared, they both beheld the nevermore, its injured wing hanging limp and useless, its red eyes burning with rage; with its talons and its one good wing, it crawled along the ground towards them. </p><p>Sunset let out a wordless squawk of alarm as Arslan grabbed her bodily around the waist and picked her up, carrying her like the ball in a game as she – Arslan – ran towards the nevermore, her moccasin-clad feet pattering along the brown earth as she charged towards the grimm in a weaving pattern, sometimes coming closer to its head and sometimes further away. </p><p>The nevermore snapped at them, its beak of black closing around the empty air as Arslan dodged aside and then, still carrying Sunset, leapt up into the air with a fierce spring that carried her beyond the nevermore’s head and over its black and feather-covered form. </p><p>“Now!” Arslan yelled as, with unerring skill, she threw Sunset head-first towards the nevemore’s neck. </p><p>Sunset thrust out Soteria like a lance and buried the blade in the nape of the neck, just at the back of the bleached white skull.</p><p>The nevermore reared up, screaming in pain, its whole body convulsing for a moment before the entire monstrous creature flopped forwards onto the ground and began to smoke, turning to ashes before Sunset’s eyes. </p><p>Sunset withdrew her sword and leapt down onto the ground. “You could have told me that was your plan.”</p><p>Arslan grinned as she landed next to her. “Be honest: it was more fun finding out that way, wasn’t it?”</p><p>Sunset huffed. “Pyrrha would never just pick me up and throw me like that.”</p><p>“No, I bet she wouldn’t,” Arslan replied, “but I’m not Pyrrha Nikos, am I?”</p><p>Sunset rolled her eyes. “I thought you were over that.” She pulled out her scroll and checked her aura. “I’m at the top end of yellow; how about you?”</p><p>Arslan checked her level on her own scroll. “Same here. Still sure that this is what you want to do with your life?”</p><p>“What I want to do right now is make sure that my friends are okay,” Sunset declared. “We need to go…” She looked around, but of course the nevermore had carried them off… somewhere, somewhere with no sign of the path. “Hang on, just let me connect to the rest of my team.” She tapped away at her scroll; she could start off by linking back up to their scrolls, and then she could use that to locate them. Directory, Team SAPR-</p><p>“No,” Sunset whispered. “No, that can’t be right.”</p><p>“What?” Arslan asked.</p><p>“Ruby… Ruby’s aura’s broken,” Sunset muttered. “It’s gone.” Her hands shook as she sought to locate her partner – her real partner – via her scroll; she fumbled, she mistyped, she struggled to remember what to do because Ruby’s aura was broken, and she was out there with… with Blake. She had to remember that; Ruby wasn’t alone just because Sunset wasn’t there. She was with Blake, and Blake… Blake was made of the right stuff. Blake would keep Ruby safe until Sunset got there; there was no way Blake would let Ruby come to harm, not while there was breath in her. </p><p>That thought, that knowledge, that trust was about the only thing that let Sunset concentrate as she completed her task, manipulating the link between the two scrolls, homing in on Ruby, or her scroll at least; if she wasn’t with her scroll, then-</p><p>No. No, she couldn’t think about that. Ruby was with her scroll and Blake both, and Ruby’s scroll was – there! To the south, along the path that she and Blake had started on. It was a way, but Sunset could teleport there in leaps perhaps, jumping as far as she could see… would that leave her with enough magic when she got there? </p><p>She’d balance it out, judge it as it came.</p><p>But then there was the question of Arslan.</p><p>“Go,” Arslan said. “Tell me where you’re going, and I’ll catch up.”</p><p>Sunset sent her the location. “There,” she said. “How did you-?”</p><p>“You weren’t exactly hiding your worry,” Arslan told her. “Go. Help your friend. I’ll be right behind you.”</p><p>A mist began to creep into the clearing, a thick fog of impenetrable grey tinged with black, sweeping out of the trees, gliding towards them. </p><p>Arslan’s hands clenched into fists. “I’ll be right behind you… once I’ve taken care of whatever this is.”</p><p>“Are you sure?”</p><p>“Do you want whatever this is following you all the way back to your teammates?” Arslan asked. “Go. Save her. I’ll be fine.”</p><p>“You don’t even-”</p><p>“I am the Golden Lion of Mistral,” Arslan declared, settling into a fighting stance as the mist crept closer. “Only one person living can defeat me, and she doesn’t go around carrying a smoke machine. Now get out of here!”</p><p>Sunset didn’t need to be told a third time. “Thank you,” she said, and then she didn’t wait for Arslan to reply before she took to her heels, teleporting as far into the forest as she could see before starting to run, leaving the Golden Lion behind to face the fog.</p><p>
  <em>Hang on, Ruby, I’m coming.</em>
</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0068"><h2>68. Golden Lion</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Arslan fights alone, while Ozpin and Ironwood find their hands tied.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Golden Lion</p><p> </p><p>Arslan watched the mist and waited for the appearance of whatever monster the mist should herald. And, as she waited, she narrated to herself. </p><p>
  <em>My lords, ladies, gentlemen, and citizens, you are about to witness an extraordinary and unique display! Right here, for one day only, we are proud to present an exhibition match between Arslan Altan, the Golden Lion of Mistral, and-</em>
</p><p>The grimm emerged from out of the woods wreathed in smoke and shadow, and yet so tall that it rose above them both. </p><p>
  <em>-and the ugliest thing I have ever seen.</em>
</p><p>It was a mushroom. It was a grimm mushroom with arms and legs. It was black, as all grimm were, although the mushroom cap which sat atop its head like a kind of hat was covered in red flashes and stripes, none of which stopped it from looking like it had gone rotten from neglect. Its face was a white bone mask but which kind of resembled a flattened version of a human face, at least as far as the jaw; its mouth, if it had one, was covered up by oily black tentacles that dangled down from its bony mask. Its eyes were red as burning coals and gleamed in the mist above the flat nose and the dangling tentacles. Its arms were as thick as tree trunks and ended in a trio of crab-like claws – they too were white; their thickness was the layer of bony armour that covered them, and from each arm, a quartet of sharp white spines protruded – while its legs were thicker still and stumpy in the extreme. </p><p>Arslan had never seen anything like it, and a part of her wished that she’d paid a little more attention in class. </p><p>She bared her teeth. Never mind what it was; with the way that it was plodding forward, it obviously couldn’t move very fast; she could run rings around it easily. It might be tough, but so long as she stayed away from those arms and hit it from behind or from the flanks, then she’d be fine. </p><p>She’d have this wrapped up in moments, and then she could catch up with Sunset. </p><p>Arslan’s bared teeth turned into a somewhat snarling smile. She crouched down, bending even lower to the ground. </p><p>A low hissing sound escaped the hideous grimm as it bore down upon her, moving slowly, its steps thudding upon the ground. The mist advanced before it.</p><p>
  <em>Three, two, one… begin!</em>
</p><p>Arslan kicked off, dashing swiftly forwards; lions were faster than men, and when it came to pure running speed, she was a mite faster than Pyrrha was. She wasn’t faster when it came to the exchange of blows in battle, worse luck, but that wasn’t going to be a problem here. She charged straight for it, her mind dashing faster than her feet as it planned out her movements in her head, predicting the grimm’s countermoves as the fight played out in her mind’s eye long before a single punch was thrown or kick was made. She would feint a direct assault, then swerve at the last possible moment and come at it from the left.</p><p>She charged into the mist and staggered to a halt, a sudden cough rising from out of the depths of her throat. She stopped, one hand involuntarily clutching her chest, as she coughed twice more. </p><p>The grimm hissed as it advanced upon her.</p><p>Arslan shook her head. She needed to shake this. She couldn’t be distracted by hayfever or whatever now. She needed to- she coughed again, more violently this time, her body close to doubling over as it shook with the strain of her coughing. She couldn’t breathe. Her eyes were watering, she couldn’t see clearly; Arslan coughed again, hard enough to make her head ache from the vibrations; she breathed in deeply, desperately, breathing in of the mist around her and yet feeling as though she hadn’t breathed at all. </p><p>The mist… the mist…the mist! Some grimm, they… they had special properties, right? It wasn’t just the ones who ripped your arms and ate your face, was it? There… there were stories, legends, grimm who could turn you into stone if you looked at them, grimm who… grimm who…</p><p>The grimm continued to plod forwards, and this time, the rattle from its throat sounded a lot like snickering laughter. </p><p>Arslan coughed again, and this time, she really was bent double, coughing and spluttering and choking on the mist. She had to get out of here. She had to… she had to… she had to…</p><p>
  <em>She had to get on the chariot. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Arslan blinked rapidly as the sun fell down upon her face. What… what had she been thinking about just then? </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Miss Altan, is everything alright?” Professor Lionheart asked solicitously.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Um… yes, Professor, everything’s fine, I think,” Arslan said. “I was just… for a moment, I felt as though I was somewhere else.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Professor Lionheart chuckled genially. “Daydreaming, Miss Altan? Why, isn’t this day enough of a dream come true without dreaming of other things?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Arslan laughed. “Sorry, Professor. I didn’t mean to keep Mistral waiting.”</em>
</p><p><em>Yes. That was right. Mistral was waiting for her. Mistral was waiting for </em>her<em>. For Arslan Altan, a kid from the lower slopes. She had been born to nothing, yet today, the city waited upon her, lined the streets to celebrate her triumph.</em></p><p>
  <em>For today, she was the Champion. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The chariot was waiting. It was pulled by four white horses in harness of deep crimson, and the chariot itself was gold and engraved with images of the gods of old Mistral: Seraphis, the lord of the sky, and his sister-wife Re; Tithys, the lord of the ocean, and his bride Amphitryte and their seven sea-nymph daughters. The chariot was large enough for three, and the driver was already aboard and waiting for Arslan. Waiting too was Victory, the personification of martial triumph over one’s enemies. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Okay, so the woman actually waiting for her in the chariot was a classically trained actress with a good theatrical pedigree, but she was dressed as Victory, with a golden wig and a crested helmet on her head and a cloak of spun gold worn over the shoulders of her gilded cuirass. She held a spear in one hand, and a shield decorated with the snarling head of a manticore was on her arm. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Victory and the driver alike were waiting upon Arslan. Everyone was waiting on Arslan. Already the streets would be lined with crowds, and the Lord Steward himself would be waiting for her at the Temple of Victory. All she had to do was get in the chariot. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>All she had to do was get in the chariot, and she would be borne through the streets, showered with accolades, praised beyond measure until the cheering of the crowd lifted her up to heaven itself. Then the Steward would place the laurel wreath upon her brow, and she would enter the temple and dedicate the supreme spoils. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>She would be immortal. Eternal glory was hers, would be hers once she walked into that temple. Her name would be recorded as a Champion of Mistral alongside the likes of Peter the Wolf; of Heracleia, who had worn a lionskin and who had been Arslan’s idol growing up; alongside the name of Pyrrha Nikos, the Invincible Girl. They would be equals at last. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Pyrrha. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Arslan frowned. “Professor… what am I doing here?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Professor Lionheart blinked. “Whatever do you mean, child? You are the Champion of Mistral, and everyone is waiting for you.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I know that, Professor, and I’m sorry to keep everyone waiting, but… how did I get here? Why am I the champion? How did I beat Pyrrha? I don’t remember it at all.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Professor Lionheart chuckled. “How did you defeat Pyrrha? Why, Miss Altan, surely, you know the answer to that? You didn’t. Pyrrha has retired, don’t you recall?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yes. Yes, that was right. Yes, Arslan remembered now. Pyrrha had retired. Pyrrha had quit, walked away from it all. And so Arslan, unchallenged, had walked to victory, trampling all other fighters to dust beneath her chariot wheels. Michael, Vespa, Phoebe, none of them could stand before her. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>And so, this was the hour of the lion. Her hour. This was all she’d ever wanted. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Wasn’t it?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Then why did it feel so hollow? So empty?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Why did the idea of getting on that chariot feel so wrong?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Miss Altan,” Professor Lionheart said. “Everyone is waiting for you. Mistral is waiting.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Arslan shook her head. “I’m not sure that I want this, Professor.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Not sure if you want it?” Professor Lionheart repeated, aghast. “Miss Altan, we are talking about being the Champion of Mistral! Your name will live on so long as the city endures!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I know,” Arslan murmured. “And I want it, more than anything-“</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Then take it.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I can’t.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Miss Altan, why in Remnant not?!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Because I want to earn it,” Arslan insisted.</em>
</p><p><em>“You </em>have<em> earned it; you have triumphed in the arena-”</em></p><p>
  <em>“Not where it counts,” Arslan declared. “Not in the battle that matters the most. I mean no insult to my fellow fighters… well, okay, maybe I do, but they’ll all understand because any one of them would feel the same way in my place. I want to be the Champion, but not by default. I don’t want to catch the laurel as it falls down from on high; I want to pry the honours from off Pyrrha’s brow while she fights to keep them with every breath! I want to win. I want to earn all this. All this… this isn’t what I want at all.</em>
</p><p>It disappeared: the chariot, the actress dressed as Victory, Professor Lionheart, all of it gone. She wasn’t in Mistral any more. She was…</p><p>She was in the Emerald Forest, on her knees in a clearing there, and that ugly grimm was looming over her, glaring balefully down upon her, bringing down one of its crab claws to crush her head like a ripened watermelon. </p><p>Arslan’s hands moved as swift as thought; with one hand, she blocked the claw aiming for her head, slamming her hand into the claw with a jarring thud; with the other hand, as she rose to her feet, she swung for the grimm’s face. </p><p>It brought its own free claw in to block her in turn, moving faster than she would have thought, based on how slowly it walked; her hand slid off the protruding spines that jutted from the bone. </p><p>Arslan leapt away in a springing backflip that carried her across the meadow; she landed on her hands and then sprung again, landing on her feet this time, a greater distance from the grimm. </p><p>The mist had gone. It had vanished as though it had never been. Arslan could breathe again. It was as though it couldn’t affect her now that she’d fought it off the first time. </p><p>Probably that was <em>exactly</em> how it worked. </p><p>She grinned. “Not that it’s gonna matter now, but if you want to trap me in a hallucination, give me something that I earned.”</p><p>The grimm hissed at her. </p><p>
  <em>Lords, ladies, gentlemen, and citizens, we apologise for that interruption; the fight will resume immediately.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Okay. He’s a little faster with his arms than I expected. But how quick does he turn?</em>
</p><p>Arslan dashed forwards, feinting a frontal assault, just as she had planned to do before; only this time, there was no hallucinatory mist to get in her way.</p><p>
  <em>This time, you're mine!</em>
</p><p>The grimm hissed; it did not advance to meet her but stayed rooted to the spot on which it stood, planting its vast legs wide apart, waiting for her with its claws held up before it as though to shield its face.</p><p>Arslan raced ahead, closing the distance between the monster and the gladiator, waiting until the last possible moment, when she turned, sidestepping with a dancer's grace and the swiftness of a plains predator to come at the grimm not from the front but from the side, her fist snapping outwards to strike-</p><p>The grimm turned. No, it didn't turn; it swivelled; it moved as though its whole body was flexible, as though there was nothing to stop its upper body moving ninety degrees at the waist while its legs remained still.</p><p>Obviously, there was nothing stopping it, but that didn't make it any less bizarre to look at. The grimm swivelled and caught Arslan's punch upon the thick bony armour of one claw.</p><p>With the other spine-protruding claw, it struck her with a backhand blow while she was too surprised by what had just happened to react; it hit Arslan hard enough to knock her across the clearing, slamming her into a tree so hard that the trunk cracked. She didn't need to look at her scroll to know that her aura had just dropped more than a little.</p><p>
  <em>What a turn of speed! Could Arslan be in trouble this time?</em>
</p><p>Arslan leapt back up to her feet.</p><p>
  <em>But she's back on her feet and ready for more with no sign of giving up, and isn't that what we love her for in the end? That she's a girl who never gives up?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It's that or my charity work.</em>
</p><p>She went for it again, trying to find an angle, trying to find an opening, trying to find somewhere that she could get at it where it would be too slow off the mark to defend itself.</p><p>If such a place existed, it was hard to find. This thing was slow on its feet, but its claws were like lightning, and the way it contorted its body like rubber meant that it had no difficulty getting into position to oppose; whether she came at it from behind or from the flanks, she would always find its face waiting for her, and both claws too.</p><p>It didn't score another big hit on her – she was ready for it by now and no longer taken by surprise – but the fact that it couldn't hit her wasn't much comfort, considering that she couldn't land a solid hit on it either.</p><p>She wasn't even getting much of the measure of it, or if she was, it was a measure that suggested that in a slugging match, she might falter before it did. Whenever they came together, from whatever angle they came together, the pattern was always the same: Arslan's attempt to find an unprotected spot was frustrated, and the two would be left furiously trading blows, fists and claws alike a blur of motion, block followed by counterblock followed by a counter to the counter. Arslan's hands met claws again and again, neither able to land a decisive blow. But always, it was Arlsan who retreated, wary of a misstep, wary of the grimm slipping through her guard to land another devastating blow to take her aura down into the red.</p><p>She retreated, leaping away from an enemy that did not pursue her. She was reminded uncomfortably of the first time that she had ever fought Pyrrha: Arslan had strutted into the arena expecting to find an aristocratic dilettante; instead, she had found a warrior.</p><p>And she didn't have four years to spend losing to this thing.</p><p>
  <em>And it looks like this battle is at a stalemate, but Arslan's aura is chipped away with every strike! What can the Golden Lion do to bring this match to a conclusion before her aura runs out?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I don't know yet, okay, just give me a second.</em>
</p><p>Arslan took a deep breath, waiting, watching her enemy.</p><p>Her enemy who made no move to come to her. The grimm appeared to have given up on walking as all a bit much. It simply stood, rooted to the earth.</p><p>Rooted.</p><p>
  <em>That's it!</em>
</p><p>Arslan charged again, rushing forward once again, heading straight for her opponent. The grimm was facing her, and once more, it let out that snickering sound as the tentacles that hung down beneath its mask shook back and forth.</p><p>
  <em>And another frontal charge from Arslan! Does she have anything at all up her sleeve?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Keep watching and you'll find out.</em>
</p><p>It was facing her, but because of the fact that it only turned the upper half of its body in any direction, its legs were side-on to her, one after another.</p><p>And so, this time, as she charged, Arslan did not turn, did not attempt to flank or slip around the rear; this time, as she charged, she dropped to the ground and skidded the rest of the way, sweeping the grimm's legs out from under it with a single kick.</p><p>The grimm topped, claws flailing, the eyes in its mask seeming to widen as it fell down towards and upon her. Arslan struck before it had the chance, a palm strike straight to the face which, amplified by a touch of her aura expelled outwards, hurled the flailing grimm up into the air.</p><p>
  <em>And the crowd goes wild!</em>
</p><p>Arslan leapt up after it, her legs propelling into the air, flying like a rocket towards her enemy, one fist cocked back.</p><p>Arslan enjoyed the look of seeming helplessness upon the face of the grimm before she slammed her fist right into its mask, putting more than half of her remaining aura behind a blow so powerful that it shattered the grimm's face and punched a hole clean through its body.</p><p>It was turning to ash which drifted away on the wind as Arslan landed on the ground once more.</p><p>
  <em>Look at that! Look at that! I can kill monsters as easily as you can, Pyrrha!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I just don't want to, is all.</em>
</p><p>Arslan stood, alone in the clearing, one fist raised in triumph; she held the pose for a moment before she slumped forwards. That had been tougher than she had expected. If inspiration hadn't struck her when it did… she would have died. It was enough to make you believe that, as the old stories put it, some god was putting ideas into your mind.</p><p>More to the point, this was what Pyrrha wanted? When all the glories of Mistral lay at her feet, she wanted to spend her time battling monsters who might, without warning, turn out to be so much stronger than you expected them to be?</p><p>So much stronger than you?</p><p>Arslan didn't know if that made Pyrrha touched in the head… or just incredibly brave.</p><p>Or both. Both was always a possibility.</p><p>Arslan had come to the great heroic epics of Mistral comparatively late; it had taken her until last year to work up the courage to try <em>The Mistraliad</em>, even though it was supposed to be a must-read for circuit fighters like her. She'd loved it, no questions about that, just as there was no doubt in Arslan's mind that it had been written – or composed, whatever – by a warrior, by someone who understood what it was to fight for glory and to ensure that you were not forgotten, but she had also felt that, alongside the courage and the ambition that drove on the heroes, there was also a touch of… obsession, madness, call it what you like, but it was there. She hadn't been able to ignore it.</p><p>If Pyrrha had that too, then… Arslan supposed it made sense.</p><p>The screeching of a nevermore flying overhead reminded Arslan that the day was not yet done. She checked her scroll as she retreated into the cover of the trees; her aura was deeper in the yellow than it had been before, almost but not quite in the red. And Ruby Rose, Sunset's real partner, was somewhere to the south of her.</p><p>Arslan gritted her teeth and hoped she had enough aura left for more fighting before the day was out as she set off in the direction.</p><hr/><p>This, Ozpin had to admit, was not going at all well. </p><p>These exercises were supposed to be challenging, of course; all of the students had signed up for an occupation where death was not only a fact of life but a quite likely possibility, and so it was fitting that even the exercises that they undertook carried with them at least the risk of death or serious injury. </p><p>That was why they had practical exercises like this, pitting the students against the grimm in their natural habitat, putting their lives upon the line. That was why the forest had been baited in order to draw grimm to where the students were, because this was not supposed to be a walk through the woods but a battle against the creatures of darkness. </p><p>And yet, he had not anticipated that there would be quite so many grimm drawn to the students. </p><p>It was not just that the students were finding the exercise challenging; rather that, as he flicked through the views offered by some of the cameras embedded throughout the forest, Ozpin found that he was witnessing the exercise descend into chaos. Mister Arc and Mister Sentry were on the run, Miss Sparkle and Mister Ayana were not doing very much better. Miss Rose was down, and only the valour and prodigious skill of Miss Belladonna was keeping Summer’s girl alive. </p><p>Miss Shimmer and Miss Altan, he had last seen being carried off by a nevermore. He had not been able to find them since. For all he knew, they were both dead already. </p><p>It was a risk. Death was a huntress’ closest companion, one who would stay by their sides when all friends forsook them. Sometimes, death took those who showed the greatest promise; it was no respecter of potential, nor did it care that its latest victim might have their whole life before them. </p><p>If Miss Shimmer and Miss Altan were dead, then he did not find the fact incredible, but he was more than a little concerned that so much hell was breaking loose in the Emerald Forest now. </p><p>“Peter,” Ozpin said mildly, “just how many lures did you set in the forest?”</p><p>“Not enough to cause this, Oz!” Port protested vehemently. “I expected to lure in groups of beowolves or ursai at intervals, not to draw in so many grimm all at once!”</p><p>“Of course,” Ozpin said. “Forgive me, I… I had to make sure.” In truth, he should not have doubted Peter’s skill and judgement in the matter; for all that some of the students found it hard to look past his manner, Professor Port knew what he was doing, and he would not have made a miscalculation like this. </p><p>Unfortunately, accidents happened from time to time, and the grimm were wild creatures. Only one person could control them, or predict what they might do, and he was not that person. </p><p>More important than the question of how this had happened – a question without an answer if ever there was one – was the question of what to do about it. </p><p>He was not inherently opposed to the idea of letting the exercise continue. They were, some of them at least, some of the most gifted students to walk the halls of Beacon in many a year; Miss Altan was reckoned second only to Miss Nikos in her skill at arms in her own kingdom; Miss Sparkle was a weak link, true, but Ozpin had faith that the others would protect her. If they survived, they would emerge from this far stronger and with a belief in themselves that would carry them through the – perhaps far harder – challenges to come. </p><p>If they did not…</p><p>Ozpin closed his eyes. That was the rub, wasn’t it? If they did not survive, then so much would have been lost in those young lives and all the promise that they represented.</p><p>So much might have been lost already. </p><p>In any event, it was clear that the exercise could not continue as planned; nevermores were beginning to fill the skies over the Emerald Forest – the most visible sign that things were not going wholly according to plan – and they would make inserting any more students into the forest by air fraught with risk for both the pilots and the students. For that matter, they would make getting the students already in the forest out again more than a little difficult under the current circumstances. </p><p>Ozpin’s eyes were drawn inexorably upwards, to where one of James’ unspeakably hideous cruisers was currently defacing the skyline nearby. </p><p>An eyesore it might have been, but, well…</p><p><em>Unfortunately, I think he will be too upset that I put Miss Sparkle in this position to be smug about this. A pity; I would rather endure his smugness than his righteous anger. </em>Under certain circumstances, Ozpin found James in the full flow of his temper to be rather magnificent; just not when it was directed at him. </p><p>However, before he could get in touch with James and ask him on bended knee ‘please, sir, will your armed might rescue my students?’ Ozpin himself received a communication from Councillor Novo Aris.</p><p>Ozpin endeavoured to conceal the impatience from his face and voice as he answered. “Madame Councillor, ordinarily, it would be a delight to speak with you, but I’m afraid-”</p><p>“Oh, is this inconvenient for you?” Novo asked. “Then perhaps you’ll begin to understand how I feel every time I have to deal with some more of your nonsense; something which I cannot help but notice is becoming more and more frequent.”</p><p>“It does seem we are living in interesting times at present, Madame Councillor, and I would be happy to discuss your concerns-”</p><p>“What concerns me presently,” Novo said, “is the fact that the Civil Defence hotline is being besieged with callers reporting Nevermore sightings to the northwest. Which would put them over the Emerald Forest, if I’m not mistaken.”</p><p>“You are not, Madame Councillor,” Ozpin admitted.</p><p>“What’s going on, Ozpin?” Novo demanded wearily.</p><p>“An exercise for some of our students in the Emerald Forest appears to have gotten just a little out of hand,” Ozpin confessed.</p><p>“‘An exercise,’” Novo repeated. “I see. Carry on with that, then, and I shall brief the press that there is nothing to worry about.”</p><p>“Indeed, Madame Councillor, I was just about to request the assistance of the Atlesian forces in clearing the skies. You may rest assured that-”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>Ozpin blinked. “No, Madame Councillor.”</p><p>“No, you will not request the assistance of the Atlesians,” Novo declared. “Their forces will remain protecting Vale and not make any aggressive movements. If the Atlesians move to engage these grimm, then it proves that there <em>was</em> something to worry about and that this was <em>not</em> a simple and routine exercise for your students. Ozpin, this city cannot afford any more panic-inducing crises.”</p><p>Normally, Ozpin was very much in favour of doing everything possible to avoid panic, but in these particular circumstances, he felt compelled to say, “Madame Councillor I have students in the forest whom aid cannot reach so long as those nevermores dominate the skies.”</p><p>“Isn’t that what they signed up for?” Novo asked tartly.</p><p>“In a manner of speaking, yes, but… I implore you, Madame Councillor, if nothing is done, they will die.”</p><p>Councillor Aris was silent for a moment. “That,” she said softly, “is regrettable, but my decision stands. Handle this yourself however you wish, but you will not involve the Atlesians or the Valish Defence Forces; do I make myself clear?”</p><p>Ozpin fought the desire to throw his scroll off the landing pad. “Crystal clear, Madame Councillor.”</p><p>So. That was that. He had to have faith in the students. Some of them, to be sure, were well-worthy of such faith. They had done so much already, and if they lived…</p><p>If they lived, then their legends would be burnished yet brighter still. </p><p>He had to have faith in them.</p><p>And hope his faith was not misplaced. </p><hr/><p>General Ironwood paused for a moment from reading a report on the state of repairs made to the Green Line to wonder how the exercise in the Emerald Forest was proceeding. </p><p>He would never be so childish as to admit the fact, but there was a part of him that was hoping his students managed to outdo Oz’s in the forest, in the same way that he hoped they would in the Vytal Festival.</p><p>Some might call it petty, to which General Ironwood would reply that you couldn’t climb to the very summit of your profession without having some sense of pride in your accomplishments.</p><p>And besides, it was good to cut Oz down to size every now and then. It made him seem a little less remote. Less like a god. </p><p>Oh, well. That was some news to look forward to later. </p><p>He returned to reading the report. Good progress was being made by the CBs. If, in the worst case scenario, a major attack fell on them, they would be able to fight it from behind adequate defences if this kept up.</p><p>A low whistling sound, and the flashing green light on his desk that accompanied it, alerted Ironwood to the fact that he was getting a call from the <em>Valiant</em>’s CIC.</p><p>General Ironwood pushed the small grey button that sat just below the blinking light. “This is Ironwood.”</p><p>“Sir,” the voice belonged to Ensign Brentwood, one of the comms officers aboard the <em>Valiant</em>. He was a young man, only eighteen years old, and his voice shook a little. “Sir, we’re picking up large numbers of nevermores concentrating over the Emerald Forest. Spitfire is requesting reinforcements and permission to engage.” </p><p>Spitfire, leader of Wonderbolt Squadron, was leading the CAP this morning; if this did turn into an air fight, that would go down as quite a lucky break for the Atlesians.</p><p>General Ironwood frowned. “Did you say the Emerald Forest?”</p><p>“Yes, sir.”</p><p>General Ironwood rose to his feet. “How many nevermores?”</p><p>“Twenty, sir, most of them are just circling at the moment; one or two are diving for the ground.”</p><p>“Tell Spitfire to adopt a defensive posture and await further orders; I’m on my way to the bridge,” Ironwood said.</p><p>“Uh, yes, sir.”</p><p>General Ironwood strode for the door, and as he did so, he pulled out his scroll. As the door into his office slid open – and the marine on guard outside saluted him, a gesture Ironwood acknowledged perfunctorily with one hand – he was pulling Ozpin out of his directory. </p><p>As he strode down the corridors of the <em>Valiant</em>, his boots thudding upon the metal flooring, he was calling the old man.</p><p>Ozpin replied voice only, and the voice that emerged from out of the scroll was a little tight. “James, I take it that you’re calling about the situation in the Emerald Forest.”</p><p>“I was calling about the situation over the forest,” Ironwood corrected. “What’s going on <em>inside</em> the forest?”</p><p>“It appears that the lures set up to draw in grimm for the exercise may have worked a little too well,” Ozpin replied. “I must say I didn’t anticipate this level of grimm activity.”</p><p>Ironwood paused in his stride for a moment. “How bad is it?”</p><p>“Nothing that our students can’t handle, I hope,” Ozpin said. “Not least because it’s impossible to get them out in the present circumstances; with all of those nevermores about, it would be madness to risk Bullheads in the area.”</p><p>“My pilots want to clear the skies for you,” Ironwood pointed out.</p><p>“I’m sure they do, James,” Ozpin replied, a slight sigh entering his voice. “When one has a skill, one wants to put it to good use, after all. But I’m afraid that I must decline. Councillor Aris insists upon it.”</p><p>“What?” Ironwood demanded.</p><p>“She is afraid that the deployment of your forces will suggest that something is amiss,” Ozpin explained. “She wishes everything to proceed as normal, in order to prevent a panic.”</p><p>Ironwood’s jaw tightened. Panic, panic, always panic! Ozpin, the Council, everyone was so concerned with avoiding panic. You didn’t avoid panic by sticking your head in a hole and pretending that the problem wasn’t there; yes, you might steal some peace of mind for a little while, but only until the problem reminded you that it was very much there by chewing on your leg. You avoided panic by putting the problem down, quickly and with extreme prejudice. </p><p>But this was Vale, and the Valish got to set the rules. Up to a point. </p><p>“Who’s down there?” he asked.</p><p>“Sunset Shimmer, Ruby Rose, Jaune Arc,” Ozpin said.</p><p>“Are you sure that this was unintended?”</p><p>“James, please, their presence is a complete coincidence.”</p><p>“And you’re willing to risk their lives?” Ironwood asked.</p><p>“I don’t like this any more than you do, but the Council is a fact of life, and Councillor Aris still looks set to win re-election, meaning that I must continue to deal with her and her party for the foreseeable future. As for the students, I have no doubt… no, James, you know me better than that; I am besieged by doubt. Yet I have hope that they will rise to the occasion, just as their predecessors did so long ago. They are joined by Blake Belladonna, in whom you should also have every confidence, Arslan Altan and Sage Ayana of Haven Academy, and…”</p><p>The fact that he hesitated told Ironwood that he wasn’t going to like whatever Ozpin had to say next. “Go on,” he demanded.</p><p>“Twilight Sparkle.”</p><p>“Damn it, Oz!”</p><p>“She is joined in the forest by a very capable Haven Student-”</p><p><em>A capable Haven student; are you sure that’s not an oxymoron?</em> Ironwood thought bitterly. “You sent Twilight in the first wave, and now she’s stuck in the forest when all hell breaks loose?”</p><p>“You chose to have her masquerade as a student, James; was I not supposed to indulge your little charade?”</p><p>“You could have not indulged it quite so much,” Ironwood replied. “I’m calling Councillor Aris myself.”</p><p>“I wish you luck, James, really I do,” Ozpin said. “Let me know if you have the green light to send in your forces.”</p><p>“I will,” James agreed before he hung up the call. </p><p>He called Councillor Aris immediately.</p><p>She answered quickly enough and did not look all that surprised to see him. “Good morning, General Ironwood,” she said. “The answer is no.”</p><p>“You haven’t even heard the question, Councillor.”</p><p>“You want to unleash your forces on those nevermores over the Emerald Forest,” Councillor Aris said. “Or am I wrong?”</p><p>“No,” Ironwood admitted. “You are not, Councillor.”</p><p>“Then the answer is no.”</p><p>“Councillor, I have a student down there in the forest-”</p><p>“And their plight is unfortunate, but I must take a broader view of these matters,” Councillor Aris declared. “I would have thought that you would be able to do the same.”</p><p>“My view is clear enough, Councillor,” Ironwood stated firmly.</p><p>Councillor Aris sucked in a breath sharply. “If the people believe that there is a grimm attack in progress, they will panic-”</p><p>“There will be no panic, because my forces will take care of this before there is time to panic,” Ironwood declared.</p><p>“And that panic will bring more grimm to the door!” Councillor Aris said.</p><p>“Then we will fight them too and kill them too!” Ironwood shouted. “Councillor, there are lives at stake.”</p><p>“Yes,” Councillor Aris agreed. “There are lives at stake, millions of lives, a city’s worth of lives. And for their sake, your ships will remain deployed over Vale, as they are now.”</p><p>General Ironwood noted that if this had been Atlas, he would have already hung up on the Council by now and done whatever he felt was right regardless, but this was not Atlas, and he was only here by the consent of the Valish council, consent which could be withdrawn at any time. If he acted now to save Twilight, then he would lose the ability to protect all his students against anything that might happen later. </p><p><em>Damn you, Councillor. </em>“Councillor, I must protest.”</p><p>“That is your right,” Councillor Aris said. “Contravening my instructions in this is not. Good day, General.” She hung up.</p><p>Ironwood gritted his teeth and fought the desire to make a dent in the wall. It might make him feel better, but it might alarm some of the younger officers and personnel. </p><p>Nevertheless, it took him a minute to collect himself. This was why he hated politics.</p><p>Once he had composed himself as an officer ought to be composed, Ironwood made his way to the bridge. As the door opened to admit him, a shrill whistle cut through the air of the CIC.</p><p>“General on deck!”</p><p>“Signal the <em>Colton</em>,” Ironwood commanded as he strode into the midst of the command centre, a nest of consoles and command stations being crewed by young men and women in the whites of the Atlesian navy, while older and more senior officers kept diligent watch over them. “I want Wonderbolt, Red, and Blue squadrons in the air immediately. And get me Spitfire on the line.”</p><p>“Aye aye, sir.”</p><p>In a moment, the harsh voice of Captain Spitfire of the Wonderbolts filled the bridge. “This is Wonderbolt Leader.”</p><p>“Wonderbolt Leader, this is General Ironwood,” Ironwood said, “you are to form up Wonderbolt and Red Squadrons above the Green Line and hold position until I direct you otherwise. You are not to engage the grimm unless they come within two clicks of your position. <em>Vigilant</em> and <em>Courageous</em> will provide close support. Do you understand?” The Green Line was still technically ‘over Vale,’ so he wasn’t breaking the First Councillor’s edict, even if he wasn’t bending it as much as he might have liked to be able to. </p><p>“I don’t really understand why we’re not shooting them up, sir.”</p><p><em>You’re not the only one.</em> “The students are conducting an exercise in the Emerald Forest, and the Valish Council has decided to let it continue undisturbed.”</p><p>Spitfire was silent for a moment. “Permission to speak freely, sir?”</p><p>“Granted.”</p><p>“That’s a lot of nevermores, General, and they’re just kids. We don’t have to bomb the forest, but we could at least clear the skies for them.”</p><p>“The Council disagrees.”</p><p>“Medical evac is going to be hot with those nevermores around, sir.”</p><p>“Thank you, Captain, I’m aware!” Ironwood yelled. He took a deep breath. “I am aware. And you have your orders.”</p><p>“Yes sir,” Spitfire said. “Sorry, sir.”</p><p>“No need to apologise for being right,” Ironwood said. “Ironwood out.” To his officers on the bridge, he added, “Have Blue Squadron and the <em>Resolution</em> take up position over Beacon; if any of those nevermores come close to the cliffs, they’re to let them have it with both barrels.”</p><p>“Aye aye, sir.”</p><hr/><p>The last straw for Pyrrha was the Atlesian cruiser, flanked on either side by smaller combat airships, gliding in a stately fashion over the school towards the cliffs. </p><p>That was the point when it became impossible to deny that something had gone wrong. That was the point at which she could no longer tell herself that she was worrying over nothing. A warship, with escorts out, was heading towards the cliffs, or even to the Emerald Forest beyond. </p><p>They weren’t doing that because they wanted a better view of an exercise that was going perfectly. </p><p>A glance at Team RSPT confirmed that they were thinking the same thing. </p><p>The question was, 'what were they going to do about it? '</p><p>What was <em>she</em> going to do about it?</p><p>She might have added 'what was Professor Ozpin going to do about it?' but, even as she thought it, she realised that was almost beside the point. Yes, he was the headmaster, and yes, she had been brought up to respect her elders and her betters, but in this moment, none of that mattered. Not even the fact that Sunset, Ruby, Jaune, or even Blake wouldn’t have hesitated to come to her aid if she were in trouble mattered right now. </p><p>“What’s going on?” Penny asked.</p><p>“We don’t know, Penny,” Ciel replied. “We are in the dark.”</p><p>“That’s a figure of speech, isn’t it?”</p><p>“Yes, Penny, yes, it is,” Ciel murmured.</p><p>“I’m going to call the General,” Rainbow said. “He must know what’s going on, or he wouldn’t have deployed a cruiser.”</p><p>“Do that,” Pyrrha said. “I hope you catch up.” Because it didn’t matter what General Ironwood was doing or what he wanted from Rainbow Dash and the rest of Team RSPT either. </p><p>All that mattered, in this moment, was that her friends had need of her.</p><p>So Pyrrha turned and pushed her way gently through the mass of students all around her, and once she was free of the press, she began to run. </p><p>She ran, heedless of Professor Port’s voice calling out to her, heedless of the sound of her scroll buzzing, heedless of all of it except the need. </p><p>Her feet carried her swiftly; she was not as fast as Ruby; she could not run so swiftly that she could run over the ocean without wetting her feet, as Camilla of old was reputed to have done; but nevertheless, she had been blessed with fast feet as well as strong arms, and those fast feet bore her winged speed over the grassy lawns and paved paths of Beacon. </p><p>It did not take Pyrrha too long to realise that she was not running alone. She glanced to her side to see Cinder Fall keeping pace with her.</p><p>“I hope you don’t mind the company,” Cinder managed to drawl even while running, “but if Sunset is in difficulty, I’d like to be of assistance.”</p><p>Pyrrha would have dearly liked to refuse her, but in the circumstances, it would have been not only rude but foolish too; they might need all the help they could get.</p><p>And so they ran on, passing beneath the Atlesian cruiser as it held position just beyond the tower, passing into and without its shadow, running towards the cliffs as their hair streamed out behind them. </p><p>They would be fine. They would all be fine. So Pyrrha told herself, to calm the beating of a heart that was pounding fast enough already simply with running. </p><p>They would be fine. They would all be fine. Because she would rescue them. </p><p>The sunlight glimmered off her armour, and Pyrrha’s red hair trailed behind her like a banner as she leapt from the cliff and plunged, headfirst, into the forest.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0069"><h2>69. No Hero</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Twilight struggles to survive</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>No Hero</p><p> </p><p>Twilight yelled incoherently as she fired the laser carbine mounted to her arm. Lavender bolts emerged in a constant crackling stream to strike the flank of the ursa major that straddled Sage’s unmoving form. </p><p>Some of the bolts struck the plates of bleached bone that served as armour on the creature’s side, others avoided plates and spurs alike to thud into the black flesh of the beast itself; neither seemed to do the grimm any harm. </p><p>But they did attract its attention. </p><p>The ursa major turned its enormous head, with those jaws that looked strong enough to snap Twilight in two and large enough to swallow her torso whole, towards her. It let out an angry huff in her direction before rearing up onto its hind legs and turning its whole considerably muscular bulk in her direction.</p><p>The wordless shout died in Twilight’s throat. “Okay,” she murmured. “Now I’ve got your attention, aha.”</p><p>She took a step back. </p><p>A beowolf, perhaps – hopefully – the last one that was still alive from the group that had waylaid them, poked its head out of the bushes.</p><p>Twilight yelped in alarm and pointed her arm towards it, lavender laser bolts erupting one after another. </p><p>She kept on firing long after the beowolf’s head had been blown clean off by the third bolt. The weapons systems built into her as-yet still nameless armour – and they were all built into her armour, not least so they would all count as one weapon for official purposes – didn’t have triggers as such. Rather, when she put on the armour, a synaptic relay mounted on the collar bit into the nape of Twilight’s neck and connected via electrodes to her spinal column, allowing Twilight to arm and deploy all her weapons just by thinking about them.</p><p>Considering that this mess of a battle had started when a beowolf had jumped on her hard enough to throw her to the ground and that she would have almost certainly lost any weapon that she had been able to drop at that point, Twilight felt that her approach was being vindicated right now. </p><p>The ursa major growled and began to advance upon her. Each step thudded into the ground. </p><p>Twilight raised her right arm towards it and let it have it with another salvo from her built-in carbine. The lavender bolts struck the ursa in the chest and belly but seemingly did no more harm to the grimm than it had when Twilight had been shooting it in the side.</p><p>“That weapon does not appear to be having any effect,” Midnight, the on-board Virtual Intelligence mounted into Twilight’s suit, observed dispassionately; what was more annoying was that she did it in what was pretty much Twilight’s own voice.</p><p>“I can see that!” Twilight snapped, prompting another growl from the ursa major. </p><p>Twilight backed away. Enclosed within her armour as she was, she was acutely aware of the sound of her own breathing, weighted with anxiety. </p><p>She wished that Rainbow was here. Or Applejack. Or Ciel. Or Penny. Or Sunset. Anyone, really. She wished that anyone was here with or, indeed, instead of her. But Rainbow, she wished for Rainbow Dash most of all. </p><p>She had… she had survived so far. It turned out that one really big advantage of slaving your weapons to your own brain was that it was very easy to fire so blindly in so many directions that you were bound to hit something. </p><p>She had survived, but Twilight was under no illusions. She wasn’t able to kill as well as Rainbow could, or any of the others. She bet that none of them would have flinched in the face of just one ursa major. </p><p>But they weren’t here right now. She was. She was, and poor Sage was counting on her. He had done well, fought hard, but then that Ursa had got him and shattered his aura, and… and there was blood on the ground, and she didn’t even know if he was still alive. </p><p>But if he was alive, if he was alive as she prayed that he was, then he was counting on her. </p><p>And she couldn’t let this ursa stand between her and helping him. </p><p>Twilight knew that she wasn’t a huntress. She had never had any pretensions to being a huntress. And so, when she had agreed to go out into the field, she had designed a suit that would more than make up for that… deficiency, under the current circumstances. Yes, Shining Armour had given her a few quick lessons in how to stand, how to use a sword and so on, but Twilight had always intended that her main defence should be carrying so many guns that she was a match for anything that she might encounter. </p><p>That was the Atlesian way, right? A wall of guns. Victory through superior firepower. </p><p>It was clear that her carbine, although it was the same type of laser that was mounted in each one of Penny’s swords, wasn’t up to the job alone. </p><p>Fortunately, Twilight had other options.</p><p>As fast as thought, driven by Twilight’s thought, a panel mounted behind her right shoulder opened up, and a rotary cannon emerged. It had five barrels each spaced a less than an inch apart, and each barrel was a deal wider than the diameter of her carbine. </p><p>Twilight settled the red targeting reticule on her HUD in the centre of the ursa’s chest, then opened fire. </p><p>The five barrels of the cannon rotated for a moment, then began to spit laser bolts, each one larger and more powerful than those she had been firing with before, each one larger than the carbine blasts, each one – and Twilight had tested this – strong enough to dent the armour plating used on a Paladin. </p><p>Each lavender beam of power flew straight and true, slamming straight into the ursa. Now it felt this for sure. It staggered backwards, it roared in pain, it shook its head wildly back and forth as though it were trying to focus past the pain. It was hurting now, it really was feeling the effects; Twilight could tell. </p><p>
  <em>It’s working. It’s working! Oh my goodness, I’m really doing this!</em>
</p><p>The ursa howled and bellowed in its rage and pain, dropping to all fours, its claws digging into the earth beneath its feet. Twilight adjusted her aim, the rotary cannon bolts striking the ursa square on the head, but the skull of the grimm was all bone, and thick bone at that, and though it still roared in anger, it no longer seemed so badly affected by the constant hammering upon its head.</p><p>Certainly, the rotary cannon didn’t stop it from charging on all fours straight at Twilight, growling all the while.</p><p>“Might I suggest deploying the big gun?” Midnight suggested.</p><p>“Yes, I know, thank you!” Twilight yelled and did what she hadn’t needed Midnight to suggest to her in the first place. </p><p>Literally, the cannon that emerged to sit above her left shoulder was as large as the rotary cannon – perhaps a little bigger – but it was entirely one barrel. </p><p>One very large barrel. A barrel, in fact, that was roughly equivalent to the laser cannon mounted on a Skydart airship. </p><p>
  <em>If this doesn’t work, then, well… I’m pretty screwed, aren’t I?</em>
</p><p>The targeting reticule for the anti-armour cannon was green and blinked twice when Twilight lined it up on her target. </p><p>The ursa leapt.</p><p>The cannon, commanded by Twilight’s thoughts, fired a beam of lavender light as broad as one of Pinkie’s pies. </p><p>It struck the ursa major mid-leap, and by the time the light cleared, there was no more ursa major left, just ashes and smoke gradually dispersing in front of Twilight’s eyes. </p><p>She didn’t have time to congratulate herself. She didn’t have time to be elated. Twilight started running towards Sage, and as she ran, she swiped her right hand over the vambrace on her left arm, bringing up a holographic menu and keypad on which she began to type furiously. </p><p>When Twilight had said that she didn’t carry any weapons with her that she could drop, she hadn’t been entirely accurate. </p><p>As her fingers flew, her commands were transmitted to the large box which she had been wearing on her back when the ambush began, and which she had detached off her back soon after being knocked down by that first beowolf. </p><p>Now, obedient to her instructions, the box opened, unfolding itself to reveal a swarm of drones within which whirred to life, their blades spinning as they rose into the air like a swarm of angry wasps.</p><p>Twilight reached Sage’s side. He had been savaged, his muscular body scarred and scratched in many places, deep gashes rent in his chest, bite marks on his neck and left shoulder. Blood was starting to pool around him, reaching the pommel of his fallen sword. The armour of Twilight’s right gauntlet receded a little so that she could check his pulse with her fingers, placing them gently against his neck. He was alive. He was alive!</p><p>“Oh, thank goodness,” Twilight gasped. “Aloysius, here! Stabilisation protocol, now!”</p><p>Aloysius, the eldest, largest, and most faithful of her drones – if one could describe a drone as being faithful – let out a two-tone beep of acknowledgement and flew swiftly through the air, covering the distance separating him from Twilight and Sage in mere moments. It hovered overhead, a few feet over Sage's prone body. Twilight leaned back as a fountain of coagulant particles erupted from out of the bottom of the drone of fall like rain upon Sage’s unmoving form. The particles would enter into his wounds, causing his blood to clot and the bleeding to cease before he bled out completely. </p><p>“Thank you, Aloysius.” Twilight’s helmet retracted, exposing her head and face to view as she tapped one of the pouches on her right thigh. It, too, retracted, leaving a large roll of plaster to drop into Twilight’s hand. “Drones,” she said, “form defensive pattern Fluttershy.” The five basic patterns for deployment of her drones were named after her friends; pattern Rainbow Dash was aggressive, a pursuit pattern for an enemy on the run; pattern Pinkie Pie was a search pattern that basically sent the drones haring off in random directions with which Twilight could interfere if she wished; pattern Fluttershy was a sentry pattern, designed to provide early warning of the approach of any grimm. “Midnight, keep monitoring the sensors; let me know if you sense anything.”</p><p>“And I was hoping to curl up with a good book.”</p><p>“Remind me to tweak your personality settings when this is over,” Twilight observed, tapping another pouch on her left thigh this time, revealing a portable shield generator about one and a half times the size of a tennis ball. Twilight set it down upon the ground and activated it, generating a bubble of hard light with a light blue glow, enveloping both herself and Sage with its protective barrier. </p><p>Not very heroic, hiding behind a shield while her drones, who had all buzzed into the surrounding undergrowth, kept watch for her, but then, she wasn’t a hero by any means, and it wasn’t as though she could move Sage in his condition.</p><p>Twilight tore away a piece of plaster from the roll with her teeth and applied it to one of the bite marks on Sage’s neck, covering it with beige plaster which, unfortunately, didn’t quite blend into his skin tone the way it might have on some other people. </p><p>Before she could repeat the process, a nevermore flew overhead. It showed no sign of wanting to disturb Twilight, but its cry made her look upwards nevertheless, and as she looked up, she saw another of the great avian grimm passing high above. </p><p>
  <em>There goes the idea of maybe using the drones to get him out.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Professor</em>
  <em> Port</em>
  <em> was right; this is a tough exercise.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’m so sorry, Sage; if you’d had a real partner, then maybe…</em>
</p><p>“Midnight,” she began, about to ask her VI to try and call Blake or one of the others.</p><p>But then she heard the gunshots, gunshots that sounded a lot like Gambol Shroud. </p><p>Perhaps calling anybody wasn’t the best idea right now. </p><p>She should just wait and hope that the others were having better luck than she was. </p><hr/><p>“That,” Jaune said, “was a lot of beowolves.”</p><p>No matter what Professor Port had said, past excursions into the Emerald Forest had not led Jaune to expect that quite that many beowolves would show up in one place, all at the same time. </p><p>There had been so many beowolves that they had, not to put too fine a point on it, run. Or, if you wanted to make it sound a little less afraid, they had retreated off the path to a slight incline that rose up above the forest. Atop the hill, there were some ruins, maybe the remains of an old watchtower or something, because Jaune couldn’t imagine why else you would build what was otherwise a pretty square, small structure on top of a hill in the middle of the forest. A pair of crumbling stone horses sat on north crest of the hill, looking down at the last remains of a path that had led down that slope, but time and weather had worn away at them just as they had worn away at the tower itself; only one floor remained above ground level, with little beyond the walls that supported said floor left standing, but it did have only one way up – the staircase – and so if the beowolves followed them here, then they could always retreat up there and try to hold the grimm off in the bottleneck. </p><p>They stood a better chance here than they had on the path, with the grimm assailing them on all sides. </p><p>Here, they could make a stand. </p><p>But why did they have to make a stand anywhere? This was a school exercise for crying out loud; they weren’t graduated huntsman. Yes, this was dangerous, and sometimes people died, and most of the people on the wall at Benni Havens’ were probably dead by now, but that should apply to students taking a test within sight of the Beacon Cliffs!</p><p>Or at least, Jaune didn’t think it should. </p><p>Maybe he was just showing his naïveté again. </p><p>Flash sighed. “I know. I wouldn’t have thought… do you think someone screwed up?”</p><p>“How do you mean?”</p><p>“Like, do you think that they set too many lures and drew in more grimm than they meant to?”</p><p>“I admit that Professor Port’s stories are boring, but I don’t think that he’s that incompetent,” Jaune replied.</p><p>“Well, something went wrong,” Flash insisted.</p><p>“Or we just suck at this,” Jaune muttered. </p><p>“She would have,” Flash said.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“The question that you’re asking yourself,” Flash informed him. “Pyrrha would have run too.”</p><p>Jaune snorted. “How did you know that was what I was thinking?”</p><p>“Cause it’s obvious,” Flash said. “And because I’m asking myself the exact same thing. Only about Weiss, not Pyrrha. You got that, right?”</p><p>“Yeah, I got it,” Jaune assured him. He fell silent then, and at the right time too, as once again, the sound of Gambol Shroud blazing away at targets unseen could be heard. </p><p>“I don’t hear Crescent Rose any more,” Jaune whispered. </p><p>“Huh?” Flash asked.</p><p>“The noise,” Jaune said quickly. “That’s Gambol Shroud, but I don’t hear Crescent Rose.”</p><p>“You can tell them apart?”</p><p>“You can’t?”</p><p>“It’s not my team,” Flash explained.</p><p>“No,” Jaune said. “It isn’t.”</p><p>Flash hesitated for a moment. “She’s probably just using the scythe instead of the gun.”</p><p>“Maybe,” Jaune murmured. “I hope so.”</p><p>Flash pursed his lips; it was about the only thing that Jaune could easily see him doing with his face, what with the way that his helmet obscured everything except his lips and his eyes. </p><p>“If you’re worried,” he said, “you can check her aura on your scroll.”</p><p>“My scroll! Right! Damn, I’m such an idiot!” Jaune sheathed his sword within his shield and pulled out his scroll, bringing up the aura levels of himself – the largest icon of the four – and his three teammates. Weirdly, Pyrrha’s aura was just below full, which was odd, because she wasn’t here, so what had she done to bring her aura down at all? Sunset’s aura was in the yellow, and Ruby…</p><p>Jaune stared down at the scroll in his hands. His trembling hands. </p><p>
  <em>No. Not again, not where I can’t reach her.</em>
</p><p>“Jaune?” Flash asked. “What’s wrong?”</p><p>“Her aura’s gone,” Jaune said.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Her aura’s down!” Jaune cried. “There’s nothing left, Ruby…”</p><p>More shots from Gambol Shroud disturbed the air. </p><p>Flash walked quickly towards him. “That sound, that’s Blake, right?”</p><p>Jaune nodded.</p><p>“And Blake… if she’s still fighting, then she’s protecting Ruby, isn’t she? I mean, that’s what she’d do, right?”</p><p>Jaune took a deep breath. “Right. With her life.”</p><p>“Then… then that’s where we head,” Flash said. “The exercise… something has obviously gone wrong with the exercise, there’s no sign of any help arriving; saving a life has to be our priority.”</p><p>“Right,” Jaune said, but then hesitated. “What about the beowolves?” He didn’t want to lead the grimm right to Ruby.</p><p>“Good point,” Flash murmured. He bowed his head for a moment. “If they come after us, if they pick up our trail, then I’ll hold them off.”</p><p>“'Hold them off'? Are you nuts, that’s-”</p><p>“The right thing to do,” Flash said. “If it comes to that. Don’t get me wrong, I hope it doesn’t, but… if it does, then I’ll do it. You’re right; we can’t bring the grimm down on an injured comrade.”</p><p>“There has to be another way,” Jaune said.</p><p>“I’m not saying my way will be necessary; hopefully, it won’t,” Flash declared. “I’m just saying, if it is, then… don’t look back and don’t worry about me.”</p><p>Jaune looked into his eyes, a hard blue like sapphires. “Are you-?”</p><p>“Let’s not argue any more over hypotheticals, okay?” Flash insisted. “We’d best get moving. Ruby’s waiting for you, isn’t she?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Jaune agreed. “At least… I hope she is.”</p><hr/><p>“Alert!” Midnight cried. “Hostile approaching from the north-east!”</p><p>“'Hostile'?” Twilight asked, looking up and around – stupid, yes, because there wouldn’t be much point in sensors or drones if the grimm could sneak up on her like that, would there? She just couldn’t help herself. “You mean there’s only one.”</p><p>Midnight’s voice was calm as she said, “I am only registering one contact. Recommend switching to deployment Applejack.”</p><p>“Negative,” Twilight replied. Applejack was a concentrated deployment, bringing maximum force to bear upon a single point – the same way that Applejack always put everything that she had into the task in front of her. But she wasn’t quite ready to take that step just yet. Grimm were pretty smart, after all, or some of them were at least, and this might be a feint to get her to draw all of her drones away and create a gap in the net elsewhere that others could slip through. “Maintain the current formation.” After all, all she knew at this point was that a single grimm was approaching. That didn’t – necessarily – mean that it was a particularly dangerous grimm. It might be a single beowolf, and even a few of her drones deployed in supporting distance of one another ought to be able to handle that easily. </p><p>She raised her helmet, enclosing her head and face once more within her armour. Once more encased, Twilight glanced at the bottom left corner of her HUD; since going on that mission with Blake and Team TTSS, she had installed her motion tracker directly into the suit’s mainframe, and she could see the red icon indicating the single hostile moving in a straight line towards her – and towards the yellow icons indicating her drones where they made slight adjustments to their positions relative to one another. </p><p>Gunfire began to echo through this part of the forest. The rapid fire of her drones letting fly with their armaments; some of her drones were equipped with machine pistols or the equivalent, admittedly small calibre ammunition but with an impressive rate of fire, and with the combination of drum magazines and an auto-loader system that she had designed, they each carried plenty of ammunition. Other drones were equipped with more powerful weapons: miniature fire dust rockets or armour piercing rifle ammunition. Twilight, who had a pretty good ear for these things as a result of spending so much time amongst huntsmen and soldiers, could make out all three kinds of weapons blazing away at the target. </p><p>Which kept on advancing. Some of the yellow blips of her drones began to move around it, circling like wolves around a bison, moving to keep on-</p><p>One of the yellow blips representing a drone blinked out. </p><p>Twilight frowned. “Midnight, bring up the status of all drones.”</p><p>A list of miniature drone images filled the left-hand side of her HUD; one of the images was red, indicating that that drone had been rendered inoperable. As Twilight looked, another image flashed red, and then another. </p><p>The wreckage of one such drone was flung through the trees, hitting the ground and bouncing along before hitting the trunk of another tree not far from Twilight. The wreck sparked and fizzled for a moment before falling deathly silent. </p><p>The roar of the grimm, a sound almost like the hooting of a distorted foghorn, echoed through the trees. Whatever it was, it was definitely not a beowolf. </p><p>“Initiate deployment pattern Applejack,” Twilight declared. “All drones, engage target!”</p><p>The drones deployed on the far side whirred overhead as they emerged, briefly, from the trees on one side only to disappear again into the woods on the other. Twilight watched all the yellow dots in motion, all converging upon the single red dot, swarming it like ants swarming a termite queen during the storming of a nest, circling around it as the fire of the guns and the rockets rose to a crescendo. </p><p>Once more, the grimm, that single grimm, roared forth its anger, and Twilight could feel the earth begin to shake now, trembling at the tread of this single grimm, as one by one, the images of her drones turned red. One after another fell before the power of this grimm, the sound of gunfire gradually lessening solely due to the fact that there fewer and fewer drones left to shoot. One by one, they fell, the gunfire from the remainder slackening off until it ceased completely. </p><p>Because there were no more drones left to engage. </p><p>The grimm, this single grimm, had destroyed them all. </p><p>Only then, only when it had stripped all of Twilight’s shields away, did the grimm show itself. </p><p>It was a cyclops, twenty feet tall by Twilight’s estimate and perhaps eight feet wide in the shoulders, with cloven hooves at the base of legs that had knees facing backwards instead of forwards, more like a goat than a man. It was bulky, what would have been called muscular in a man or a beast, and it was covered almost completely in plates of bone armour; no wonder Twilight’s drones, even her rockets had failed to make a dent in it; it was protected everywhere but the joints, and there, the gaps between the armour plates were slight and hard to pinpoint. A single eye burned in the centre of a bone mask, burning red and raw, and above the eye, a horn, curving slightly, rose out of the grimm’s forehead. </p><p>In one hand, it bore a great hammer, a heavy thing all fashioned out of metal with a head that was several feet wide. Twilight shivered to look at it. Grimm didn’t work in metal; although cyclopes practically alone of all grimm were known to craft primitive weapons like wooden clubs, they did not build forges nor mine for iron. </p><p>The cyclops had taken this weapon from a huntsman it had killed. </p><p>It had killed a huntsman. What chance, then, did Twilight have?</p><p>No chance. Twilight glanced down at Sage. No chance and no choice. If she did nothing, if she cowered within this shield, then Sage would be put at greater risk. </p><p>The cyclops hooted in derision, hefting its hammer up in one hand. </p><p>Twilight reached out and deactivated the shield that was protecting both herself and Sage. Holding the spherical generator in one hand, she stepped away from the unconscious but stabilised student, then threw the generator back onto the ground next to him, where the hard-light barrier flared to life once more, protecting Sage but not Twilight. </p><p>It didn’t look as though there was any immediate help coming. </p><p>Which meant Twilight would have to do the best she could.</p><p>She thought of her friends: brave Rainbow Dash; faithful Applejack; kind Fluttershy; Rarity, gentle and generous; Pinkie Pie, with her heart so large and so open. </p><p>
  <em>Help me be brave. All of you, please, help me be brave.</em>
</p><p>“H-hey!” Twilight shouted. “Over here!” And then she let the cyclops have it with every gun that she possessed. The carbine mounted on her arm, the rotary cannon on her right shoulder, the anti-armour cannon on her left shoulder, all blazed away with full force, lavender lasers leaping from Twilight’s barrels, flying across the distance to splash across the surface of the cyclops’ armour. </p><p>And as she fired, as laser after laser erupted from her cannons, Twilight backed away from the cyclops and from Sage. With luck, the next group to enter the forest would find him.</p><p>She backed away; the cyclops pursued. It didn’t seem to be harmed. Not even her heaviest cannon, the one that had evaporated an ursa major, was penetrating its armour. The cyclops advanced, dragging its hammer along the ground, roaring that hooting, foghorn roar as it came, seeming more irritated than anything else. </p><p>Twilight kept firing. She kept retreating, and she kept on firing. Maybe if she just kept shooting, then maybe-</p><p>A crack appeared in one of the plates of bone armour covering the cyclops, where it was struck repeatedly by Twilight’s big gun. There! If she concentrated her fire, then maybe-</p><p>The cyclops quickened its pace, running down, its cloven hooves pounding the soil of the path. Twilight tried to quicken her retreat, but she stumbled over a rock sticking up out of the soil and nearly fell, and in that moment, the cyclops was on her, swinging its enormous hammer.</p><p>Twilight raised her left hand, a lavender shield projecting from her vambrace.</p><p>The hammer, propelled by the cyclops’ hideous strength, shattered her shield in a single blow, striking Twilight in the midriff and hurling her twenty feet backwards down the path, tossing her along the ground like a doll. The world spun in front of Twilight as she hit the ground head first, back first, front first, then on her head again, before finally rolling to a stop upon her belly.</p><p>The edge of her HUD flashed red in alarm. </p><p>“Alert!” Midnight said. “Rotary cannon damaged. Recommend that you cease use until repairs have been completed.”</p><p>“Not really the time, Midnight,” Twilight groaned, as she tried to get up. <em>Rainbow Dash makes this look so easy.</em></p><p>“Alert!” Midnight said. “Grimm-”</p><p>She was cut off, but Twilight got a sense of what she was about to say when she felt the cyclops’ grip close around her helmet, squeezing her and squeezing Twilight’s aura too as it picked her up off the ground only to slam her back down again, face up this time, facing it. </p><p>Twilight raised her arm, her carbine firing, but the cyclops brought one cloven hoof down on her arm, hammering it into the ground; it stamped upon her arm again, and Twilight howled as the pain was transmitted through her aura, which was now dropping dangerously close to the red.</p><p>The cyclops let out a gruff, husky laugh as it planted its hoof on Twilight’s chest, exerting its weight upon her, crushing her slowly underneath it. </p><p>Twilight’s cannon fired once, twice – but before it could fire a third time, the cyclops had placed its three meaty fingers around it and casually ripped the weapon off of Twilight’s suit, idly throwing it away into the forest. </p><p>The cyclops placed its hand over Twilight’s face, so that she could see nothing but black flesh and white bone. </p><p>Then she saw fire. The cyclops’ hand began to burn; it glowed red and yellow, and Twilight felt the heat through her armour and through her diminishing aura. Sweat beaded upon her brow, her breathing became more laboured not only by the oppressive heat but by the rapidly dropping level of her aura as it got lower and lower before her eyes, burning away in the heat of the cyclops’ fire. Once it broke, her armour would offer her some protection still, but this grimm was so strong that it would probably be able to turn her to a pulp inside her armoured suit just by slamming her into the ground often enough, and that was if it didn’t burn her first. </p><p>Trapped, cooking inside her armour, Twilight whimpered. She didn’t want to die, not like this, not anything like this. She wasn’t a hero, she was just Twilight Sparkle, and she wanted to survive. She just couldn’t see a way how. </p><p>The cyclops howled and released Twilight, its hand pulling away before Twilight’s aura shattered.</p><p>Twilight looked up to see Pyrrha’s javelin buried in the crack in the cyclops’ armour.</p><hr/><p>Pyrrha ran forward, legs pounding, hair flying out behind her in a glorious stream of red. She leapt, and as her leap carried her upwards and onwards, over Twilight and towards the cyclops that threatened her, Pyrrha threw her shield like a discus aimed straight at the cyclops large single eye. </p><p>The cyclops flinched, turning its head away from the flying metal disc, which struck the armoured side of its head to little harm, but while the grimm was turned away, it wasn’t looking as Pyrrha grasped her Miló and pulled it free, kicking off the cyclops’ chest and flipping over in mid-air as she landed on the ground between the cyclops, staggering backwards, and Twilight Sparkle.</p><p>She held out her left arm, and Akoúo̱ flew towards it, taking its proper place upon her armour vambraces. </p><p>Cinder emerged out of the woods behind the cyclops, the light glinting off her glass scimitars as she slashed at its hamstrings, her obsidian blades seeking out the gaps between the armour plates as she struck first at one leg and then the other. </p><p>The cyclops roared in anger, lashing out with one cloven hoof, catching Cinder with its kick and knocking her to the ground. The grimm glared balefully down at her as it raised that hoof to stamp down upon her.</p><p>Miló switched from spear to rifle in Pyrrha’s hands as she fired two shots – her last two shots; she had used the other three getting here – at the cyclops’ head. They ricocheted harmlessly off its armour, but they seemed to put all thoughts of Cinder out of the grimm’s head as it turned its attention once more to Pyrrha.</p><p>“Twilight,” Pyrrha said, gently but firmly as Miló shifted back into a spear. “If you wouldn’t mind clearing the path please.”</p><p>“R-right,” Twilight said, scrambling off the path and into the somewhat safety of the woods on either side. </p><p>The cyclops growled as it advanced upon her, hefting its enormous hammer in one hand.</p><p>Its metal hammer. </p><p>The weapon which it had taken from some valiant warrior and, in the taking, doomed itself. </p><p>It simply didn’t know that yet. </p><p>Pyrrha charged towards the cyclops, and as she charged, she reached behind her and placed Miló upon her back, holding it fast against her cuirass, leaving her right hand empty and free, bearing no weapon but Akoúo̱ as she approached the grimm at a flat run. </p><p>The cyclops quickened its own step in response, shaking the earth as its hooves pounded the path ever more swiftly.</p><p>The cyclops swung its hammer at her, one-handed, a swiping blow which would have knocked her sideways and maybe shattered her aura with a single hit.</p><p>If it had made contact. </p><p>As the hammer swung down and towards her, Pyrrha spun, her hair flying around her as she pirouetted gracefully as any ballerina might, reaching out with her free right hand even as she ducked beneath the oncoming hammer. </p><p>The hammer passed harmlessly overhead, but as it did so, Pyrrha reached out and touched it, her gloved fingers brushing against the metal as she applied sufficient of her semblance to rip it out of the cyclops’ hand and send it flying. </p><p>The cyclops hooted in shocked disbelief, but Pyrrha was already moving, running towards the hammer, outpacing the grimm as she slung Akoúo̱ across her back just as she had Miló before it. </p><p>She had a feeling that she would need both hands for this. The hammer was truly enormous; it made Nora’s Magnhild look like a child’s plaything by comparison. Whoever wielded it – whoever had fallen wielding it against the cyclops – must have been a mighty warrior indeed. </p><p>Were it not for her semblance, Pyrrha would not even have attempted to lift it; fortunately, her semblance made that ‘were it not’ redundant.</p><p>The cyclops closed in behind her, but Pyrrha had already laid her hands upon the hammer’s shaft, and with polarity, she was able to lift what her muscles never could have as she turned, swinging the hammer in a wide arc to slam with a crunch into the cyclops’ leg. </p><p>The cyclops bellowed as it crashed to the ground, arms flailing, throwing up dust from the impact. </p><p>Its eye looked up towards the sky until Cinder appeared to block out the sun. </p><p>Her swords of glass had transformed into a bow, which she drew back and loosed a single obsidian shaft straight into the creature’s single eye.</p><p>The cyclops howled, thrashing its arms wildly, groping blindly for Cinder above its face, and as it groped, Pyrrha swung the hammer down a second time – upon the cyclops’ armoured chest.</p><p>Further cracks began to spread across the plates of bone. The cyclops blindly reached for her, but Cinder turned her bow to swords once more and slashed at the cyclops hands and fingers, making the grimm flinch back each time it got close with another pained and moaning cry. </p><p>Pyrrha swung the hammer again, and again, and with each dolorous blow that landed upon the cyclops with so heavy a thud, more cracks across the armour spread until she had shattered the bony plates that warded it completely, exposing the oily black flesh beneath.</p><p>Pyrrha brought the hammer down one final time, stoving in the cyclops chest. The cyclops did not roar now; rather, it let out a sort of gasping sound as its torso collapsed, and then it made no further sound at all as its body began to smoke.</p><p>In a little while, it would be nought but ashes.</p><p>The corner of Cinder’s lip quirked upwards. “Not bad,” she said, “We make a pretty good team, you and I.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Pyrrha murmured, without committing to anything. “Twilight, are you alright?”</p><p>Twilight emerged from out of the woods, retracting her helmet so that they could see her face. “I’m okay,” she said, “but Sage…” She gestured to the unconscious figure lying on the ground beneath the shield. “I daren’t move him, not with his injuries. What’s going on, are you with the second wave?”</p><p>Cinder snorted. “The second wave? Do you think that the exercise is still going on?”</p><p>“It… isn’t?” Twilight asked.</p><p>Cinder’s right eyebrow rose. “You have no idea how bad things have gotten, do you?”</p><p>“Weren’t they supposed to get this bad?” Twilight asked.</p><p>“Unfortunately not,” Pyrrha murmured. “The sheer number of grimm were not anticipated, and with so many nevermores in the skies… it is unlikely that Professor Ozpin will risk any Bullheads here. Cinder and I had to descend via the cliff.”</p><p>“But… but what about the Atlesian airships?” Twilight asked. “General Ironwood’s squadrons could-”</p><p>“Don’t put so much faith in your technological toys,” Cinder suggested. “The ability to fire a few missiles or make a gun fly is as nothing compared to the primal ferocity of the grimm.”</p><p>“If that were so, Atlas and all its territories would have fallen long ago,” Twilight declared. “We are protected because of our technological toys and the edge they give to the brave people who wield and pilot them. There’s no way that the General would be scared off by a few nevermores.”</p><p>“And yet, above us fly the nevermores, and where is your gallant General?” Cinder demanded. “Why, I do believe he is elsewhere, scared perhaps.”</p><p>“Cinder, please,” Pyrrha said sharply. “That will do.”</p><p>Cinder snorted. “You think you can invent your way to omnipotence,” she spat. “But where did that get you? Helpless.”</p><p>She turned away, and walked away. Pyrrha watched her for a moment before returning her attention to Twilight. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I… don’t know what that’s about.”</p><p>“It’s fine; you don’t need to apologise for her,” Twilight said. “And she’s not wrong, about me. Thank you, for saving my life.”</p><p>“Any time,” Pyrrha said. “But… I’m afraid that I’m going to have to leave you with Cinder now; Ruby… her aura’s broken, I need to get to her.”</p><p>“Of course,” Twilight said. “Go. Now. Good luck.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Pyrrha said, and now it was her turn to turn away, dashing off into the woods and out of sight. </p><hr/><p>“Good luck,” Twilight murmured again, as Pyrrha disappeared into the woods, leaving her alone with the unconscious Sage, and Cinder. </p><p>Not her first choice of company, she had to admit. </p><p>
  <em>I’m probably not her first choice either, to be fair.</em>
</p><p>Nevertheless, accepting that fact didn’t help Twilight come up with anything to say while they both… while they waited? Waited for what? Waited for help that wasn’t coming? Waited for General Ironwood to send in his airships? Waited for the grimm to get bored and go away?</p><p>Would that even happen?</p><p>If it did, that would be… very convenient. Which was partly why Twilight doubted it would actually happen.</p><p>Cinder kicked at the remains of one of Twilight’s drones with her foot. “What was this?” she asked.</p><p>“A drone,” Twilight said softly.</p><p>“I see,” Cinder murmured. “More broken toys?”</p><p>“What do you have against technology?” Twilight asked.</p><p>“Nothing,” Cinder said. “I have nothing against technology; I merely have something against those who are so arrogant as to presume that technology can make them master or mistress of the world. It is a power that is… wholly unearned, and yet, you act as though possessing it makes you deserving, as though the technology that has elevated your city has likewise elevated you in virtue above all others. Your power is nothing but good fortune, and yet you act as though you are entitled to be the masters.”</p><p>“We don’t pretend to be the masters of anything,” Twilight said. “Or anyone. But you’re wrong about General Ironwood; he’s not afraid. Not of some nevermores, not of anything.”</p><p>“All men are afraid of something,” Cinder insisted. “Even the most powerful of men, for he fears losing his power if he fears nothing else.” She chuckled. “We saw an Atlesian warship, Pyrrha and I,” she said. “It took up station over Beacon, but as you can see, it has made no move to progress further and take the battle to the grimm. That speaks to something, don’t you think?”</p><p>“Something,” Twilight replied. “Not fear. Caution. Perhaps. Whatever the General is doing, whatever our forces are doing, there is a good reason for it.”</p><p>“Yes, and I’m sure there’s a good reason your teammates are standing around back at the school with their thumbs up their rear-ends,” Cinder muttered. “I’m sure that nobody has written us off, oh no.”</p><p>“If you think this is hopeless, then what are you doing here?”</p><p>Cinder was silent for a moment. “Why do we do anything, Twilight Sparkle, except because it seemed like a good idea at the time?”</p><p>Twilight’s eyes narrowed. “So… how does this end?”</p><p>“That depends on how it started,” Cinder replied. She smiled. “But fear not. Although Altas may have abandoned you, you will not die.”</p><p>“How can you be so sure?”</p><p>“You’re with me,” Cinder explained. “I was not fashioned for a mean and unremarked ending such as this, in such a place as this, by claw or jaw of some common grimm. I am made for greater things by far, protected by my fate. And while you are with me, that fate, that destiny, will protect you also.”</p><p>“Really?” Twilight asked sceptically.</p><p>“A fire consumed my home,” Cinder said. “My father and my mother perished.”</p><p>“I’m sorry to hear that,” Twilight murmured.</p><p>“I do not tell you for your sympathies,” Cinder replied sharply. “The fire… it did not touch me. It crept into my room, it roared into my face, it licked at me like an affectionate dog, but…” She spread her arms out wide on either side of her. “Do you see a burn on me? Do you see so much as a single mark? No. I did not suffer the flames. My family was devoured by them, but I endured. I was protected. As I will be protected.” She fell silent for a moment. “I’m going to take a look around,” she declared and walked away, moving silently into the trees, scouting perhaps or doing something that Twilight knew not.</p><p>
  <em>Well, that makes me feel a lot better.</em>
</p><p>“Twilight,” Midnight said. “You have an incoming transmission.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0070"><h2>70. True Mettle</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Blake gives everything she has to protect Ruby</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>True Mettle</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Now, isn’t this interesting?</em>
</p><p>Cinder held up the object that she had discovered during her investigation of the forest around the site of the attack on Twilight Sparkle. It looked like a box, a metal box, painted in forest camouflage, all greens and browns and black lines in an asymmetrical riot that made it hard to spot amidst the undergrowth. It was about as large as a decently-sized box of teabags and with what might have looked like air-holes peppering the surface of the box. </p><p>Of course, Cinder recognised it as not just a box, but a sophisticated grimm lure from Atlas. If she were to crack it open – and she was strongly tempted to do just that – she would find a perfume-like store of pheromones waiting within, gradually being released out into the air to draw the grimm with the promise of humanity. </p><p>She had found three of these things so far, and alongside them, she had found, concealed with some degree of care, a large number of more primitive baits and lures, as if the student who had been assigned to distribute them up and down the path had dumped their entire load here to be done with it.</p><p>What elevated it out of sheer laziness, of course, was the presence of these Atlesian toys along with them.</p><p>Someone had wanted to draw in grimm and had gone to some effort to make sure that enough grimm were drawn in. </p><p>And Cinder felt that she had a fairly good idea of who that someone might be.</p><p>“Phoebe,” she murmured as she crushed the lure-box she was holding in one hand, turning it into a crumpled pile of scrap metal within her clenched fist. “Phoebe, Phoebe, Phoebe. What am I going to do with you?”</p><p>It was all about that wretched sword, of course. Poor Phoebe, so long spent lusting after that black blade, only for the one who had denied her the sword to casually give it away, and to a faunus no less. Cinder cared little for Mistralian traditions, still less for the pride of the House of Nikos or the dignity of the House of Kommenos, but she would admit that it had pleased her to see Sunset strutting about with that ancient heirloom across her back, if only to imagine that apoplexy that must be choking Phoebe every moment that Sunset had the sword and she did not.</p><p>It seemed that she had underestimated the lengths to which Phoebe would go to get the sword. Trying to kill Sunset by stealth, well, that was hardly honourable, but then, the Mistralian honour was nothing more than a bad joke anyway, wasn't it? But risking all of the other students along with Sunset, just to claim an antique bauble from a bloody corpse? What a low, vile thing to do.</p><p>But then, Phoebe had always been a very low, vile person, hadn’t she?</p><p>
  <em>Please, Phoebe. Please. I’ll be good, I swear.</em>
</p><p>Cinder closed her eyes, and her grip upon the ruined box in her hand grew tighter still as the metal groaned and squeaked as she crushed it. </p><p>Cinder could hear the crying in her head, the sobbing, the groans of pain as she-</p><p>Cinder’s eyes snapped open, a wordless growl escaped her as her hand began to glow white hot, melting the twisted metal that she held in her grasp so that its molten fragments slipped through her fingers to land in dribbling lumps upon the soil before her. </p><p>Cinder snorted in frustration as she hastily piled some dirt upon them, lest they start a forest fire. </p><p>She forced those memories down, down and down into the dark and murky recesses of her soul. They did her no good upon the surface. She had no need of them. All of that… all of that was past her now.</p><p>But Phoebe Kommenos always seemed to bring out the worst in her. </p><p>Cinder brushed her hair irritably back behind her shoulder. She had no doubt that Phoebe had done this. No proof, admittedly, but no doubt either. She could not conceive of anyone else who would want to do such a thing; it was not as though Phoebe would be constrained by the fear of collateral damage, and it was not as though she was above paying to win either. In fact, Cinder would go so far as to say that what successes she had accrued in her meagre career she owed entirely to paying to win, either in the form of better equipment than her opponents or simply paying them off. </p><p>She relied entirely upon the wealth she had inherited from her late mother to grease her way in life, whether in buying victories one way or another or in – as far as Cinder could see – buying friends with the largesse that she could demonstrate to those who laughed at her feeble jokes.</p><p>It must gall at her then, that the things that she really wanted were all the things that money could not buy her: a triumph over Pyrrha Nikos – any sort of tournament triumph, really – the sword Soteria, any sort of real respect from anyone. </p><p>And so she had sought to buy another triumph, to use Atlesian technology to summon enough monsters to win a battle she could not win on her own. </p><p>If it didn’t work – and Cinder honestly hoped that it would not work – then it would rather prove her point once more about the folly of relying upon these Atlesian tricks. </p><p>Phoebe had done this; Cinder would lay odds upon it in the sure and certain knowledge that her bets always came up. </p><p>The question – the real question – was what would Cinder do about this fact? What would she do about Phoebe?</p><p>
  <em>Kill her.</em>
</p><p>Cinder sighed. That would be… very lovely and thoroughly deserved, but it was too soon. The last thing she wanted was a manhunt on Beacon campus. </p><p>And besides… she looked down at her hands, and scowled at the slight tremor that had come over them. Just thinking about…  just thinking about confronting her… </p><p>Cinder was very glad that nobody could see her at the moment. </p><p>Another option was the profoundly safe bet of turning in a couple of these technological lures as evidence to the proper authorities. Let Professor Ozpin and General Ironwood investigate their way to the answer that was staring Cinder in the face. She doubted that Phoebe was intelligent enough to have concealed the transactions whereby she had obtained these devices. The trail would lead back to her, and she would be expelled at best, if not facing criminal charges. </p><p>That did not please Cinder. The last thing she wanted was for Phoebe to be stuck snug in a cell, enjoying room and board at the expense of the Valish taxpayer. She wanted… she wanted Phoebe to suffer. She wanted her to be defeated in the Vytal Festival; she wanted Phoebe to be humiliated by Pyrrha one last time, on the grandest stage in all of Remnant, before the eyes of the entire world. She wanted Phoebe to lose, to suffer the ultimate defeat, before…</p><p>Cinder clenched her hand into a fist. By that point, she would be able to do what must be done. By that point, she would have mastered all her childish fears.</p><p>
  <em>I am the storm. I am the east wind that will sweep through Remnant, and I am not afraid of Phoebe Kommenos.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I will not be afraid.</em>
</p><p>She would do… nothing, much. She might send Lightning Dust – the most thuggish of her crew in appearance and manner, plus Phoebe would hate being menaced by a faunus – around to have a word with her, persuade her to let it lie from now on.</p><p>She didn’t want Sunset as part of this ridiculous, petty vendetta.</p><p>For that matter, she wanted noble Pyrrha to stay reasonably safe too. </p><p>Yes. Yes, that was the best way. She would handle this privately, and actually privately – not Sunset’s definition of ‘privately,’ which seemed to involve your deeds becoming an open secret around the school. </p><p>“Cinder?” Twilight called, and besides her voice Cinder could hear her crashing through the undergrowth with all the subtlety of a goliath. “Cinder?”</p><p>Cinder stood up, and slinked out from behind a tree. “Yes? Here I am.”</p><p>“Oh. Right,” Twilight said. “What are you doing?”</p><p>“Oh nothing, much,” Cinder replied. “What’s the matter?”</p><p>“Nothing’s the matter,” Twilight said. “I’ve got some news, great news.”</p><hr/><p>Ruby’s aura was broken.</p><p>And Blake fought on. </p><p>The grimm had attacked not long after – by the sound of it, at least – they had come after Sunset and Arslan. Sunset had dropped her scroll, Blake and Ruby had begun to discuss what it meant, and then there had been no time to think of anything but their own situation. </p><p>As beowolf after beowolf emerged from out of the trees – with the occasional ursa to switch things up, how fun – Blake found herself thinking that maybe Professor Port had gone just a little bit overboard when he was setting up this test. </p><p>Still, they hadn’t done badly at first. Ruby had been magnificent, cutting through grimm by the half-dozen at a time in great swings of her scythe, gunning them down with shots from Crescent Rose. They had been holding their own, and the only reason Blake thought of it as holding their own and not as winning was that the grimm just kept on coming, replenishing their numbers as fast as they could be cut down. </p><p>And then Crescent Rose got stuck in a tree. </p><p>That was always a danger with weapons as big as that one, and in conditions as cramped as a forest. Ruby had, in fact, sliced through a couple of trees in the course of this battle – and an old statue of a robed woman – when they had been unfortunate enough to get in her way, but this was a particularly old and stout oak, and Crescent Rose had stuck in the wood point-first, unable to cleave through the wood but stuck too fast for Ruby to get it out again before the grimm were on her.</p><p>Blake should have been closer to her. She had been in the midst of a rampage, and she had allowed her bloody swathe through the beowolves to carry her too far from Ruby’s side. The first thing she had known of Ruby’s distress was when she cried out for help, and Blake had turned to see that one of the beowolves had got Ruby’s cape between its teeth, dragging her to the ground and holding her fast, her tiny fists meaning as little to it as tossed acorns.</p><p>And while it held her, the other beowolves closed in. </p><p>Blake had rushed back to her immediately, carving a path through any beowolf or ursa to stand in her way, using her shadow clones to leapfrog past opponents, flying into the grimm whose claws rose and fell, rose and fell on Ruby Rose. </p><p>She had cut them down, one and all, bursting amongst them with an angry cry like a lion amongst the buffalo of the plains, but it was too late. She had been too late.</p><p>Not too too late, thank whatever god had made the faunus and whatever god or gods watched over Ruby Rose. She was not dead. She wasn’t even injured bodily. But her aura was gone, and she was out like a snuffed candle. Her eyes were closed; she lay on the ground with her head lolling slightly to one side, arms stretched out limp by her side. </p><p>She looked incongruously peaceful for the desperate circumstances in which they found themselves.</p><p>Blake had dragged her to a hollow in the treacherous tree that had trapped her scythe, laying her there to limit the number of directions from which the beowolves could approach, and then she had planted herself before Ruby like a mother bear protecting her cub from the spears of the hunters. </p><p>She fought on. She fought on to protect Ruby until… until Sunset came. Yes, Sunset would come. Sunset would come because Ruby was in danger, and Sunset would not be blind to that nor be forestalled from coming to Ruby’s aid, though grimm or armies stood between them. And until she arrived, Blake would protect Ruby.</p><p>Until she arrived… or even if she didn’t, then Blake would still protect Ruby. Until whatever end.</p><p>And so she fought. She emptied magazine after magazine from Gambol Shroud, she slashed with her sword, she hacked with her cleaver, she buried her hook in the black flesh of the grimm. She used her clones, although more sparingly than was her wont because she dared not let the grimm get close to Ruby. So she fought, and so the grimm came, running out of the trees without end, as though they were being drawn as much by Blake’s anxiety as by any bait Professor Port had laid out. Perhaps they were, but there wasn’t much that Blake could do about that. </p><p>She just had to fight and keep fighting. </p><p>And so she fought, though the grimm kept coming and they got luckier and luckier with their blows. So she fought while her aura level got lower and lower. Blake did not even consider the possibility of retreat. She would not allow Ruby to die, nor even come to harm, not while she lived.</p><p>Blake stood in front of Ruby with her legs spaced apart and Gambol Shroud in pistol mode. She blazed away, shot after shot leaping from the flashing muzzle with a series of staccato snapping sounds, the rounds slamming into a pair of beowolves, two of a trio of the closest creatures, striking them down before the third of their number lunged at her. It passed through a shadow clone as Blake reappeared above the grimm, throwing down her cleaver to strike like a thunderbolt clear through the neck. It began to turn to ashes as Blake landed on the ground once more. Gambol Shroud switched from pistol to sword smoothly in her hand in time to bisect the beowolf that tried to pounce upon her from behind. </p><p>Another grimm dashed past her, aiming for Ruby, growling in anticipation – but Blake flung out her hook and buried it in the beowolf’s leg, dragging the creature with her ribbon back towards her where she despatched it with a single smooth stroke of Gambol Shroud.  </p><p>One of the creatures pounced on her, bearing Blake to the ground, but she sent it flying upwards with a powerful kick, leaping first to her feet and then after her prey, driving the black blade of Gambol Shroud up into its chest until the tip of the sword pierced its back. </p><p>Her weapon transformed from sword to pistol as she fell, spraying fire across the edge of the path at the grimm still coming from the edge of the woods. She could feel herself getting low on aura, so the more of these monsters she could kill before they got close, the better.</p><p>Blake landed, legs spread out, knees bent; she lashed out with her cleaver to split the skull of a beowolf that got too close. But, as she struck at that grimm, another leapt at her, too fast and too close for her to get out of the way; she had to burn aura in order to evade it, reappearing beside the grimm, severing its head with her cleaver scabbard-</p><p>But as she struck, she had no time, and insufficient aura remaining, to escape the other beowolf that came at her from the other direction. </p><p>It bore her to the ground, her aura shattering as she struck the earth with a thump and a cry of pain that was drawn out as she was dragged along that ground by the beowolf that pushed her with its forepaws, pressing them against her shoulders, its claws pricking at her skin sharply enough to draw blood but not firmly enough to do much more than that. </p><p>With her aura gone, what it was doing felt like quite enough. </p><p>The beowolf dug its claws in just a little deeper; the pain of it was like fire burning in Blake’s blood, and she howled at it, she howled as the grimm bent down and snarled into her face. </p><p>Blake grimaced and bared her teeth right back at it as she buried her hook in the side of its neck. </p><p>The beowolf let out a startled yelp of surprise, its open mouth frozen in a look that Blake could only find to be confused before it turned to ash.</p><p>Blake climbed to her feet. Yes, without aura, she wasn’t moving as swiftly or as fluidly, she wasn’t able to simply backflip with acrobatic grace the way she could have without. Yes, her shoulders were throbbing with every prick that the beowolf’s claws had dealt to her; yes, she could feel the warm blood running down her body; yes, the pain was like someone yelling into both her ears, constantly seeking her attention no matter how she wished to concentrated on other things; but she still got up. She could still get up. She could still fight. </p><p>And she had vowed to fight. She had vowed to protect Ruby. Not ‘until her aura ran out’ but absolutely; Ruby was down, but Blake would fight on, though her aura too was shattered. </p><p>While there was breath in her, she would fight on. </p><p>She started to run, trying to ignore both the pain and the heavy breathing both at the same time; she ran towards Ruby, scooping up Gambol Shroud from where she had dropped it – it was still in pistol mode, thank goodness – and she opened fire upon the grimm who, ignoring Blake, thinking little of her, dismissing her now that she was without aura, had begun to bear down upon her temporary partner.</p><p>Blake opened fire, and as she opened fire, she roared in anger, roaring like the beast that so many had dismissed her as or accused her of being, roaring like a lion to scare away the jackals. She roared and she fired and she planted herself once more between Ruby and all harm like a stone wall and she blazed away, blasting the grimm to ashes until she had no more rounds left in Gambol Shroud’s magazine. </p><p>And no more mags in her pouches. That had been the last one. </p><p>The beowolves – twelve of them in all, and they seemed to have stopped coming for now – waited, watching her warily, and yet at the same time, Blake could also sense an anticipation rising from them; they knew – either they had seen or because they could sense it – that she had no aura. They didn’t anticipate that she would, that she could, provide much opposition to them now.</p><p>Maybe they were right. Maybe it was pointless. Maybe she would die swiftly, and Ruby would die soon after. </p><p>Or maybe not. Maybe Sunset would come. Maybe some other unexpected stroke of luck would swing her way. </p><p>It didn’t matter. She would fight regardless. She faced the beowolves with Gambol Shroud’s pistol turned sword in one hand and its cleaver in the other regardless. Not because it was fun, not because it was easy, not because it was glorious, not because there was a greater good or a cause worth dying for, but because it was right. Because there was a life at stake.</p><p>Because who she was was where she stood, though where she stood be where she fell. </p><p>The grimm advanced slowly, soft growls rising from their throats.</p><p>Blake waited for them, legs bent and poised to spring. </p><p>The beowolves rushed, and Blake rushed to meet them, charging straight into the centre of the pack which closed around her. She drove Gambol Shroud through the centre of a beowolf’s chest above its armoured bony plates, but a set of claws raked her back from behind, slashing through the metal plate she wore on her back to scar her skin. Blake cried out, stumbling, but still had the strength to slash in turn at the forepaw of the nearest beowolf; she didn’t sever it, but she made it recoil. She tried to ignore the claws that raked her shoulders, lashing out with her cleaver; maybe she killed one, maybe she injured one, maybe she did nothing at all; it was hard to tell. The world had shrunk to a black mass around her, to a few bony masks snarling into her face, to the space that she could swing her weapon. She threw her hook and thought she got one. It was so hard to tell. Hard to concentrate through the pain.</p><p>They raked her leg. Blake couldn’t restrain the shriek of pain as she collapsed onto her knees, but she held it together long enough to stab one of them through the gut. She knew she killed it, she saw it die, she tried to take advantage of the momentum of the kill, but her leg was burning, it wouldn’t support her weight, it crumbled beneath her as she tried to stand.</p><p>She was struck across the neck and face, knocked to the ground; she could feel the blood; it felt… it felt so warm. </p><p>Her vision was… starting to blur. The beowolf that loomed above her was indistinct, hard to make out; it was just colours without any real shape. </p><p>It was getting hard to see anything at all. </p><p>Green. Green light. So bright. Blinding. </p><p>And then there was only darkness. </p><hr/><p>Bursts of magic flew from Sunset’s palms, striking down beowolf after beowolf, starting with the one that was straddling Blake but showing no mercy to any of them, slaying them all, one after another, and none of them even got close to her. </p><p>She didn’t have a lot of magic left – she’d used a fair bit of it getting here – but that didn’t matter; what mattered was killing the grimm before they killed Blake, and if she had to use all of her magic to accomplish that, then she would.</p><p>And she did. The grimm died, and Sunset had no time to consider the state of her magical reserves as she rushed to Blake’s side. </p><p>Ruby, it seemed, was basically unhurt. She was unconscious, and her aura was down, but it seemed that her aura breaking was the extent of the damage. Blake, on the other hand… they had really done a number on Blake. Her clothes were torn to shreds, and the fair skin beneath it was not much better: she had a nasty wound to her neck and the bottom of her face; she had scars raking down her sides, gashes on her leg; what remained of her white waistcoat was soaked with blood. </p><p>“Blake?” Sunset cried, as she knelt down beside her. “Blake? Blake, if you can hear me, say something.”</p><p>Blake did not reply. </p><p>Sunset tore off her jacket, draping it over Blake like a blanket and pressing it down, trying to smother as many of Blake’s wounds as she could reach – and see. She used telekinesis – might as well use the magic while she had it – to press the jacket down everywhere equally. Leather wasn’t the best for this, but her tank-top wasn’t really big enough. </p><p>Sunset held her vambraces to Blake’s mouth; it misted up from her breath, but only slightly. Blake was still alive, but only just.</p><p>Sunset pressed the jacket down harder. “Come on, Blake. Stay with me. I need you to fight for just a little longer, okay? Come on, you can’t die before you’ve achieved equality, come on.”</p><p>“Ruby?” Jaune’s voice echoed through the trees. “Blake?”</p><p><em>Oh, thank Celestia.</em> “Jaune!” Sunset yelled. “Over here, quickly!”</p><p>“Sunset?” Jaune cried in disbelief.</p><p>“Yes!” Sunset shouted back. “Come on, Blake’s hurt!”</p><p>“Blake?” Jaune repeated, still with the incredulity in his voice, but he came nonetheless, emerging out of the trees and onto the path, with Flash Sentry just a step or two behind him. </p><p>Jaune’s eyes widened as he saw Blake. “What happened?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Sunset replied. “Can you do your thing?”</p><p>“What about Ruby?” Jaune asked, looking around for her.</p><p>“She’ll be fine, I think,” Sunset replied, taking her jacket off Blake so that Jaune could get a better look at her. “Blake needs you more.”</p><p>“Right. Okay. Sure,” Jaune said, and it was his turn to rush to her side now, even as Sunset took a step away. He knelt down beside her and held his healing hands over her, and the shining light spread from his palms to engulf her with its golden glowing embrace. </p><p>“Thank you,” Sunset murmured. Jaune didn’t reply; he was too busy concentrating on his work. </p><p>Sunset left him to it; he had had his semblance for long enough, he was perfectly capable of doing what needed to be done. Sunset walked towards Ruby, scooping up Sol Invictus and Soteria – she had discarded them to take on the beowolves – as she did so. </p><p>“Sunset,” Flash said.</p><p>Sunset stopped, looking at him. “Hey, Flash,” she muttered.</p><p>Flash looked at her for a moment, then looked away, and then looked back again. “I’m glad you’re alright,” he said.</p><p>Sunset hesitated. “Mmm. Likewise,” she said quietly.</p><p>Flash blinked. “Where’s the girl you were with? Arslan, was it?”</p><p>“I… I don’t know,” Sunset admitted. “We got separated. I had to find Ruby.”</p><p>“You left her?” Flash demanded.</p><p>“She volunteered, I had to make sure that Ruby was okay, and Blake,” Sunset insisted. “Once I’ve made sure they're safe, I will go back and look for her.” She knelt down beside Ruby, checking her more thoroughly for any injuries. She couldn’t see any. It seemed that being knocked out really was the extent of it. </p><p>Sunset guessed that she had Blake to thank for that. </p><p>
  <em>I don’t know how I can begin to thank you properly for that.</em>
</p><p>“What does safe look like right now?” Flash asked.</p><p>“I… I don’t know,” Sunset admitted.</p><p>“Jaune and I-”</p><p>“Jaune can’t fight while he’s helping Blake,” Sunset declared.</p><p>“And you don’t trust me,” Flash said.</p><p>“Not as much as I trust myself,” Sunset replied. “No offence.”</p><p>Flash didn’t reply to that, perhaps because he had no reply and perhaps because they were both immediately distracted by the sound of something else approaching. </p><p>Sunset snatched up Sol Invictus and immediately ran to put herself between the new intruder and Jaune and Blake. </p><p>“Stay where you are, Jaune; I’ll cover you,” Sunset said. “Don’t worry about it.”</p><p>“I won’t,” Jaune said, and he even sounded sincere about it. </p><p>Sunset raised her rifle to her shoulder; out of the corner of her eye, she saw Flash coming to stand beside her, shield up and spear resting atop the rim of Rho Aias. </p><p>The ursa lumbered out of the woods, its arms swaying slightly by its sides. Its movements were stiff, a little sluggish, and instead of a roar, a sort of barely audible moan escaped its bleach bone jaws. </p><p>It took one single, solitary, halting step forwards before it collapsed onto the ground.</p><p>It did this because it had Miló buried in its neck. </p><p>“Sorry I’m late,” Pyrrha said, snatching up her weapon out of the disintegrating ursa as she strode forwards.</p><p>“Always glad to see you, Pyrrha, you know that,” Sunset said, evident relief breaking in her voice as she lowered the muzzle of her rifle. “Surprised, but glad.”</p><p>“Once I knew something was wrong, I couldn’t just wait,” Pyrrha replied. “How’s Ruby?”</p><p>“Unconscious, but unhurt,” Sunset said, stepping aside. “Blake, on the other hand…”</p><p>Pyrrha gasped, her eyes widening. “What did she-?”</p><p>“Protected Ruby, I think,” Sunset murmured. “We won’t know until she tells us; she was… when I got here, she was almost done. If Jaune hadn’t shown up…”</p><p>Pyrrha nodded. “How is she, Jaune?”</p><p>Jaune glanced up at her. “I… I think she’s stabilising?” He ventured. “I don’t know; it’s really hard to tell.” He paused. “What’s going on up there?”</p><p>“I… don’t really know,” Pyrrha admitted. “Or rather… when Cinder and I left-”</p><p>“Cinder’s here too?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“I left her with Twilight; Sage is also wounded,” Pyrrha explained. “No other students are being dropped into the forest. I think something must have gone wrong somehow.”</p><p>“Tell us about it,” Sunset said.</p><p>“And with the nevermores, I suppose it might be too dangerous. But what I don’t understand is that the Atlesian airships are covering Beacon, but not attacking the grimm over the forest. Or in it. They’re not doing anything to help us,” Pyrrha continued.</p><p>“That doesn’t make any sense,” Flash said.</p><p>“Twilight can’t explain it either,” Pyrrha added.</p><p>“So what you’re saying is that we’re on our own?” Sunset asked.</p><p>“I’m afraid so,” agreed Pyrrha.</p><p>Sunset made a sound that was halfway between a growl and a wince. “Okay. Now that you’re here, can you stay here? Arslan stayed behind to buy me a little time to reach Ruby, but now that you can protect them, I should go back and try to find her.”</p><p>Before she could, before Pyrrha could agree, before any of them could do anything, they were disturbed by the sounds of howling beowolves filtering through the trees towards them.</p><p>The howling of a lot of beowolves. </p><p>“Oh no,” Flash moaned. “They must have followed us after all.”</p><p>“You brought them here?!” Sunset snapped.</p><p>“If we hadn’t gotten here, Blake would be in real trouble,” Jaune reminded her.</p><p><em>You could have left him,</em> Sunset thought, but did not say because… because she didn’t actually want Jaune to leave Flash behind, and if he had done so… she probably would have gone back for him before she went back for Arslan. Such was the hold that he had on her still. “How many?”</p><p>“Too many,” Flash replied. “More than I’ve ever seen in one place before.”</p><p>To Jaune, Sunset asked, “Can you move Blake?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Jaune moaned. “I can’t tell.”</p><p>Sunset glanced at Ruby, lying beneath the tree as though she were sleeping beneath its leafy bower. “Pyrrha, get Ruby up into that tree and stay there until… until help arrives; it's bound to eventually.”</p><p>
  <em>I may not like Professor Ozpin, but he wouldn’t let the students he’s taken an interest in die, would he?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Maybe if we did, it would prove that we weren’t that interesting after all.</em>
</p><p>The three of them formed a line, a little line, a meagre line, but the best line that they could muster in the circumstances. Pyrrha’s Miló was in rifle mode, ranged alongside Sol Invictus; Flash kept his Caliburn in spear configuration, and Rho Aias held before him. </p><p>The howling of the beowolves grew louder and louder; the three huntsmen could not see them yet through the trees, but they could hear them and measure their approach by the cacophony they made, a swelling sound of bloodlust that grew louder by the moment until-</p><p>Until for one brief and shining moment, the howling of the beowolves was drowned out by the whining of an engine as an airship passed overhead, casting its shadow over the trio, then over Jaune where he tended to Blake, before it flew away, banking swiftly to return towards them. And as it banked, Sunset could see it clearly: an Atlesian Skyray painted in bright cyan, with the cloud and rainbow lightning bolt of Rainbow Dash painted proudly on the nose.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0071"><h2>71. The Ace of Canterlot</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Rainbow Dash to the Rescue!</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Ace of Canterlot</p><p> </p><p>James called. Ozpin wasn’t particularly surprised. He sometimes thought that James let his closeness towards his students cloud his judgement as a headmaster a little too much – James was not their father, and Ozpin feared that he forgot that fact more often than was wise – but it made the general rather predictable to one who knew him as well as Ozpin did.</p><p>And in the current circumstance, Ozpin found it hard to blame him. They might have a number of broad philosophical disagreements, ranging from the proper role of the military to Ozpin’s belief that James coddled his Atlas students too much, teaching them to rely on outside help that might not always be available – the current situation being a case in point – but he couldn’t blame James for being desperate for news. </p><p>Had their places been reversed… had their places been reversed, he hoped he would have been just the same, even if he feared it would not be so. </p><p>He answered the call. “General.”</p><p>“How’s it going down there?” James asked immediately, forgoing all pleasantries.</p><p>“Miss Nikos has entered the forest, accompanied by Miss Fall,” Ozpin said. “Whether they will be enough to turn the tide is… uncertain.”</p><p>“Oz, you know that we can’t just wait this out,” Ironwood declared. “Now that those grimm are here, they aren’t just going to get bored and go away again; at least while there are still students in the forest, the grimm will keep hunting them.”</p><p>“I’m aware of the behaviour of the grimm, James,” Ozpin declared reproachfully.</p><p>“Then what are you going to do about it?” James demanded. He sighed. “I’ve tried contacting the Council again, but I’m being answered by their secretary.”</p><p>“As am I,” Ozpin replied. This was the downside of having treated the Council as he had and of having given First Councillor Aris so many headaches over the past year: the First Councillor considered herself to have been ill-used by him, and now, she was being petty in response. </p><p>He would have begrudged her the vindictiveness less if there were not lives on the line. </p><p>James scowled. “Politicians,” he growled. “Who came up with this set-up?”</p><p>“Someone who was doing what he thought was best,” Ozpin replied softly. “Someone who knew he was establishing the worst system in the world, apart from all the others that had already been tried.”</p><p>“Forgive me if I withhold my agreement,” James muttered. “What are we going to do, Oz?”</p><p>Ozpin was silent for a moment. Miss Shimmer, who could have been either great or terrible or somewhere in between; Miss Nikos, so full of promise, the last flower to bloom from a bygone world; Miss Rose, Summer’s girl, so young and so eager, in heart the very model of a huntress. All thrown into the fire. All at risk. All… all gone, perhaps. </p><p>He had hoped that their skill might see them through, he had thought that if they could survive this trial by fire, then they would have proved themselves one step closer to being ready, but James was right: the grimm would not stop hunting them. And it was unlikely that they could kill every grimm that had been drawn into that part of the forest. Perhaps they could fight their way to the Green Line, out of the Emerald Forest, but that seemed a slender thread on which to build any great hopes. </p><p>Ozpin wished he had his cane with him; he felt the sudden need to lean upon it. </p><p>“I am not sure that there is anything we can do,” he murmured.</p><p>James stared at him. “We can’t just give up on them, Oz! There must be something; we have to do something!”</p><p>“Is <em>this</em> not what we do, James?” Ozpin demanded. “We send these valiant young men and women into great peril, even to their certain deaths? Do we not send them out to fight and die alone, unaided, and then hate ourselves for being monsters that we are and then do it all again tomorrow? Is there any difference except that these young gallants have not yet been given the fig-leaf that we call graduation?”</p><p>“Oz-” James began.</p><p>“This is hardly the moment for you to try and console me, James,” Ozpin informed him quietly.</p><p>“No,” James murmured. “No, I guess it’s not.” He paused. “I try not to leave anyone to die alone if I can avoid it.”</p><p>“Sometimes…” Ozpin didn’t finish that thought. He didn’t actively seek it either, but there were instances when it was quite simply unavoidable. “I do not know what there is to be done.”</p><p>“Sir!” the voice of Miss Dash rang out from behind him. “Permission to speak!”</p><hr/><p>Dash’s leg twitched. Her foot tapped impatiently up and down upon the ground.</p><p>Something was wrong. It was obvious that something was wrong. Everyone in the freshman class, gathered outside in front of the docking pads, knew that something was wrong. Knew that something had gone wrong. Knew that things in the Emerald Forest weren’t going according to plan.</p><p>What gave it away? What <em>didn’t</em> give it away? The fact that Professor Ozpin and Professor Port were huddled together discussing things that they didn’t want the students to hear, the fact that no more Bullheads had taken off, the fact that you only had to turn around and you could see nevermores flying around out past the school, the fact that a cruiser and its air wing had taken up a defensive position over the school, none of this was normal. None of this was how things were supposed to go. </p><p>Rainbow didn’t know what, exactly, had gone wrong, but she knew that something had. Everyone knew that something had. None of these students here were idiots; at least, none were bigger idiots than Rainbow Dash. They all had eyes; they could all work this stuff out. </p><p>Of course, none of them were doing anything about it. They were only whispering and murmuring and worrying… and tapping their feet. </p><p>Everyone except Pyrrha. Pyrrha had done something. Pyrrha had run for the cliffs, and if Rainbow wasn’t mistaken, she had jumped right off them too. Off the cliffs and into the forest. She had gone to help her friends, while Rainbow… Twilight was down there, Twilight was there while something was going wrong, and Rainbow was just… just standing here!</p><p>She felt like a coward. Pyrrha made her feel like a coward. </p><p>
  <em>What’s going on? And why isn’t anyone doing anything about it? Why is that ship holding station instead of taking the fight to the grimm?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Is Twilight still okay?</em>
</p><p>“You’re tapping your foot,” Ciel observed.</p><p>Rainbow glanced at her. Ciel stood at ease, her hands clasped behind her back. Clasped a little too tightly. “And your hands are too tight,” Rainbow replied.</p><p>Ciel’s only reply to that was a slight sigh. </p><p>“Are you… are you both worried?” Penny ventured. “About Twilight?”</p><p>Rainbow hesitated. “Yes,” she admitted. “I’m worried.”</p><p>Ciel hesitated for even longer than Rainbow had. “As am I,” she said at last.</p><p>Penny blinked. “Should I be worried, too? This… it isn’t how things are supposed to go, is it?”</p><p>“No, Penny, it is not,” Ciel declared. “The following waves of students should have been flown in in quick succession, and there should have been no need for a fleet deployment.”</p><p>Penny frowned. “But if the fleet has been deployed, then isn’t everything okay? Won’t they save everyone?”</p><p>“That’s how it's <em>supposed</em> to work,” Rainbow muttered.</p><p>“In this case… we simply lack information,” Ciel said. “I suspect that Professor Ozpin and Professor Port have discussed the situation at hand, but they are not sharing their information with us.”</p><p>“I… I see,” Penny said softly. “But Pyrrha and Ruby are really strong, especially Pyrrha; and so is Sunset too, in a different way to them. I know that Twilight wasn’t partnered up with any of them, but maybe if they all team up, then-”</p><p>“Believe me, Penny, if I knew that had happened, I would not be nearly so worried,” Rainbow replied. “Trust me, I wouldn’t be nearly so worried if I knew that Twilight was with Blake, never mind all the others. But I don’t know that, and so… so I worry.” <em>And I hate that Pyrrha has more guts than I do.</em></p><p>“You are not at fault,” Ciel said.</p><p>“Huh?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>“Pyrrha has followed the dictates of her conscience, but you are not at fault by remaining here in obedience to orders,” Ciel assured her.</p><p>“Really?” Rainbow asked. “Then why do I feel at fault?”</p><p>Ciel was silent for a moment. “Obedient service is not always easy,” she said in that typically even tone of hers.</p><p>“Thanks, that makes me feel a lot better,” Rainbow growled. She turned around, looking over the heads of some of the students gathered around her to see – past and through the screen of Atlesian airships grouped around the cruiser – the nevermores flying over the forest. “The problem is the nevermores,” she declared.</p><p>“What do you mean?” Penny asked.</p><p>“I mean, that if the skies were clear, it wouldn’t matter what kind of trouble there was down in the forest because we could either bring in more students or, if things were really too hot, airlift the ones that were already in the forest out again. Even if they didn’t want to continue the exercise, then they could get Twi and the others out. But because of all those grimm in the… ah!”</p><p>Penny’s eyes widened. “Rainbow Dash?”</p><p>“I’m such an idiot!” Rainbow cursed, smacking herself on the forehead for only thinking like a huntress in training when she wasn’t just that, not by a long shot. “Wait here,” she commanded before she started pushing her way through the crowd – Penny followed her in spite of Rainbow’s instructions, practically forcing Ciel to do likewise – until she had not only cleared the front rank of the huddled students, but closed the distance with the headmaster by half, waiting until she reached the edge of the landing pad on which he stood to come to attention, slamming her foot down on the pad, and say. “Sir! Permission to speak!”</p><p>Professor Ozpin turned to face her slowly. He had a scroll in his hand, and on that scroll, Rainbow could just about make out the face of General Ironwood looking out at her.</p><p>Rainbow saluted. “Sir!”</p><p>“At ease, Dash,” General Ironwood said in a voice that was distant but audible nevertheless. Rainbow saw the General return her salute, and so she lowered her arm and came to an ‘at ease’ posture, legs spaced out and hands clasped behind her back. </p><p>Professor Ozpin’s expression was unreadable, at least to Rainbow. He walked towards her and kept his voice soft as he said, “Permission granted, Miss Dash.”</p><p>“Request permission to mount a rescue, sir.”</p><p>Professor Ozpin glanced down at General Ironwood, who – unless Rainbow was imagining it, which was possible – had a slight smile on his face. </p><p>“Explain, Miss Dash,” Professor Ozpin said.</p><p>“I don’t know whether the situation on the ground is so bad that you wouldn’t insert any more students in there if you could, sir, but you can’t,” Rainbow said. “And you can’t get the students of the first wave out either because the grimm own the skies over the Emerald Forest. Now, I… I don’t know why we’re letting them rule it,” she said quickly, hoping to get over the hump of the disrespect to the General quickly but at the same time knowing that if she didn’t say it, it would keep on bugging her until she did. “But I can get them out regardless, in my Skyray.”</p><p>Professor Ozpin’s eyebrows threatened to rise. “There are a very large number of nevermores, Miss Dash; believe me, withholding evacuation is not a decision that I take lightly. What makes you think that you can accomplish this?”</p><p>“Because I’m that good of a pilot, sir,” Rainbow replied. “But you don’t have to believe that; you only have to ask yourself: what have you got to lose? Me. And if you risk me, then you might get some of the gold out of that forest… isn’t it worth the risk?”</p><p>Professor Ozpin again glanced down at General Ironwood. “James? What do you say to this?”</p><p>“I say that if anyone can get this done, Dash can,” General Ironwood replied, and he was looking at Rainbow, not at Professor Ozpin, when he said it.</p><p>Rainbow felt her chest puff itself out a little as she heard that. “I won’t let you down, sir.”</p><p>“Considering what you’ve volunteered for, Miss Dash, letting anyone down should be the least of your concerns,” Professor Ozpin replied. The corners of his lips twitched upwards. “Permission granted, Miss Dash. Bring them home.”</p><p>Rainbow saluted. “Yes sir!” She turned around, finding Penny much closer than she had expected. “Penny, stay here. Ciel, make sure that Penny stays here.”</p><p>“Affirmative,” Ciel responded. </p><p>“'Stay here'?” Penny exclaimed. “But Ciel and I should come with you. Twilight and the others might need help-”</p><p>“I’ll have help,” Rainbow replied. “Just… not you.”</p><p>“Why not me?” Penny demanded. “I’m ready! I’ve already fought the White Fang; what’s so different about-?”</p><p>“This is not a question of readiness, Penny,” Ciel said, placing a hand on Penny’s shoulder. “This is a question of… value, is it not, Rainbow Dash?”</p><p>Rainbow nodded. “You’re too valuable to risk in something like this.”</p><p>“But you’re risking your life for our friends,” Penny pointed out.</p><p>“And if the General walks down any street in Low Town, he can find twenty guys just like me,” Rainbow replied. “You’re the only Penny that we’ve got.”</p><p>Penny pouted. “No! They’re my friends too, and I want to help you rescue them! Why should I just sit here-?”</p><p>“Penny,” Ciel cut her off. “This complaining is childish and to no purpose.”</p><p>“If you’re going to treat me like a child, then why shouldn’t I be childish?” demanded Penny.</p><p>“Penny,” Rainbow said sharply. “Look at me.”</p><p>Penny did, indeed, look; her green eyes were bright from the backlighting, and they glared into Rainbow’s face. </p><p>Rainbow didn’t flinch; it would look bad if she did. “Do you trust me?” she asked.</p><p>“I never-”</p><p>“Do you trust me?” Rainbow repeated.</p><p>Penny nodded solemnly. “I trust you, Rainbow Dash.”</p><p>“Then trust me,” Rainbow implored her. “I’m going to get them back, but you need to stay here and stay safe. There are lots of battles to fight, real battles, battles with whole kingdoms at stake. But this isn’t one of them. Trust me, I can get this done.”</p><p>Penny hesitated. “You will save everyone, won’t you?”</p><p>Rainbow grinned, and threw her a thumbs up. “I’m all over it.”</p><p>“Rise up through snow and cold and heart of winter,” Ciel murmured. “May the Lady be your co-pilot.”</p><p>Rainbow nodded but said nothing. She looked out across the sea of gathered students. She wasn’t going to take Penny, and not taking Penny, she couldn’t really take Ciel either – someone had to take over as team leader if this didn’t work out – but she did want someone to go in with her, just in case anyone needed help groundside. Someone who could handle themselves, someone who wasn’t afraid of a little direct action, someone reliable, but also someone who was crazy enough to go along with this.</p><p><em>Or a team whose leader is nuts but whose second is reliable. </em>“Hey, Trixie!” she yelled as she walked past Penny and Ciel and back the way she’d come. “You want to be a hero?”</p><p>“The Grrrrrreat and Powerrrrful Trrrrixie is already a hero amongst heroes!” Trixie proclaimed, throwing back her cape and hitting a green-haired, red-eyed girl in the face with it in the process. Trixie didn’t notice as she grinned. “But I’m always ready to join in a stupid plan if you need my help.”</p><p>“If Twilight needs help, then we’re in,” Starlight agreed.</p><p>“Thanks, guys,” Rainbow said. “I’ll owe you for this.”</p><p>Tempest rolled her eyes. “Sure. Sure. Whatever.”</p><p>“We’re not doing this so you’ll owe us,” Sunburst insisted. “We’re doing this because it’s the right thing to do.”</p><p>“But we’ll take a favour anyway,” Trixie added.</p><p>“Ignore her,” Starlight said. “Blake risked her life to save us on our last mission. How can we do less now that she needs help?”</p><p>“Maybe nothing, but I’ll owe you anyway,” Rainbow said. “Now come on, let’s go.”</p><hr/><p>Ozpin looked down at his scroll. “Can she do it, James? Or are we throwing good children after more good children?”</p><p>“I told you before, Oz: I’ve never met anyone with more guts and determination than Rainbow Dash,” Ironwood replied. “She’ll get it done; you can count on it.”</p><hr/><p>Rainbow led Team TTSS up the ramp into The Bus, their feet clattering upon the metal of the ramp as they piled inside the airship. </p><p>“Starlight, I need you up here with me,” Rainbow said as she took off her wings – she’d hardly need them to fly a Skyray, and the truth was that their bulk got in the way a little when she was sitting in the pilot’s chair – and stowed them in one of the lockers behind the benches next to the side doors. “At least until we pick up Twilight.”</p><p>“Uh, I’ve flown a little,” Starlight said, “but I wouldn’t say I’ve got what it takes for a mission like this.”</p><p>“I don’t need you to take the controls; I need someone smart to bring up the locations of everyone we need to pick up,” Rainbow explained, slamming the locker door shut with a metallic thud. “Can you use their scrolls to trace their positions?”</p><p>“Sure, if they’ve got their scrolls with them,” Starlight replied.</p><p>Rainbow grinned. “I knew I could count on you.” It was well known that Starlight Glimmer could turn her hand to… pretty much absolutely anything. She might not be the best at all of those things – she wasn’t quite as smart as Twilight, or as scientifically or mechanically gifted, and she was right: she was nowhere near as good a flyer as Rainbow Dash – but she was pretty darn good at all of them. It had been, to be honest, a little unnerving how awesome she was at everything, like, why was General Ironwood wasting his time with Rainbow Dash when this girl was obviously going to be Atlas’ champion in years ahead? Then she’d had a freak-out from the stress of it all, gone AWOL, and eventually been tracked down to a nameless village out in the wilds where she’d been trying to persuade everyone to wear sackcloth and bake deliberately bad-tasting muffins – the villagers hadn’t taken much notice and honestly seemed glad to have a huntress around – which had answered that question, lost Starlight her team-leader spot, and meant that she had come back to repeat her first year after she got out of therapy. All in all, being Trixie’s second seemed to agree with her more than being the rising hope of Atlas ever had, and she hadn’t had any problems since, so Rainbow wasn’t worried about having her ride shotgun. </p><p>In fact, in the current situation, she couldn’t think of anyone that she’d rather have. </p><p>“Tempest,” she added, “when we set down, I’m going to need you on one of these guns.” She pointed to the two triple-barrelled rotary cannons mounted on rails running along the ceiling parallel to the doors. Not all Skyrays carried them all the time – they were usually reserved for airships attached to front line units – but The Bus had them for situations just like this, and a good thing too, considering there were likely to be as many grimm on the ground as in the air. </p><p>“Understood,” Tempest said, her voice and expression alike betraying nothing. She was absolutely impassive, the situation not fazing her at all. </p><p>That was probably a good thing.</p><p>“But right now, everyone strap in,” Rainbow said. “This ride could get rough.” She turned in the direction of the cockpit, trusting Starlight to follow.</p><p>“Wait!” the voice that hailed her belonged to Sun, and his voice was followed shortly after – as Rainbow turned back – by his self as Sun leapt onto the ramp and scampered into the airship. “Wait,” he repeated. “I’m coming with you.”</p><p>Rainbow frowned. “Sun, I know you must be worried about Blake-”</p><p>“This isn’t about Blake!” Sun exclaimed. “I mean, sure, I’m worried that she’s in there, even though I know that she’s a totally awesome huntress, and if anyone can handle herself in a situation like this, it’s her, but this isn’t about her. This is about Sage. He’s my teammate, and he’s in trouble, and so I should do something to help him. I should have gone with Pyrrha, but I didn’t, and now… I should do this, don’t you think? Isn’t this what a team leader would do?”</p><p>Rainbow hesitated. “Maybe it is,” she conceded. “But if I let you come with me, and then Weiss shows up wanting to come with us to help out Flash-”</p><p>“Rainbow Dash!” Weiss called, and Rainbow heard her feet pitter-pattering up the ramp before she burst in, shoving Sun slightly aside to make room for her. “I’m coming with you.”</p><p>“No, you’re not,” Rainbow insisted. “If you two come along, and then Yang shows up next, there’s not going to be any room for Sage or Flash or anybody else we’re supposed to evacuate.”</p><p>“If you have us, why do you need… these people?” Weiss demanded, waving one dismissive hand to encompass Team TTSS as Trixie, Tempest, and Sunburst took their seats on the front benches and strapped themselves in. </p><p>“Because I trust them,” Rainbow said. “And also because they’re kind of expendable if this goes wrong.”</p><p>“Hey!” Trixie cried.</p><p>“Listen, I get it,” Rainbow said, “you want to be good team leaders, believe me; in your shoes, I would want in too. But I also know that if I were down there in that forest, the last thing I’d want would be for my team leader, my friend, to get hurt on some dangerous rescue plan.”</p><p>“Then why are <em>you</em> going?” Weiss demanded.</p><p>Rainbow grinned. “Because I don’t take enough notice of what Twilight wants.” The smile faded from her face. “Trust me, we’re going to bring them home, all of them. But I need you to step down and wait for them to come back, okay?”</p><p>Weiss frowned. “What makes you so sure?”</p><p>"Because this is what I do," Rainbow said earnestly. She could fight; she could kill grimm; if it came to it, maybe she could kill men too; but what she was, what she really was, what she thought that General Ironwood took notice of her for, was a saviour. She'd protected Twilight and the others from Chrysalis; she'd saved Applejack, Maud, and Spearhead from the grimm; the reason she was the leader of Team RSPT was in case somebody needed to save Penny. That was what Rainbow Dash did: she made sure that everyone got home safe.</p><p>And she didn't mean to break that streak now.</p><p>Weiss looked into Rainbow's eyes. "Winter tells me that you're very good," she murmured. "And my sister is a very good judge of character. Come on, Sun; we don't want to get in anyone's way."</p><p>Sun's mouth opened; for a moment, it looked as though he might say something, but he did not; he simply followed after Weiss as they both exited the airship.</p><p>"Trixie, shut that door before Yang shows up," Rainbow ordered; she heard the door hissing shut behind her as she, once again, turned to the cockpit.</p><p>This time, she made it there and sat down in the pilot's seat on the right-hand side and started running hastily through the pre-flight checklist. Dust at one hundred percent, engines green, weapons loaded, sensors operating…</p><p>Starlight sat down in the seat beside her. "There is one thing that concerns me a little," she admitted, even as she took out her scroll and began to tap away on it.</p><p>"What's that?" Rainbow asked.</p><p>"There are ten people down in the forest, right?" Starlight said. "Including the two who went in after the first group?"</p><p>"Pyrrha and Cinder, yeah, ten," Rainbow replied.</p><p>"This airship is only rated to carry ten people," Starlight said. "And there are already five of us."</p><p>"Yeah, but come on Starlight, this an Atlesian airship," Rainbow declared. "Everyone knows Atlesian engineering has a one hundred percent margin of safety."</p><p>"Does it?" Starlight asked.</p><p>Rainbow paused for a moment. "Well, let's hope so, huh?" she said, flashing a grin in Starlight's direction. Twilight had told her that it was so; admittedly, Twilight had told her so while defending the way that she had built a hundred and fifty percent margin of safety into the Wings of Harmony.</p><p>Hopefully, Twilight hadn't been lying to save face.</p><p>Nah, Twilight wasn't the kind to do something like that. One hundred percent margin of safety.</p><p>Probably.</p><p>Starlight rolled her eyes.</p><p>As the engines on The Bus stirred to life, Rainbow quickly got out her own scroll and called Twilight. She wouldn't have risked calling anyone else in the middle of a hot combat zone like that, and she didn't know of anyone in the forest who would be stupid enough to answer their scroll in the middle of a fight, but Twilight's armour included her VI, Midnight, who could do things like answer the scroll without Twilight have to lift a finger.</p><p>Rainbow wasn't always sure that she liked Midnight, but she was glad that she existed right now.</p><p>"Hello, Rainbow Dash," Midnight said, her voice seeming even more mechanically distorted than normal when coming out of the other end of a scroll.</p><p>"Rainbow Dash?" Twilight cried.</p><p>"Twilight!" Rainbow said loudly. "Are you okay?"</p><p>"Thanks to Pyrrha," Midnight said.</p><p>"What happened?" Rainbow demanded.</p><p>"Nothing happened," Twilight insisted.</p><p>"Several deficiencies were discovered with Twilight's combat system," Midnight informed Rainbow. "Also, she almost died."</p><p>"'Almost-'" Rainbow forced herself not to panic. Panic wasn't going to help. She needed to be calm and cool to fly the airship. "How much aura do you have left?"</p><p>"About twenty percent," Midnight said.</p><p>"It's not my aura that I'm concerned with," Twilight declared. "Sage is hurt; he needs help. What's happening up there?"</p><p>"What's happening is that I'm coming to get everyone," Rainbow said. "Starlight is trying to fix your location using your scroll; can you give her a hand with that, or are you too preoccupied?"</p><p>"Starlight?"</p><p>"Hey, Twilight," Starlight broke in. "Rough day, huh?"</p><p>Twilight sighed on the other end of the line. "You could say that."</p><p>"You can tell us all about it when we get back to Beacon," Starlight said. "Until then, do you think you can help me out?"</p><p>"Sure, I'll do what I can," Twilight said. "Rainbow, are you sure you can do this? The nevermores-"</p><p>"Let me worry about the nevermores; you just stay safe until I get there."</p><p>"Okay. I'll try. Thank you."</p><p>"Yes, thank you, Rainbow Dash," Midnight added. "This is why you're my favourite."</p><p>"No, I'm not," Rainbow replied.</p><p>Midnight paused. "No," she admitted. "As a computer, I don't have favourites."</p><p>"I don't believe that either," Rainbow muttered. "Sit tight; we're on our way." She ended the call, gripped the wheel, and hauled up on it to lift The Bus up into the air. The sky sank down to meet them, the buildings of Beacon falling away as the airship ascended. Starlight looked down at the scroll in her lap, tapping away, while Rainbow's gaze flickered between the view out of the cockpit and the instruments arrayed in front of her. Sensors detected no hostiles; all systems were go.</p><p>Rainbow's hands spun the wheel, turning the airship upon a central point so that the Skyray's bulbous nose was facing eastward towards the Emerald Forest. Rainbow Dash accelerated, the airship lurching forwards towards the line of Skydarts ranged around the cruiser that, now she was in the cockpit, she could identify as the <em>Resolution</em>; they were guarding the cliffs, warding off any attempt the nevermores might make at Beacon. There probably wasn't much chance of it – the grimm weren't stupid, unfortunately, and they probably knew that attacking a huntsman academy was a cheap ticket to an early grave – but it was the closest the Atlesian forces could get to engaging the enemy.</p><p>Rainbow pulled the microphone off the wall. "<em>Resolution,</em> this is Rorari Three-Two heading out over the Emerald Forest."</p><p>"Roger that, Rorari Three-Two; good luck out there."</p><p>"Wish you were coming with me."</p><p>"Wish we were coming too, Three-Two, over."</p><p>"Understood," Rainbow said and hung the microphone back up.</p><p>Starlight shuffled in her seat. "I wonder why they're just standing there?"</p><p>"We'll find out eventually," Rainbow said.</p><p>"Will we also find out what Twilight's doing in an academy uniform?" Starlight demanded.</p><p>Rainbow looked at her.</p><p>"Come on, Rainbow Dash, you must realise this is the question everyone who knows Twilight has been asking," Starlight needled. "She's no huntress, so why the act? What's going on?"</p><p>Rainbow looked away, out of the cockpit. "It's classified."</p><p>Starlight snorted. "In other words, don't ask," she muttered.</p><p>"Pretty much, yeah."</p><p>Starlight shook her head. "So many secrets."</p><p><em>If only you knew,</em> Rainbow thought.</p><p>They passed through the <em>Resolution</em>'s fighter screen, beyond the cliffs and out over the Emerald Forest; Rainbow could see patches of the green and verdant forest canopy out of the corners of the cockpit, passing down below, stretching out green uninterrupted for miles beyond.</p><p>And above the trees, the nevermores circled. There must have been about fifty of them, circling, darting back and forth, their wings flapping as they peered downwards at the forest below. Every so often, one of them would dive down towards the trees, but never for very long, never reaching the ground; they always pulled up before they reached that point.</p><p>Rainbow asked, "What do you think they're doing?"</p><p>Starlight looked up from her scroll and shuddered. "I think they're looking for prey," she said before she plugged in her scroll to a dock on the dashboard. Instantly, the scroll began to project a three-dimensional hologram of the forest, with ten red dots marking positions scattered across the map: seven in one place, one solitary dot off to the north-west, and three dots closest to The Bus.</p><p>"That's Twilight, there," Starlight said, indicating the trio of red dots. "One of them, at least."</p><p>The Skyray's sensors began to blare out.</p><p>"And that's the first nevermore, right there," Rainbow muttered.</p><p>It was coming straight at them. Its mouth was open, and although Rainbow couldn't hear it, she could imagine the shrill shriek coming out of the giant grimm's mouth as it bore down on them, head to head, talons outstretched.</p><p><em>I bet you wouldn't be going head to head like this against a Skydart,</em> Rainbow thought. The grimm weren't stupid, more was the pity; they knew which kinds of airships were more dangerous than others.</p><p>Or thought they did, in this case. It was coming straight for The Bus because, as big as it was, it didn't believe that the Skyray was armed with anything that could hurt it.</p><p>Rainbow was in no hurry to disabuse this one of the notion; as the nevermore flew straight at them, Rainbow did the same, maintaining a level course towards the nevermore in turn. She accelerated slightly and fired off the smaller rotary cannons mounted upon the wingtips; the guns fired, tracer rounds zipped past the cockpit, marking the way as the shots tracked the nevermore and impacted into it, bullets thudding into the black feathers of the grimm.</p><p>The grimm took no notice of them, ploughing through the fire, great wings beating, driving it on towards Rainbow Dash and her airship.</p><p>Once more, Rainbow found she could imagine the shriek.</p><p>"Uh," Starlight murmured. "You want to tell me why you're not using the bigger gun?"</p><p>"Not yet," Rainbow replied, her thumb hovering over the button to fire the Tempest cannon.</p><p>"Why not?" Starlight demanded.</p><p>"Because I want to make sure that I don't miss," Rainbow said, lining up her shot.</p><p>The nevermore stretched out its talons, its body rising upwards as it prepared to grab the Skyray from the front.</p><p>Rainbow fired the Tempest.</p><p>If there was anything to convince Rainbow that Atlesian ships were engineered with a truly staggering margin of safety, it was the fact that she had been able to strap the most ridiculous gun ever made to the bottom of an airship in no way designed for it without suffering any ill-effects whatsoever.</p><p>Okay, that wasn't entirely true; as Rainbow hit the button and held it down, as she fired the Tempest at the nevermore that wanted her dead so badly, the entire airship shook. The vibrations of the gun was like an earthquake on the ground, making the cockpit shake, and would have thrown one or both of Rainbow and Starlight out of their chairs if they hadn't been strapped in. Behind her, Rainbow heard Trixie moan in alarm as the whole airship wobbled like jelly that hadn't set right.</p><p>But it was worth it, for the way that the nevermore simply disappeared in a cloud of black feathers, thrown backwards as a stream of heavy calibre armour-piercing rounds struck it square on the breast with a buzzsaw sound that echoed upwards into the airship itself.</p><p>And then there were clear skies before them.</p><p>"And that," Rainbow said, "is why I waited."</p><p>The alarm began to ring out once again.</p><p>Rainbow Dash looked up to see two nevermores swooping down upon The Bus from out of the sun. </p><p>She banked hard to the left, tilting the Skyray, feeling herself being pulled down, pressed against the straps that held her in as she upped the power level on the engines just a little bit. She didn’t stay to fight – these nevermores might not have missed the fate of their comrade, and them coming down on her, it would be tough to get into position to fire the Tempest – so she ran, banking first to the left and then to the right, jinking this way and that while the nevermores pursued them, their black wings pounding, gaining slowly upon the Atlesian airship as they flew. </p><p>“Can’t this thing go any faster?” Starlight demanded.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>Starlight boggled at her for a moment. “Then why isn’t this thing going any faster?!”</p><p>“Because I don’t want to lose them,” Rainbow replied, “I want to string them along.”</p><p>Starlight stared at the girl in the pilot’s seat. “Are you crazy?”</p><p>“No, I’m a great pilot,” Rainbow replied, grinning like a maniac. Her hands were steady as a rock, and she didn’t know if Starlight noticed, but there was not a single bead of sweat anywhere upon her, certainly not on her hand. By the gods but she had missed this, both the freedom of flying and the thrill of it, of knowing that even on a good day, you were one slip up, one accident away from death, and that went double when there were grimm around. </p><p>Everything was in her own hands. Her survival was entirely up to her, and it was awesome! No limits, no boundaries, just showing the whole world what she could do.</p><p>And so she let the nevermores gain on her, drawing closer, ever closer, and then, when she judged that they had gotten close enough, Rainbow hauled back on the steering column, and <em>then</em> she let the throttle out. The enhanced engines of The Bus roared to life as Rainbow’s beauty shot upwards into the sky, soaring higher, ever higher, rising towards the clouds with the nevermores still in hot pursuit. </p><p>A Skyray was fast on the level – faster than a nevermore – but the avian grimm had a better rate of climb, so Rainbow needed to give it all she had in order to stay ahead of them during the race for the clouds. The nevermores stopped gaining, holding the distance between them and their prey even, never falling behind and not letting up in their pursuit, not for a single moment. </p><p>Starlight was being pressed backwards into her seat, moaning softly in discomfort. From behind, Rainbow could hear Trixie shrieking. She sounded a little like one of the nevermores. </p><p>The grin didn’t leave Rainbow’s face. Sure, things might not seem fun right now, and she could feel the harness digging into her chest the same as Starlight could, but once they pulled this off, they were all going to feel absolutely fantastic. </p><p>“Look at this view!” Rainbow whooped as they rose higher and higher, bursting through a cloud, rising so high that when Rainbow cut back on the engines for a moment, when she throttled the power back to a bare minimum, The Bus hung suspended for a moment, high above a world that was spread out all around them.</p><p>And it was beautiful. You could see the whole of Vale from up here, in all its sprawling glory. From up high, the Atlesian cruisers looked like the model ships that Ciel made. The Emerald Forest was a lush carpet of green laid out across the world so that nobody stubbed their toes walking on the floor, and the mountains rose up out of the earth like the jagged blades of an obsidian club. Rivers of sparkling sapphire wound their way across a land of tiny villages and small towns, and railway lines bound the land in chairs of iron. </p><p>Rainbow couldn’t see all the way to Atlas from up here, but in a way, that was a good thing. Home was a long way off, but it was good that the world wasn’t small enough to fit into the view from an airship. </p><p>The world was so vast and so beautiful. </p><p>She wondered where in all this expanse of loveliness Fluttershy and Applejack were; she tried to imagine them, wandering along the ground like tiny ants, while she sat in heaven looking down upon them all. </p><p>Then the Skyray began to fall.</p><p>It began to plummet to the ground, and the rate of its descent accelerated dramatically as Rainbow Dash turned the engines back on to maximum, turning the Skyray so that its nose was pointing straight towards the ground, the ground towards which the airship rushed with all the power at its command. The nevermores scattered out of her way, aided by Rainbow firing downwards at them to give them some more encouragement, but as The Bus flew headlong like a thunderbolt towards the ground, they pursued once more, joined by a third nevermore, all of them falling down, black darts pursuing. </p><p>The forest grew larger and larger, closer and closer. </p><p>“Rainbow Dash!” Starlight cried, holding onto the ceiling of the cockpit with one hand as she looked to be trying to push herself back into her seat.</p><p>Larger and larger, closer and closer. </p><p>“RAINBOW DASH!” Starlight yelled when there was nothing in their view but green trees, on which they could see the leaves. </p><p>Rainbow pulled up, hauling back on the steering column to wrest the Skyray out of its descent and bring it level, no, rising just a little bit. The bottom of the airship towards the tail hit the trees with a thump that made them all bounce, that made the airship rise a little and then fall a little before levelling off just above the treetops. </p><p>The nevermores were not so lucky. Unable pull up in time, all three of them, tangled up together, getting in one another’s way as they sought to escape their fate, ploughed into the ground, smashing trees beneath their bulk, kicking up great clouds of earth as they cratered the landscape beneath them. </p><p>Rainbow didn’t know if any of them had survived the impact, but she wasn’t about to take any chances; as she banked the airship around, she opened up the missile launchers on the starboard side and fired on the crater the grimm had left. </p><p>Nothing stirred once the smoke cleared. </p><p>A triumphant laugh began to rise from Rainbow’s throat… only to cease when she thought about how many adorable forest critters might have died as a result of what she did.</p><p>
  <em>Maybe I won’t tell Fluttershy about this.</em>
</p><p>Starlight gasped. “That… that was-”</p><p>“Great, right?”</p><p>“Not quite the word I’d use,” Starlight replied.</p><p>There were no other nevermores actively trying to kill them, so Rainbow kept the airship flying just above the treetops as she looked back over her shoulder. “Everyone okay back there?”</p><p>Trixie groaned wordlessly.</p><p>“I think I might hurl,” Sunburst muttered.</p><p>“Tempest, can you stand?” Rainbow yelled.</p><p>“Of course,” Tempest replied. “You want me on the gun?”</p><p>“Yes,” Rainbow said; she looked back at Starlight’s map. They had, by luck, come down pretty close to the lone dot making their way through the forest. “Someone’s nearby.”</p><p>She heard, rather than saw, one of the side doors open up, but rather than glance back again to see Tempest deploying the side cannon, Rainbow kept her eyes in front of her – and on the sensors – as she banked The Bus gently in the direction of the single lost lamb in the forest. She couldn’t help but wonder what kind of person would leave their partner like that. </p><p>Perhaps it was Blake; she could see Blake doing something stupidly noble like trying to lead the grimm away from Ruby. </p><p>She was that kind of person. It was what made her such a good fit for Atlas.</p><p>It was also the kind of thing that was going to get her killed one of these days if she wasn’t careful. </p><p>A flash movement caught her attention; a head poked up through the leaves, followed by a figure climbing up to the top of one of the trees, waving both her arms in the air to get Rainbow’s attention. It wasn’t Blake, it was the Haven student, Arslan Altan, the one who was some kind of bigshot back in Mistral. Rainbow brought the Skyray alongside the tree, and Arslan nimbly leapt aboard, landing inside with a thump against the metal. </p><p>“Thanks,” she said as Sunburst – feeling a little recovered – helped her to a seat. “I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting a rescue effort with all those nevermores around.” She paused. “Just like I wasn’t expecting to see any airship pull a stunt like that. That was incredible.”</p><p>“You didn’t have to experience it,” Trixie groaned.</p><p>“What happened here?” Sunburst asked. “Where’s your partner?”</p><p>“What happened is the creatures of grimm,” Arslan said. “There were so many of them; like, what kind of an exercise is this?”</p><p>“One that’s gone wrong,” Starlight declared as she got out of the co-pilot’s chair and made her way back into the passenger section. “Grimm numbers are much higher than expected; that’s why the skies are full of nevermores, that’s why we’re getting everyone out.” She glanced at Trixie. “We should get ready.”</p><p>Trixie unstrapped herself. “Quite right, Starlight. I was wondering who’d be the first to notice that it is time to get ready!”</p><p>Rainbow shook her head. As she guided the VTOL – gently, bearing in mind there was a door open now – towards the location of Twilight and her companions, she glanced back into the passenger section and said, “You never said what happened to your partner? Is Sunset okay?”</p><p>“Sunset went on ahead,” Arslan replied. “Ruby’s aura broke; she could move faster on her own. I tried to catch up, but I… got lost.”</p><p>Tempest sniggered.</p><p>“I’m a city girl; I don’t know where I am in the countryside!” Arslan protested.</p><p>Rainbow said nothing. What Sunset had done… it probably wasn’t the right thing to do, but at the same time, she could absolutely understand why Sunset had done it, and, well, there was a reason they were headed towards Twilight next.</p><p>
  <em>Maybe Sunset and I are more alike than I thought. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>There’s an encouraging thought.</em>
</p><p>In addition to Tempest on the cannon, Starlight crouched in the doorway with her Equaliser in rifle mode; as the Skyray flew low over the trees, Starlight would sometimes see a beowolf darting through the forest beneath them. Equaliser rang out, a turquoise-coloured laser bolt streaming from the barrel; sometimes, she could see that she had hit the target; other times, she just had to hope that she had. </p><p>They flew over one of the paths cutting through the forest, following it southwards towards Twilight’s location. Once or twice, they saw ursai or small groups of beowolves, and when they did, the side-cannon whirred as it sprayed the forest with fire, splintering tree bark and denuding the trees of their leaves as grimm were dissolved in the hail of fire. </p><p>Rainbow let out a breath that she hadn’t known that she’d been holding when she saw Twilight, distinctive in her lavender armour, waving one hand towards them. There was someone else with her too, Cinder Fall in her brown vest and pants, shielding her eyes from the sun as she looked up towards them. Rainbow could see Sage too, lying on the ground. He wasn’t moving. </p><p>“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight’s voice broke through on the microphone. “Am I glad to see you!”</p><p>Rainbow nearly ripped the microphone off the wall. “Me too, Twi; me too. Are you sure you’re okay?”</p><p>“I’m fine,” Twilight insisted. “It was a little scary, I admit, but I’m okay, thanks to Pyrrha and Cinder.”</p><p>“Where is Pyrrha?”</p><p>“She left Cinder here with me and went on ahead to go help Ruby,” Twilight said. “Her aura broke; I don’t know if she’s okay.”</p><p>“We’ll find out soon enough,” Rainbow assured her. “How’s Sage?”</p><p>“I don’t know; I’m not a doctor,” Twilight replied. “I’m not sure if we should move him.”</p><p>“We don’t have much choice,” Rainbow replied. “Hang on, I’ll set her down; that way nobody has to jump while carrying him.”</p><p>“Is there room to land here?”</p><p>“I’ll make it work,” Rainbow said, gently easing The Bus downwards towards the ground. It <em>was</em> a tight squeeze, definitely – this path had been made for people not for airships – but it had also been made to give people a reasonable amount of space, and so, by shifting first this way and then that, by moving the wings inch by inch to avoid the trees, by taking it nice and slow, she was able to bring the airship down to hover just above the deck. She didn’t extend out the ramp, as much as that might have made things easier. They might need to make a quick getaway, after all. </p><p>Sunburst got one of the two stretchers down from the ceiling and leapt down to carry it to Twilight and Sage, while Starlight also disembarked to cover them, Equaliser pressed against her shoulder as her aim darted this way and that. </p><p>Cinder, by contrast, embarked into the Skyray, not waiting for Twilight as she and Sunburst got Sage onto the stretcher. Rather, Cinder walked into the cockpit, her boots tapping lightly upon the floor, and leaned over Rainbow’s seat.</p><p>“So, gallant Atlas decided to rescue us after all,” Cinder drawled. “I must confess that I’m surprised.”</p><p>“You shouldn’t be,” Rainbow grunted, “Saving people is what Atlas does.”</p><p>“Oh, yes, you save everyone, don’t you,” Cinder said. “You never fail, you never falter, you never let anyone die. You have the power to save every single life.”</p><p>“I didn’t say that,” Rainbow said. “I just… we try, okay? We don’t leave anyone behind.”</p><p>“Apparently not,” Cinder conceded. “And yet… rather a small rescue party, isn’t it? Just you and… some other people.”</p><p>“We’re Team Tsunami!” Trixie declared. “Led by the Great and Powerful-”</p><p>“Fascinating,” Cinder interrupted. “My point is, why just one ship?”</p><p>“You only need one ship when I’m at the controls,” Rainbow declared. “Thanks, for sticking by Twilight.”</p><p>Cinder smirked. “Oh, don’t mention it, Rainbow Dash. It was pure pleasure.”</p><p>She retreated just as Twilight levitated Sage’s stretcher inside and then embarked herself, followed by Sunburst and Starlight. As Sunburst secured Sage’s stretcher on the floor, strapping both the stretcher and the patient in at the back of the airship so that neither of them would be thrown around if Rainbow had to do any more dramatic flying, Twilight made her way up to the cockpit.</p><p>Rainbow grabbed her, pulling her into an embrace that was no less tight for being one-armed. She pressed her forehead against Twilight’s and, for a moment, closed her eyes. </p><p>“You are not doing this again.”</p><p>Twilight laughed nervously. “I hope not.”</p><p>Rainbow opened her eyes. “I’m glad you're okay.”</p><p>“I’m glad you came for me.”</p><p>“Always,” Rainbow said softly.</p><p>A smile briefly spread across Twilight’s face, and for a moment, it looked as though she was going to say something else… but instead, she merely took the now vacant co-pilot’s seat, and Rainbow returned her attention to the controls as she guided the Skyray – once more, gently – back up into the air and towards the remaining students still in the forest. </p><p>She kept The Bus to about half the speed she was capable of, mostly because she didn’t want to completely overshoot the target or miss where Blake and the others were – maybe trying to get their attention like Arslan and Twilight – because she was going too fast to slow down in time.</p><p>Tank had taught her that there were times when slow and steady won the race. </p><p>However, as the Skyray glided over the treetops, Rainbow soon noticed – even before Starlight called out to her – that it wasn’t just the forest floor and the trees that were passing beneath them.</p><p>It was the grimm, a mass of grimm, maybe not enough to be called a horde – and Rainbow didn’t see any really big ones there – but it was certainly a huge column of beowolves, a black mass running through the forest, sometimes thinning out as a dense copse of trees or a rock formation presented some obstacle to their movement, but then flowing back again into the column they had presented before. They were like a river, a tide of grimm that could be momentarily broken up but not denied the unity of its course. Individual grimm were impossible to keep track of as they disappeared out of sight from time to time as the trees blocked the view from above, but it was impossible to lose sight of the mass of grimm, the sheer number of them moving in one group, one direction.</p><p>In the same direction as the huntsmen. </p><p>The sound of their roars and growls rose up from the forest floor as Tempest opened fire on them, spraying the column with rounds from her rapidly rotating cannon. Some of the beowolves looked up; they bared their fangs; they raised their paws in angry, futile challenge; but though Tempest’s fire raked their column, it did not diminish the size of the black, angry mass in any meaningful way. </p><p>Some of the beowolves leapt up into the air or else climbed trees before jumping off the highest branches that would bear their weight, claws flailing wildly as they sought to gain the Skyray and massacre all those within. Those that weren’t killed instantly by Tempest’s cannon, by Starlight’s Equaliser, those that weren’t burned by the fire from Trixie’s wand, fell back, flailing and howling, to the ground below as Rainbow pulled her airship upwards, out of reach of grasping claws.</p><p>She also accelerated, the engines roaring as the forest began to disappear beneath more rapidly, as The Bus gained ground over the grimm, racing towards the head of the column, soaring over beowolves and alphas, beyond them even as they raised their heads to look for the shadow that had passed overhead. </p><p>If they didn’t reach Blake and the rest before the grimm did, well, things could get messy. </p><p>But there always seemed to be more grimm ahead, the column they were dashing over never seemed to end, they never got out in front of the grimm, there were always more of them, more of them, and as the six red icons of the six students on Starlight’s map got closer and closer, Rainbow began to worry that the grimm might have beaten them to it after all. </p><p>They had not, thank the gods; at the last moment, just before they reached the point at which everyone was waiting, Rainbow and her Skyray overshot the grimm. Of course, she overshot the students too, which was why she hadn’t wanted to be going this fast in the first place, and had to bank around, descending from her loftier height towards them even as the first wave of grimm began to make their final approach.</p><p>She could see them, in the clearing: Blake was on the ground, with Jaune kneeling over her, applying his semblance to her – was she hurt? Was it serious? And how was it Blake was down, the truest mettle Rainbow had ever met in her life? – while Ruby slumbered in a nook formed by some tree roots, and Sunset, Pyrrha, and Flash formed a line against the onrushing grimm. The sunlight glimmered off the armour of Pyrrha and Flash momentarily dazzling Rainbow as she piloted the airship down in front of them.</p><p>It didn’t seem to be dazzling the grimm. </p><p>“Coming in hot!” Rainbow shouted. “Tsunami, get ready for incoming! Arslan, get them in, quickly!”</p><p>She brought The Bus in as fast and as hard as she dared without actually crashing it, offloading missiles from the pods mounted to her wings, raking the front of the column of grimm with fire from her wing-mounted guns – she didn’t want to risk the Tempest right now; the vibrations might throw the whole airship off kilter – before turning sharply to descend between the grimm and the huntsmen, a hollow metal barrier between the six and destruction. </p><p>The grimm burst out of the woods, howling and snarling and roaring for blood. Their roars were answered by the spitting of the cannon as Tempest raked them with fire, by the hissing of Equaliser as Starlight fired as swiftly as she could, by the crackling flames as Trixie’s fire, amplified by wind from Sunburst’s staff, erupted in a blazing cone to consume all before it. </p><p>“Get in! Quickly!” Arslan shouted, and it seemed less than a second to Rainbow’s ears before the sharp crack of Pyrrha’s rifle was added to the cacophony of sounds doing battle against the growling of the grimm.</p><p>“Two in,” Arslan called. There was the crack of Sunset Shimmer teleporting. “Four in. I’ll find her a seat; don’t worry.”</p><p>Sol Invictus began to bark loudly. </p><p>“Six in!” Arslan yelled. “Everybody safe and sound.”</p><p>Rainbow didn’t need telling twice. The moment she heard the words, she pulled the Skyray up sharply, closing the doors on both sides of the airship as The Bus shot upwards. She heard a thump striking the side, and then heard a muffled yelp as the beowolf who had tried to jump them lost its purchase and tumbled back to earth once more. </p><p>Rainbow risked a glance backwards, from the cockpit into the pretty crowded main section. Everyone who had gone into the forest looked a little worn out, and everyone, including Team TTSS, looked a little shaken. </p><p>“How’s Blake?” Rainbow asked quietly.</p><p>“She’s hurt,” Jaune said, his voice hoarse. “I’ve done what I can, but I still think she should see a doctor.”</p><p>“Secure her on the other stretcher at the back,” Rainbow said. “This might be a bumpy ride before we get home… and Ruby?”</p><p>“Her aura broke, but I don’t think she was injured, at least nothing more than bumps and bruises,” Sunset replied. She pursed her lips together. “Thanks for showing up.”</p><p>Rainbow smiled thinly. “I never leave my friends hanging,” she said, and turned back to the steering column and her controls. “Now, maybe we can have an easy-”</p><p>The alarms blared.</p><p>“I need to keep my mouth shut,” Rainbow muttered as she turned for home and gunned the engines to maximum. No, she pushed them past maximum, trusting to that one hundred percent margin of safety – and hey, overloading the Skyray hadn’t caused them to crash just yet – as she pushed the engines beyond what they were supposed to go.</p><p>And, you know, they didn’t blow up or anything. Which was good, because it seemed like every nevermore over the forest was converging upon them, following them, descending in front of them, trying to fall on them like they were sparrows and the hawk was out. Rainbow fired every missile she had left, she let every gun blaze away, not trying to kill the grimm but to make them flinch long enough to get out. </p><p>She jinked and rolled, dodging the talons that reached for her airship and the feathers like knives that were flung at it from all directions. They burst through the mass of black, leaving the grimm to follow in a great roiling mass as The Bus raced for the cliffs. </p><p>The cliffs, and the Atlesian airships beyond. </p><p>Rainbow grabbed the microphone. “<em>Resolution,</em> this is Rorari Three-Two; I hope you’re ready for company, because we’ve got lots of it.”</p><p>“Copy that, Three-Two. Maintain your present vector precisely. Don’t be alarmed; we’ve got you covered.”</p><p>“Understood,” Rainbow said as the smile returned to her face. </p><p>For a moment, the Skyray flew straight and true in the direction of Beacon, and the nevermores pursued.</p><p>Then the sky was lit up by lasers as the <em>Resolution</em> and its fighter screen opened up at once, red lasers from the cruiser and green from the turrets on the Skydarts streaking out across the blue to pierce the cloud of nevermores. The grimm scattered, flying this way and that as some of their number were vaporised, pierced by the bolts and turned to ash. The Atlesian airships fired again and again, some of their bolts passing so close to The Bus that their glare illuminated the cockpit, but none of them so much as scratching the cyan paintwork on the vessel. </p><p>The nevermores withdrew, pursued by yet more lasers, their numbers reducing every moment as the Atlesian fire found its mark again and again. </p><p>“Thanks for the save, <em>Resolution</em>.”</p><p>“Any time, Rorari Three-Two.”</p><p>“Rorari Three-Two, this is <em>Valiant</em> Actual; what’s your status?”</p><p>Rainbow swallowed. “Everyone is on board, sir. Blake and Sage are in need of medical attention.”</p><p>General Ironwood was quiet for a moment. “How bad is it?”</p><p>“I’m not quite sure, sir.”</p><p>“Alright, I’ll inform Ozpin,” General Ironwood replied. “Twilight?”</p><p>“I’m right here, sir,” Twilight murmured. “I’m… a little shook up, but I’ll be fine.”</p><p>“Thank gods for that,” General Ironwood said, a touch of weariness entering his voice. “Good work out there, Dash.”</p><p>Rainbow’s chin rose a little higher in spite of itself. “Thank you, sir.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0072"><h2>72. To Each A Task</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Rainbow and Yang discuss Blake. Ozpin deals with the fallout of the exercise. Phoebe gets a visit from Lightning Dust.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To Each a Task</p><p> </p><p>Sunset swung her legs out over the sky as she and Cinder sat on the docking pad, looking out across Vale as the sun descended towards the horizon.</p><p>“How’s Ruby?” Cinder asked.</p><p>“Fine,” Sunset said. She hesitated for a moment. “Disappointed in herself.”</p><p>“For almost dying?”</p><p>“For losing,” Sunset explained. “She ought to have been able to take out a bunch of beowolves without breaking a sweat. Or so she believes, anyway.”</p><p>“I’m a little surprised you’re not with her,” Cinder murmured.</p><p>“Anything that I said to try and make her feel better would seem like a platitude at this point,” Sunset explained. “I think the only one who can really make her feel better is Blake. That’s what upsets her most: it’s not the fact that she couldn’t win; it’s the fact that she was so helpless that Blake had to save her life.”</p><p>“Is it a shameful thing to have your life saved by another?” Cinder asked. “I thought that what teams were all about: rah-rah, teamwork, watching one another’s backs, that sort of thing.”</p><p>“Could you sound any less sincere about this?” Sunset asked.</p><p>Cinder chuckled. “Sorry,” she murmured. “It’s just that, when it comes to the topic of personal helplessness… I’m afraid that I am inclined to agree with Ruby. She ought to be ashamed of herself.”</p><p>Sunset’s eyes narrowed. “You won’t repeat that where she can hear you. Or at all, as a matter of fact.”</p><p>Cinder stared at her, a slight smirk playing across her face. “Of course not,” she said softly. She bowed her head. “Forgive me.”</p><p>Sunset snorted. “We all have bad luck sometimes. There is no disgrace in it.”</p><p>“I’m sure that Blake will agree, once she wakes up,” Cinder said airily. “Speaking of which, I’m a little surprised that you’re not with her.”</p><p>Sunset pouted. “They wouldn’t let everyone in the room. It’s just Yang and Rainbow Dash.”</p><p>Cinder giggled, covering her mouth with one hand. “So, does that make me your third choice of person to spend time with, or your second?”</p><p>“I’m here with you because I want to be,” Sunset declared. “And because I want to say thank you.”</p><p>“I did very little.”</p><p>“You came,” Sunset insisted. “That’s enough.”</p><p>“I would have liked the chance to save your life,” Cinder said.</p><p>“You saved Twilight.”</p><p>“I helped,” Cinder corrected. “Don’t overinflate the record of my accomplishments.”</p><p>“You came,” Sunset repeated. “You came to aid us. Only Pyrrha can say the same, in this whole school. Well, you two and Rainbow Dash and… Team Tsunami; by Celestia, I owe my life to the Great and Powerful Trixie. Ugh.” She got to her feet. “I might have to throw myself off this docking platform in sheer embarrassment.”</p><p>“I’d rather you didn’t,” Cinder drawled. “The sound of your screaming on the way down would make it very hard to appreciate the view.”</p><p>“You think I’d scream as I fell?”</p><p>“I think you’d scream the school down, yes,” Cinder said.</p><p>“Really?” Sunset asked, and her eyebrows rose as she stepped off the docking platform. </p><p>She fell silently, arms spread out, wind pushing at her face and rushing through her hair as she plummeted towards the ground… for all of two seconds before she teleported back onto the docking platform. </p><p>“There, you see?” Sunset asked. “Completely silent.”</p><p>Cinder glared at her. “Perhaps I should break your aura and then we can try that again.”</p><p>Sunset chuckled. “We could, if you like,” she said, with the smug confidence of someone who didn’t use aura to teleport.</p><p>“No,” Cinder murmured. “Let’s not; that would be rather tedious.”</p><p>“Fine by me,” Sunset said, sitting down again. “I mean, who wants to fight when we have this great view to enjoy, huh?” All of Vale was spread out before them, bathed in the golden light of the setting sun, the high towers casting long shadows over the rest of the city, the myriad panes of glass reflecting the light in vibrant flashes, the lights beginning to blink as the light fell. </p><p>It was no Canterlot, and it was not a perfect city, but at the same time… it wasn’t half bad. </p><p>“Thank you,” Sunset said again.</p><p>Cinder leaned backwards, tucking her hands behind her head. “You can make it up to me some other time.”</p><p>“I will,” Sunset said. “You can count on it.”</p><hr/><p>The golden light of the late afternoon spilled through the window into the room in the hospital wing. </p><p>Blake’s room.</p><p>She was sleeping still, her long black hair spilling out over the pillow in all directions, framing her face like a halo of darkness. She was covered by a white sheet from the neck down, obscuring the bandages in which they had bound her injuries. </p><p>Thanks to Jaune, she wouldn’t have any scars, or at least not any really noticeable ones; not that you could have seen most of her scars anyway, but if you could, they still wouldn’t be very noticeable. </p><p>Not that it would have been a big deal if you could see them. All that scars did was show that you were brave. </p><p>The exercise had been called off, but although there were a lot of people who would have liked to be here for Blake when she woke up, the size of the room and – more importantly – the attitude of the nurse meant that only a couple of people were allowed to stay with her. Rainbow Dash was one of them, leaning against the wall with her arms folded across her chest, one leg raised and pressed, sole down, upon the wall. </p><p>Yang was the other person here; it was weird… well, no it wasn’t; there were perfectly valid reasons why Rainbow Dash didn’t think of Blake’s team leader as being one of the people closest to her, but it said something about the way things had turned out for Blake lately nonetheless. </p><p>Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that Rainbow would have listed Sunset above Yang in terms of people close to Blake, Yang had insisted on being here. And, since Rainbow had refused to go, that meant that Sunset would just have to wait for news about Blake like everyone else. </p><p>Sun was also not there, by his own choice instead of by the decree of the nurse; he had told them that his place was with Sage, his teammate. Rainbow couldn’t help but think that Blake would be impressed to hear that when she woke up. </p><p>Yang was sat in the only chair in the room, by Blake’s bedside, close enough that she could have reached out and touched her if she wanted to. She didn’t, but she could if she chose. </p><p>For the moment, she kept her hands to herself, lying in her lap one on top of the other. She just looked at Blake, her purple eyes soft. </p><p>She glanced at Rainbow. “You don’t have to stay, you know.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Rainbow contradicted, “I do.”</p><p>“She’s not your teammate.”</p><p>“Not yet, maybe, but she’s still my responsibility.”</p><p>“'Not yet'?” Yang repeated. “You’re that confident, huh?”</p><p>“It’s nothing personal,” Rainbow said softly.</p><p>Yang’s brow furrowed for a moment. “I know,” she said. “You want what’s best for her.”</p><p>Rainbow nodded. “That’s right.”</p><p>“And you really believe that’s Atlas?” Yang asked. “In spite of…”</p><p>“In spite of the racism?” Rainbow suggested.</p><p>“You said it, not me,” Yang replied. “I know that it’s Blake’s choice, and I’m not like Sunset looking to stand in her way, but… why? Tell me that, tell me why?”</p><p>“Why what? Why Atlas?”</p><p>“No,” Yang said. “I can guess why Atlas; it’s because you’re from Atlas, and you think that it’s the greatest place on Remnant, right?”</p><p>“Well, yeah,” Rainbow said, “but only because it is.”</p><p>“Beacon has Ruby, and Pyrrha, and Sunset; hell, Beacon has <em>me</em>,” Yang declared. “What does Atlas have to compare to that?”</p><p>Rainbow thought about that for a moment. “Me,” she said.</p><p>Yang smirked. “Who else?”</p><p>“Air support, that’s who else.”</p><p>Yang snorted. “That was a big help today, wasn’t it?”</p><p>“That was Vale’s fault, not ours,” Rainbow replied. “The General would have come in with all guns blazing if your councillor-”</p><p>“Don’t call her my councillor; I didn’t vote for her,” Yang said. “A leader should have a strong chin. Her opponent has no chin, and his deputy has several, but I’m still going to vote for them first chance I get; Councillor Aris doesn’t have what it takes.”</p><p>“Because she left your sister to die in the forest?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>“I mean, <em>that</em>, for sure,” Yang agreed. “But even before that, she might know how to make money, but she doesn’t know how to keep this kingdom safe. She wasn’t able to get a handle on the White Fang, so Ruby and all you guys had to do that; she tried to arrest Blake so that she could get a good headline; I don’t think she’s made a single good call since all of this started. Actually, no, she did send out the huntsmen to protect the villages, I guess. Huh, I wonder if she just got it right for once or if someone pressed her to do the right thing.” She paused. “I don’t get how you can want to be tied down to one place.”</p><p>It took Rainbow a moment to work out that they were back to talking about Atlas now. “It depends on the place you’re tied to, I guess. And the people who live there.”</p><p>“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Yang murmured. “Easier to travel when you’ve got nobody to tie you down.”</p><p>“What about Ruby?”</p><p>“If you think Ruby is the settling down type, I’ve got a bridge to sell you,” Yang replied. “I don’t think her feet will let her rest while there are grimm in the world.” Once more, she took pause before she said, “So why Blake? Let’s say that Atlas really is so great and wonderful, why do you want to sweep Blake off her feet and carry her there? Maybe I’m being hard on you, but I don’t think that it’s just for her own good.”</p><p>“And what if it was?” Rainbow asked. “What if it’s nothing but the fact that some people gave me a shot at making something of myself, and I’d like to pay that forward by giving Blake a shot?”</p><p>“Because the people who gave you a shot didn’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts,” Yang pointed out. “They did it because they wanted something from you.”</p><p>Rainbow was silent for a moment. “You make Twi and the General sound like they’re using me.”</p><p>“That’s not what I meant,” Yang said quickly. “But you know what I meant, don’t you? It’s like that fancy sword that Sunset came back from Mistral with. Pyrrha’s mom didn’t give it to her because they ran out of the room on the mantelpiece or because she was feeling generous that day. She gave Sunset the sword so that she could get something back from Sunset.”</p><p>Rainbow frowned. “Am I the sword here? Is Blake a sword?”</p><p>“No, I think your wings are probably the sword,” Yang explained. “You’re still you. But ‘the General’ might be Pyrrha’s mom.”</p><p><em>And what would Aska have to say about that?</em> “Do you believe in fate?” Rainbow asked.</p><p>Yang blinked. “You mean like destiny?”</p><p>“Sure,” Rainbow replied. “I can’t tell the two of them apart.”</p><p>Yang nodded. “No,” she said.</p><p>“That was certain.”</p><p>“Nobody is pulling <em>my</em> strings,” Yang averred confidently. “The only person who decides where I go or what I do is me. And Dad, sometimes, and the teachers when school’s in session. And when I take missions, then I suppose that… wow, I’m really not free at all, am I?”</p><p>“We’re too young for freedom,” Rainbow said. “Don’t let it get to you.”</p><p>Yang chuckled. “And what about you? You do believe in fate, don’t you, or you wouldn’t have asked.”</p><p>Rainbow reached up and scratched at one of her equine ears. “If I didn’t, I don’t know if I could…” She trailed off.</p><p>Yang waited for a moment. “You don’t know if you could what?”</p><p>“To each of us falls a task,” Rainbow replied. “It might not be a big thing, it might be one of the smallest things, but we’re still put here to do it. It’s our purpose, our… our gift. Something that only we can do, for Remnant. And it all adds up to something amazing, something huge, all the things that only we can do all piling up on top of one another, it’s a thing as big as Atlas. But of course, for some people, the task that falls to them is already pretty huge, like leading our forces against the darkness all around. </p><p>“I’m not saying that I know exactly what Blake’s task is yet, but I think… when I think of the things that she could do, I think of some pretty big stuff.”</p><p>“In Atlas?”</p><p>“Anywhere,” Rainbow replied. “But yes, in Atlas. Maybe. Hopefully. She’s smarter than I am, she’s a better fighter than I am… she’s more deserving to follow in the General’s footsteps, if that’s what she wants.”</p><p>“I’m not sure that’s true,” Blake croaked, her hoarse voice cutting into their conversation like an out of control airship through the front windows of an edgeside cafe. “Apart from anything else, we haven’t actually fought one another, have we?”</p><p>Rainbow’s eyes widened. “How long have you been awake listening?”</p><p>“I just woke up,” Blake replied, speaking slowly and somewhat drowsily. “I take it I’m not dead.”</p><p>Yang laughed. “No,” she said. “No, you’re not dead.” She paused. “Thank you, for protecting Ruby.”</p><p>Blake glanced at her, a slight smile crossing her face for a moment. “It was no problem,” she said.</p><p>“Your injuries might disagree,” Rainbow said.</p><p>Blake groaned. “You know what I mean.”</p><p>Rainbow nodded. “You did good today,” she said. “You did real good.”</p><p>“I almost died,” Blake pointed.</p><p>“Some things are worth dying for,” Rainbow declared. “Our friends most of all.”</p><p>“Mhm,” Blake murmured. “What happened, down there in the forest?”</p><p>“Something went wrong,” Rainbow replied. “A lot more grimm showed up than expected to.”</p><p>“Thanks, I would never have guessed that from the fact that I almost died,” Blake grumbled. “I was asking if we knew why?”</p><p>“No,” Yang said.</p><p>“And we won’t, probably,” Rainbow said.</p><p>Blake was silent for a moment. “Nobody can go in to investigate yet because the grimm concentrations are still too high, and by the time the grimm have dispersed, they will have consumed the lures that were drawing them in, because they devour the works of man as well as humans themselves.”</p><p>“Probably,” Rainbow agreed. “So if anyone did interfere in the test, chances are that they’ll just walk away.”</p><hr/><p>“So the rich and powerful get away with it again,” Lightning Dust muttered. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? Just another day on Remnant.” </p><p>“Quite,” Cinder murmured. “As you say, the wealthy and the powerful will continue to escape justice, while those who are charged with the protection of the world turn a blind eye to their evil… or actively enable it.”</p><p>Lightning grunted. “Pity you didn’t bring one of those lures back with you.”</p><p>Cinder smirked. “Lightning. Lightning. Now why would I want to do that?”</p><p>The response to her question was silence. </p><p>Team CLEM sat in their dorm room. Mercury was lying on his back, reading some sort of Atlesian comic book. Emerald sat at the foot of Cinder’s bed, looking up at her. Lightning was doing one-armed push-ups, presumably because she could. </p><p>Her vanity was rather amusing, in a slightly pathetic way. But ultimately, her vanity was what made her useful. </p><p>Lightning completed another push-up. “She nearly got your friend killed; I figured you might want to do something.”</p><p>“We have more important things to concern ourselves with than Sunset Shimmer!” Emerald snapped. </p><p>“Do not presume to define for me what is and is not of import to me,” Cinder hissed.</p><p>Emerald flinched. “I’m sorry, Cinder, but I thought-”</p><p>“That was your mistake,” Cinder declared. “Do as you’re told, but leave the thinking to me.” She smirked at Lightning. “Lightning Dust, go and pay Phoebe a visit for me.”</p><p>Lightning stopped doing her push-ups. “You want me to kill her?”</p><p>“Lightning!”  Cinder gasped theatrically. “Are you suggesting that I would have a fellow student murdered?”</p><p>Lightning looked her in the eye. “Wouldn’t you?”</p><p>Cinder chuckled. “Oh, yes,” she agreed, her voice a feline purr. “If it served my interests. Phoebe’s death does not. Not yet, at least. However, I do want her warned off; she’s been making too much noise, and I want it stopped. So go, and make sure that she understands that from now on, she’s to keep her hands to herself. Off you go.”</p><hr/><p>“So, Professor Ozpin, can you shed any additional light on what was going on in the Emerald Forest today?”</p><p>Ozpin sat back in his chair. “I’m afraid I’ve very little to add, Lisa; as you are no doubt aware, we at Beacon frequently test our students in practical exercises to test their skills in simulations of the situations that they will encounter in the field. That’s what happened today.”</p><p>On the other side of the screen, Lisa Lavender looked at him sceptically. “Surely you’re not pretending that it’s normal for the sky to be filled with grimm during one of your school exercises.”</p><p>“No,” Ozpin allowed. “But the grimm are not our pets; they are not predictable creatures. Unforeseen circumstances are inevitable in an environment like the Emerald Forest.”</p><p>“So what happened?”</p><p>“It was always our intent to draw in grimm to oppose our students,” Ozpin said. “In this instance, some more arrived than we had anticipated.”</p><p>“Wasn’t that dangerous?”</p><p>“Lisa,” Ozpin said, in the voice of an indulgent uncle. “Everything that the students are training to do here is dangerous.”</p><p>“Some might question whether that is a good thing,” Lisa said.</p><p>“I’m afraid that I have little time for armchair professors,” Ozpin said, his tone hardening. “We are training huntsmen here, and the life of a huntsman is filled with peril. Yes, some of our practical exercises are dangerous. Sometimes, students do not survive. Each death is a tragedy, and one which we try very hard to avoid, but I will not apologise for the curriculum they died in pursuit of. This is a dangerous life; best they learn that here rather than out there.”</p><p>“But what about the intervention by the Atlesian fleet?” Lisa asked. “In addition to the nevermores, many observers saw the guns of an Atlesian warship lighting up the sky. Was that a planned part of the exercise?”</p><p>“No, I’m afraid I must credit General Ironwood for that display,” Ozpin said. “The good general is a little less tolerant of risks to his students than I am; he felt it necessary to intervene.”</p><p>“You mean that in Atlas, they aren’t as willing to tolerate loss of life amongst the student body?”</p><p>“In Atlas, they do many things differently,” Ozpin said. “But let me be clear: no lives were lost today; two students were injured, true, but they are both expected to make complete recoveries. They all acquitted themselves very well in a deliberately trying circumstance. I couldn’t be prouder of them. If only one thing that I say to you takes root with people, Lisa, it is this: that Vale is being guarded by some of the bravest young men and women I have ever known, and that is something that should bring everyone great comfort.”</p><p>“Thank you, Professor,” Lisa said, and the picture cut out as she started to turn away. </p><p>Her voice continued to echo out of James’ scroll as he and Glynda entered from the elevator. “In other news,” Lisa continued, “the First Councillor’s daughter, Skystar Aris, has been seen with-”</p><p>James shut off the broadcast and closed his scroll. “I’m less tolerant of risk to my students?”</p><p>“Is it not so?” Ozpin asked mildly.</p><p>James stared at him. “You think I coddle them, don’t you?”</p><p>“I think that they will not always have air support to call on when they are in desperate need, and it is better they learn that sooner rather than late,” Ozpin replied. “They’re not your children, James.”</p><p>“They’re as good as,” James replied, walking towards Ozpin’s desk. “Some of them don’t have anybody else.”</p><p>“Nevertheless, they will have to-”</p><p>“To what?” James asked. “'Grow up'? This from the man who tolerated a food fight in the cafeteria on the grounds that they were still children.”</p><p>Ozpin glanced at his redoubtable lieutenant. “<em>Et tu</em>, Glynda?”</p><p>Glynda coughed into one hand. “You do have a somewhat inconsistent attitude, Professor,” she murmured.</p><p>“Man is an inconsistent creature,” Ozpin replied. “I am allowed to have two thoughts in my head, though they be the most contrary thoughts that ever were thought. On the one hand, I deplore the fact that this error occurred, and our students were forced into this position; on the other hand, I am, as I told Lisa, intensely proud of them. I am even, perversely, glad that it was Team Sapphire that were engaged in this… debacle. They are one step closer to being ready.”</p><p>“So you have chosen then,” Glynda said. “Miss Nikos?”</p><p>“I said ‘closer’ to being ready, and I said the team,” Ozpin reminded her. “I will not lie; she has always been my first choice-”</p><p>“And what happened in the forest hasn’t changed that?” James asked.</p><p>“Miss Shimmer remains fundamentally unsuited to become the Fall Maiden,” Ozpin replied. “Not only on account of her temperament and character – although I must say that would be quite enough; she would be as poor a guardian as Raven would have been – but because we do not know what mixing the magic of two worlds will do.”</p><p>“What about Miss Belladonna?” James asked.</p><p>Ozpin’s eyebrows rose. “You astonish me, James, what about Miss Dash?”</p><p>“Rainbow Dash would make a fine guardian for these perilous times,” James said. “But Miss Belladonna-”</p><p>“Is too in love with death,” Ozpin interrupted. “That would be bad enough, even were the death she is enchanted with not her own. How is Miss Belladonna, by the way?” he asked Glynda.</p><p>“Predicted to make a full recovery,” Glynda said. “If she hadn’t fought as hard as she did, there’s a chance that Ruby might have died before Miss Shimmer could get to her.”</p><p>“True, but there is also the report of the incident at Badger’s Drift,” Ozpin replied. “A Maiden cannot throw away her life so recklessly; she must live, for at least a little, but Miss Belladonna seems to have no concern for her own survival whatsoever.”</p><p>“Is that why you don’t mind that she might be coming to Atlas?” James asked.</p><p>“Could I stop her, if she wished to go?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” James said. “You seem to try and keep all the best students for yourself.”</p><p>“I would be failing in my duties if I did not,” Ozpin replied. “Nevertheless, regardless of my feelings on Miss Belladonna, I am glad to hear that she will recover. Have you heard from Councillor Aris?”</p><p>“Not yet,” James said. “Which surprises me a little.”</p><p>“I doubt she wishes to send you home,” Ozpin said. “Perhaps she thinks it better to pretend this never happened rather than bark futilely at you.”</p><p>“Maybe,” James muttered. “You understand now, don’t you Oz? Why I came?”</p><p>“I thought you came to fight the White Fang, not rescue students from exercises gone wrong,” Glynda said.</p><p>“I came because the waters are rising,” James said sharply. “She’s coming for us <em>now</em>.”</p><p>“You think this was her work?” Glynda asked.</p><p>“You don’t?” James asked.</p><p>“Accidents happen,” Glynda replied.</p><p>“And the rampage of the White Fang, is that an accident too?” James demanded. “She’s coming for us now.”</p><p>“'Coming for us'? No, James, she will not come. She will not come save only to triumph over me when all is won,” Ozpin murmured. “She uses others as her weapons. Weapons which we will confront, as and when they show themselves. Until then… the students have survived a harrowing experience and won another victory. I suggest we take that and be well satisfied with it.”</p><hr/><p>Phoebe Kommenos stalked through the moonlit streets of Vale, looking for someone to vent her frustrations on. </p><p>Of all the rotten luck! They’d survived! Sunset had survived, and all the rest of them as well! Pyrrha had dived off the cliff into the forest after them, and she’d made it out alive as well!</p><p>And now everybody was talking about them. The whole school knew that the last exercise had gone horribly, terribly wrong, and yet, those eight students had fought their way out, and weren’t they amazing! Pyrrha Nikos had gone in to rescue her friends, and wasn’t that just what you’d expect from the Champion of Mistral? The Ace of Canterlot had flown her way through nevermore infested skies to extract the students, but what else could you expect from General Ironwood’s star pupil? </p><p>It made her sick to her stomach. </p><p>She hated them. She hated all of them. Pyrrha, Sunset, Rainbow Dash, the whole damn pack of them. </p><p>
  <em>Why do they keep rising from strength to strength while I languish in the gutter?</em>
</p><p>Her hands itched. She had restrained herself for long enough. She needed to take her frustrations out on someone. She needed to take the pain that was in her heart and make it visible on someone’s face. </p><p>And so, she stalked the alleys in search of a victim. </p><p>A garbage can rattled behind her. Phoebe turned around, her chin tilted upwards, her nostrils flaring. </p><p>“Who’s there?” she demanded of the darkness.</p><p>There was no response.</p><p>Phoebe laughed. “Do you think that you can frighten me by hiding and making noises? I am Phoebe Kommenos, warrior of Mistral and student of Atlas Academy; you’d best run along, unless you want me to teach you why you ought to fear my name.”</p><p>Still there was no response. </p><p>Phoebe snorted in disdain and turned away.</p><p>There was a flash of lightning in the corner of her eye. She started to turn back, but her attacker was on her before she ready her weapon.</p><p>She was fast and ferocious, a freak of a faunus whose equine tail swished from side to side as her fists pounded Phoebe from all directions. Lightning surged up and down her body, and as she slammed Phoebe up against the wall, that lightning rippled across Phoebe’s skin, ripping at her aura as she screamed in pain. </p><p>Phoebe cried out as she was thrown to the ground; she winced as she was kicked in the stomach, then picked up and slammed into the pavement again as she tried to crawl away. She felt another shock of lightning tear over her, the crackling of the lightning countering her cry of pain before she was grabbed by the throat with one hand. </p><p>“Please!” Phoebe cried as she looked helplessly into the burning gamboge eyes of the muscular faunus. “Please, don’t kill me!”</p><p>The faunus growled. “We know what you did.”</p><p>Phoebe’s whole body trembled. “What I did?”</p><p>“In the forest,” the faunus said. “The way you sabotaged the test, we know. We have the lures to prove it.”</p><p>Phoebe gasped. Dying was bad enough, but disgrace would be even worse. If she got expelled from Atlas, she’d have to limp home and be a laughingstock back home in Mistral. It wasn’t like she had Turnus’ money and name to shield her from the consequences. They’d lord it over her in the arena for the rest of her days, a pathetic failure who couldn’t even graduate from an academy. </p><p>“What do you want from me?” she cried. “I have money, I can pay-“</p><p>“We don’t want money,” the faunus grunted. “Just leave Team Sapphire alone. No more games, no more messing around. You’re done. Understand?”</p><p>“Team Sapphire?” Phoebe murmured. “Did they put you up to this?”</p><p>“Understand?!” the faunus yelled, and lightning wreathed her free hand as she raised it to strike. </p><p>“Yes!” Phoebe yelped. “Yes, yes, I understand! They… they will get no more trouble from me.”</p><p>She hated having to say those words. She hated meaning them. She hated it as she hated them. She would never stop wishing for their deaths. But in the face of this monster, in the face of potential ruin and deaths real and social, she didn’t dare say anything else.</p><p>She didn’t dare mean anything else. </p><p>She had been defeated. </p><p>Just like she always was.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This story will be going on hiatus for a couple of weeks after this, as the next few chapters are very long and are taking some time to write.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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